You Belong to Me Reviews

Fonda, a bored multimillionaire playboy, goes on a skiing trip and finds himself enamored of Stanwyck, a beautiful woman he spots on the slopes. Trying to get a better look at her, he steers himself into a snowdrift and suffers an injury to his rear end. He is taken to the local doctor, who turns out to be Stanwyck. The serious professional woman and the charming playboy soon fall in love and are married, but the relationship quickly shows signs of strain when Stanwyck discovers that Fonda, who needs no job and therefore has nothing much else to do, spends all his time working himself up into a jealous frenzy while she treats handsome male patients. Stanwyck expresses doubt about being able to continue with the marriage unless Fonda finds something to do so he can stop pestering her. She suddenly hits upon the idea of finding him a job. Willing to try to salvage the marriage, Fonda reluctantly looks for work and finds himself working as a lowly clerk in a department store because he has no qualifications for anything else. Stanwyck is quite pleased with Fonda's success, but he soon loses the job because the other employees find out he's a millionaire and complain that he's robbing an unemployed person of a good position. Fonda finally ends his frustrations when he decides to use all his money to buy a bankrupt hospital and install Stanwyck as the chief of staff while he runs the business end. YOU BELONG TO ME was a weak attempt to recreate the success of the previous Fonda-Stanwyck coupling, THE LADY EVE. Whereas THE LADY EVE had inimitable Preston Sturges at the helm, YOU BELONG TO ME only had the competent Ruggles to direct a so-so screenplay by Binyon from a story by Trumbo. The material was quite cliche by 1941, and it is only through the strength of performers Stanwyck and Fonda that the film works at all. A pleasant and amusing comedy, but really nothing more.