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Mr. and Mrs. Cugat
If you're tired of novels heavy with 'social significance,' bored to death with historical novels, want one on which you can spend a perfectly good evening having a swell time, 'Mr. and Mrs. Cugat' is your meat.
We promise this book will give you some laughs, and we further promise that you'll meet, for a change, and affectionate and happily married young couple--a couple such as you've often known but seldom found in a novel. They have a perfectly grand time together at their parties, on their trips, and at home; they get into some pretty ticklish situations with their friends and manage to survive these--and their own domestic crises--with their sense of humor unimpaired.
Yes, you'll like them and laugh with them and long aftewards recall their predicaments when you are faced with similar ones. And don't overlook the amusing drawings by Floyd Hardy.
We promise this book will give you some laughs, and we further promise that you'll meet, for a change, and affectionate and happily married young couple--a couple such as you've often known but seldom found in a novel. They have a perfectly grand time together at their parties, on their trips, and at home; they get into some pretty ticklish situations with their friends and manage to survive these--and their own domestic crises--with their sense of humor unimpaired.
Yes, you'll like them and laugh with them and long aftewards recall their predicaments when you are faced with similar ones. And don't overlook the amusing drawings by Floyd Hardy.
211 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1940
98 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 20, 2020
I was perusing Neglected Books's "Reader Recommendations" to wile away a leaden hour of restless twitching as the nasty shingles stabbed my nerve endings for their amusement and ran across this ancient humorous collection of sexist nonsense from 1941. It was the source material for I Love Lucy among other things; Mama had a hardcover of it that I, for some reason (forgot to go to the library? summertime lull? don't remember), picked up and finished in a Watergate-hearings-deadened 1973 afternoon.
The Mahfouzes I found and reviewed recently were all piled atop something, and seeing this title caused the bulb to flash: This book is a rare survivor of the various losses my library has seen over the years! Why in the heck these various and random weirdos survived I do not know. At some point I evdently flung a few things in a box that never got reopened until I landed in New York, but whatever.
So I flipped through this time capsule of gender politics and came away no more and no less amused than I was fiftyish years ago. It's amusing. The setting isn't I Love Lucy's Upper East Side, it's some midwestern place; the Cugats have a comedy-accent foreign maid with the usual "naive peasant" beliefs; Mr. Cugat isn't as funny as Ricky was, though he has a larger cast of sidekicks ("tell {your drunken friend} he can go have his DTs all over someone else's house!" says Mrs. C in a true cringe moment); it's a period piece and is well-enough written that I didn't want to hurl, it or my lunch, at a wall.
I do have an issue, the same one that makes me dislike rewatching the sitcom, with Mrs. Cugat's tendency to lie her way into trouble. Mr. Cugat calls it "whiffling" instead of lying, which is what it is, and does (like Ricky) flip-flop between covering madly and shouting at...well, chastising...Mrs. Cugat for it. If I were reading it for the first time today, I'd give it two stars and a ripping good flensing. But it was funny as hell once, it spawned a movie, a radio show, and two TV shows, all of which I've partaken of (Old Time Radio! gotta love them guys), so it's sorta (great-)grandfathered in.
Don't sprain anything finding and reading it, though. Best appreciated from a safe distance.
The Mahfouzes I found and reviewed recently were all piled atop something, and seeing this title caused the bulb to flash: This book is a rare survivor of the various losses my library has seen over the years! Why in the heck these various and random weirdos survived I do not know. At some point I evdently flung a few things in a box that never got reopened until I landed in New York, but whatever.
So I flipped through this time capsule of gender politics and came away no more and no less amused than I was fiftyish years ago. It's amusing. The setting isn't I Love Lucy's Upper East Side, it's some midwestern place; the Cugats have a comedy-accent foreign maid with the usual "naive peasant" beliefs; Mr. Cugat isn't as funny as Ricky was, though he has a larger cast of sidekicks ("tell {your drunken friend} he can go have his DTs all over someone else's house!" says Mrs. C in a true cringe moment); it's a period piece and is well-enough written that I didn't want to hurl, it or my lunch, at a wall.
I do have an issue, the same one that makes me dislike rewatching the sitcom, with Mrs. Cugat's tendency to lie her way into trouble. Mr. Cugat calls it "whiffling" instead of lying, which is what it is, and does (like Ricky) flip-flop between covering madly and shouting at...well, chastising...Mrs. Cugat for it. If I were reading it for the first time today, I'd give it two stars and a ripping good flensing. But it was funny as hell once, it spawned a movie, a radio show, and two TV shows, all of which I've partaken of (Old Time Radio! gotta love them guys), so it's sorta (great-)grandfathered in.
Don't sprain anything finding and reading it, though. Best appreciated from a safe distance.
November 2, 2010
I have read this no fewer than 20 times and love every page, every word. It is one of the books that has a permanent place on my nightstand -- to put it away would be such a waste of time, as I'd just have to get it right back out.
