Come Live with Me │ Warner Archive Collection
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment
by CHAD KENNERK
Ask a classic movie fan to name a film starring James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, and Ian Hunter and chances are you'll hear Ziegfeld Girl. Before that lavish Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical romance was made, the trio appeared in another 1941 film, the overlooked Come Live with Me. Now revisited through a new 2026 1080p HD master from 4K scans of the original nitrate camera negative, the Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray reveals a dazzling romantic comedy ready for rediscovery.
Directed and produced by Clarence Brown, Come Live with Me follows Austrian refugee Johnny Jones (Lamarr), who faces deportation back to Nazi-controlled Austria. If she can manage to marry within the week, she can stay. Though she already has a proposal from publisher Barton Kendrick (Hunter), the two are unable to tie the knot until Kendrick finalises his divorce from Mrs Kendrick (Verree Teasdale). After a chance encounter at a diner with broke writer Bill Smith (Stewart, at his most charming), Johnny suggests a marriage pact; she'll pay him $17.80 a week in exchange for his name. Bill finds inspiration in the concept and begins writing Without Love – which really would have been a better title for the movie itself.
Widely known as ‘Garbo's favourite director’, Brown was one of the top directors at MGM during the decade, turning out a slew of stylish, sophisticated films. Brown still holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations without a win, having been nominated six times at the Oscars for Anna Christie, Romance, A Free Soul, The Human Comedy, National Velvet, and The Yearling. Fresh from completing The Philadelphia Story, the performance that would ultimately earn him the Academy Award, Stewart stepped directly into Brown's production and filmed three pictures ahead of Oscar night, including Ziegfeld Girl (with Lamarr, Judy Garland and Lana Turner) and the film he often cited as his worst, Pot o' Gold.
A breezy romantic comedy on the surface, Come Live with Me is surprisingly bold for the time. Beneath its banter lies a layered story shaped by the new realities of Nazi aggression, foreshadowing America’s entry into the war later that same year. With the Production Code strictly in place in 1941, it’s a wonder that a screenplay which openly explores taboo topics like divorce, extramarital affairs, and the concept of open marriage made it past the censors. The dialogue remains delightful ("You don't ask somebody in Heaven if they like the place."), and the film is populated by women with real agency, intelligence, and strong points of view.
In her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman, Lamarr considered herself and Stewart “an unlikely romantic pair,” but admitted that the film “pleased audiences, made some money…and increased my bargaining power at the studio. As an indication of this, when I heard MGM was going to make Ziegfeld Girl, I went right to see Mr Mayer. I wanted to do a musical. Its light, gay quality fitted my mood of the day.”
Stewart frequently recalled in interviews an anecdote from filming the Western The Far Country in the Canadian Prairies, where he was approached by a man who wanted to tell him how much he enjoyed the ‘fireflies’ scene in Come Live with Me. “He couldn’t remember the title. But that little thing – didn’t even last a minute – he’d remembered all those years…That’s the great thing about the movies. If you’re good and God helps you and you’re lucky enough to have a personality that comes across, you’re giving people little tiny pieces of time – pieces of time that they never forget.”
Adeline De Walt Reynolds makes her screen debut here at the remarkable age of 78 as Bill's grandmother, delivering a warm, scene-stealing performance. When asked after her first day on set whether she was tired, she reportedly replied, "If you had waited seventy years to do something, you wouldn't be tired." Special features on this Warner Archive Collection gem include the MGM shorts America Preferred and From the Four Corners – the latter directed by Anthony Havelock-Allen and featuring Leslie Howard encouraging Commonwealth soldiers during the war effort – along with the animated cartoon Officer Pooch and the original theatrical trailer.
Come Live with Me is available on Blu-ray 30 June from Warner Archive Collection.
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