Our Wife features a memorable supporting performance by the cross-eyed silent comedy star Ben Turpin. As John McCabe writes in Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, "this hardy perennial of an earlier day had retired from comedy years before to care for an ailing wife. Playing a justice-of-the-peace whose comic myopia causes difficulties in determining just who is being married, Turpin's brief appearance in the film was amusing but not of sufficient duration to give him a chance to sparkle." Turpin had lent support to dozens of one and two-reel comedies at Essanay in the mid-teens, in support of stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Wallace Beery, and Bronco Billy Anderson. In the late teens and early twenties Turpin starred in his own series of comedies for Mack Sennett. His appearances in the sound era were few, but included cameos in such feature films as Million Dollar Legs (1932) with W. C. Fields, the Twentieth Century-Fox nostalgia piece Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), and his final film, Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940).
Producer: Hal Roach
Director: James W. Horne
Screenplay: H.M. Walker (dialogue)
Music: Marvin Hatley, Leroy Shield (both uncredited)
Film Editing: Richard Currier
Cast: Stan Laurel (Stanley), Oliver Hardy (Oliver), Babe London (Dulcy, the bride), James Finlayson (father of the bride), Ben Turpin (Justice of the Peace), Charley Rogers (Finlayson's butler), Blanche Payson (Turpin's wife)
BW-20m.