August 14, 2018
I head this book was the inspiration for the “My Favorite Husband”radio show, which morphed into “I Love Lucy”. It was written in 1937 and is pretty dated both in good and bad ways. The good was just the whole 1930’s vibe, the bad was that Mrs. Cugat was pretty much a young sweet idiot wife. It was a fun little book to read.
Want to read
January 5, 2022My Favorite Husband is the name of an American radio program and network television series. The original radio show, starring Lucille Ball, evolved into the groundbreaking television sitcom I Love Lucy. The series was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) written by Isabel Scott Rorick, the earlier of which had previously been adapted into the Paramount Pictures feature film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942), co-starring Ray Milland and Betty Field.
May 14, 2019
Very mild domestic comedy - if you really want belly laughs, I'd recommend Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I or My Sister Eileen by Ruth McKenny.
March 1, 2016
Very funny, especially the costume ball chapter. You can sort of see where I Love Lucy came from, although with a more suburban, country club feel.
March 20, 2018
I bought this book because I saw that it was something that I Love Lucy was based off of and being such a fan, I couldn't wait to receive it.
I suppose there were some funny parts in it like falling down the stairs drunk and some similaries to the show such as Mrs. Cugat being a liar and wanting a mink coat, but this book just didn't do it for me. I thought there were too many characters thrown in there without a proper introduction so I started spacing out so much that I couldn't wait for it to end - especially at the end of the story when all Mrs. Cugat was worried about, was the hat on Mr. Cugat's head. Who cares?
I suppose there were some funny parts in it like falling down the stairs drunk and some similaries to the show such as Mrs. Cugat being a liar and wanting a mink coat, but this book just didn't do it for me. I thought there were too many characters thrown in there without a proper introduction so I started spacing out so much that I couldn't wait for it to end - especially at the end of the story when all Mrs. Cugat was worried about, was the hat on Mr. Cugat's head. Who cares?
July 3, 2024
Silly hijinks!
July 30, 2025
This is a very funny and enjoyable book! I first found out about this book from a list of books featured as Armed Services Editions (this list can be found in Appendix B of When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning) that I have been lazily reading my way through. I am a little sad about not being able to read this list in chronological order, because the majority of the books’ subjects (war, detective, and sports) don’t interest me. However, when I read a description of this book as the humorous adventures of a young married couple, I thought that premise sounded charming. Mr. and Mrs. Cugat certainly is—but what’s more, this book was also partially the basis for the classic television show I Love Lucy.
Mrs. Cugat’s antics brought Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo to mind several times, like when Mrs. Cugat’s luncheon club attends a lecture by author Captain Allingham, whose book details his many travels and adventures around the world. During a conversation with Captain Allingham, Mrs. Cugat gets carried away by her own tendency to embellish stories, and says that her husband has also been to Java (he has not!) while staying with his old Uncle Joe (does not exist!). When it later becomes apparent that she is about to be caught in a lie by Captain Allingham and Mr. Cugat, Mrs. Cugat has a very Lucy-like lament: “Mrs. Cugat took a deep draught of her highball. How did she get herself into things like this? It was incredible! She must be a little crazy—that story of an entirely imaginary Uncle Joe in whatever the name of the place was! Where did it come from? How could she invent a thing like that and actually almost believe in it? And not be able to stop herself, either!”
Another zany moment occurs when the Cugats’ cat climbs up a telephone pole and Mrs. Cugat thoughtlessly enlists the help of a very young neighborhood boy: “Mrs. Cugat glanced at him. He looked as agile as a little spider. ‘You couldn’t climb up there and bring the kitty down, could you?’ she ventured doubtfully. ‘I’d give you a quarter if you would.’”
Despite the fact that Mr. Cugat is a fairly successful banker, Mrs. Cugat also has difficulties keeping her checkbook balanced and not overdrawing on their bank account. Mr. Cugat tries to help his wife as much as he can with these problems, even giving her pep talks: “There was no sense to it. It simply showed lack of training and will-power. Mrs. Cugat was a perfectly normal, rational being; there was no reason at all why she should not keep her checkbook in order, live within her budget, and balance her household accounts. Mrs. Cugat knew exactly what he meant. All her life people had been saying this sort of thing. The only thing to do about it, she had found, was just try to look intelligent, do the best she could, and not get depressed.”
I was shocked when it was revealed that Mrs. Cugat had once received this note on her report card at age 14 regarding her mathematical abilities: “‘[…]The faculty, after serious consideration, are forced to recommend that she drop the subject entirely, as further attempts to master it appear useless.’” I know this is probably supposed to add to the humor, but this was such a foregone conclusion for any teacher to reach, and I can’t imagine contemporary teachers saying anything like this today to any student.
It’s also a little disgusting how often Mrs. Cugat must deal with the unwanted advances of various men. While on a solo trip that is supposed to help Mrs. Cugat get some rest, it is sad when she laments that she “[…] let a portrait painter kiss her” when there wasn’t much for her to “let” happen to begin with. Even worse, Mrs. Cugat has to fight off a different guy when they are driving in a car together to meet a group of her husband’s friends at a restaurant, and this is probably supposed to be funny too, instead of disturbing: “She had made the last twenty miles by driving with her left, covering with her right, and keeping her elbow in Marko’s stomach.”
