Unfinished Business (1941 film)

Unfinished Business is a 1941 American romantic comedy film directed by Gregory La Cava and starring Irene Dunne, Robert Montgomery and Preston Foster. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures.

Plot
On a train to New York City, small-town singer Nancy Andrews meets and falls in love with sophisticated playboy Steve Duncan. However, Steve ignores her when they reach their destination.

Rejected following an opera audition, Nancy must take a job as a telephone operator performing singing telegrams. Nightclub impresario Billy Ross likes her voice and offers her a job. At the club, Steve's brother and attorney Tommy Duncan becomes inebriated and reveals that Steve is soon to marry another woman. Nancy, also drunk, agrees to escape with Tommy to South Carolina for a quick elopement.

The following day, Tommy discovers that Nancy does not love him. After they return to New York and throw a party, Nancy kisses Steve, angering Steve's new wife and Tommy's old girlfriend. In his disappointment, Tommy enlists in the army and leaves for a year.

When Tommy returns, he punches Steve and prepares to grant Nancy her divorce. However, he learns that he and Nancy are parents of a baby boy and that she is overjoyed to know that Tommy still loves her.

Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote:"Any picture which brings Irene Dunne and Robert Montgomery to a state of matrimony, with the directorial blessing of Gregory La Cava, must, perforce and in truth, have a great deal to recommend it. And a great deal of random charm and pleasantly caustic humor there is, without any dispute, in Universal's 'Unfinished Business,' which provides that denouement in a manner somewhat less than harmonious but sufficiently withal ... But this oddly 'Unfinished Business,' in which they are so desperately involved, is something to tax the credulity of even the most lenient mind. ... In brief. like many another picture, it makes a romantic plot but not much sense. ... Mr. La Cava has done a lot to disguise a foolish script with glib action, but the trick doesn't quite come off. The unfinished business here lies dead in someone's typewriter."