Aside from truly dated material that does not hold up to today’s standards, the humor in this book works more often than not. The Cugats actually like each other and are a good team, and their silly disagreements are ridiculous and never serious or unhappy. Mrs. Cugat buys Mr. Cugat a gray pork-pie hat when they are on vacation in Bermuda, and impulsively tosses his too-old, darker fedora out the window on the ship ride home. Despite the fact that it is her own fault that he has no other hat to wear, Mrs. Cugat is unhappy Mr. Cugat keeps wearing the pork-pie hat because she thinks he looks like a gangster with the combination of his dark suit. Mr. Cugat has some very funny moments of his own throughout the book, and teasing his wife about her dislike of his outfit is a favorite of mine: “Putting his hat on he caught her eye in the mirror and winked in a friendly fashion, then he deliberately turned the pork-pie straight up in front, which made him look, this time, like a pirate, and walked out.” I rate this book as four-out-of-five-stars and recommend it to anyone looking for pleasant stories and easy laughs.
Mrs. Cugat’s antics brought Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo to mind several times, like when Mrs. Cugat’s luncheon club attends a lecture by author Captain Allingham, whose book details his many travels and adventures around the world. During a conversation with Captain Allingham, Mrs. Cugat gets carried away by her own tendency to embellish stories, and says that her husband has also been to Java (he has not!) while staying with his old Uncle Joe (does not exist!). When it later becomes apparent that she is about to be caught in a lie by Captain Allingham and Mr. Cugat, Mrs. Cugat has a very Lucy-like lament: “Mrs. Cugat took a deep draught of her highball. How did she get herself into things like this? It was incredible! She must be a little crazy—that story of an entirely imaginary Uncle Joe in whatever the name of the place was! Where did it come from? How could she invent a thing like that and actually almost believe in it? And not be able to stop herself, either!”
Another zany moment occurs when the Cugats’ cat climbs up a telephone pole and Mrs. Cugat thoughtlessly enlists the help of a very young neighborhood boy: “Mrs. Cugat glanced at him. He looked as agile as a little spider. ‘You couldn’t climb up there and bring the kitty down, could you?’ she ventured doubtfully. ‘I’d give you a quarter if you would.’”
Despite the fact that Mr. Cugat is a fairly successful banker, Mrs. Cugat also has difficulties keeping her checkbook balanced and not overdrawing on their bank account. Mr. Cugat tries to help his wife as much as he can with these problems, even giving her pep talks: “There was no sense to it. It simply showed lack of training and will-power. Mrs. Cugat was a perfectly normal, rational being; there was no reason at all why she should not keep her checkbook in order, live within her budget, and balance her household accounts. Mrs. Cugat knew exactly what he meant. All her life people had been saying this sort of thing. The only thing to do about it, she had found, was just try to look intelligent, do the best she could, and not get depressed.”
I was shocked when it was revealed that Mrs. Cugat had once received this note on her report card at age 14 regarding her mathematical abilities: “‘[…]The faculty, after serious consideration, are forced to recommend that she drop the subject entirely, as further attempts to master it appear useless.’” I know this is probably supposed to add to the humor, but this was such a foregone conclusion for any teacher to reach, and I can’t imagine contemporary teachers saying anything like this today to any student.
It’s also a little disgusting how often Mrs. Cugat must deal with the unwanted advances of various men. While on a solo trip that is supposed to help Mrs. Cugat get some rest, it is sad when she laments that she “[…] let a portrait painter kiss her” when there wasn’t much for her to “let” happen to begin with. Even worse, Mrs. Cugat has to fight off a different guy when they are driving in a car together to meet a group of her husband’s friends at a restaurant, and this is probably supposed to be funny too, instead of disturbing: “She had made the last twenty miles by driving with her left, covering with her right, and keeping her elbow in Marko’s stomach.”
Aside from truly dated material that does not hold up to today’s standards, the humor in this book works more often than not. The Cugats actually like each other and are a good team, and their silly disagreements are ridiculous and never serious or unhappy. Mrs. Cugat buys Mr. Cugat a gray pork-pie hat when they are on vacation in Bermuda, and impulsively tosses his too-old, darker fedora out the window on the ship ride home. Despite the fact that it is her own fault that he has no other hat to wear, Mrs. Cugat is unhappy Mr. Cugat keeps wearing the pork-pie hat because she thinks he looks like a gangster with the combination of his dark suit. Mr. Cugat has some very funny moments of his own throughout the book, and teasing his wife about her dislike of his outfit is a favorite of mine: “Putting his hat on he caught her eye in the mirror and winked in a friendly fashion, then he deliberately turned the pork-pie straight up in front, which made him look, this time, like a pirate, and walked out.” I rate this book as four-out-of-five-stars and recommend it to anyone looking for pleasant stories and easy laughs.
November 6, 2016
This is a cheerful book, ideal reading materials for a depressed afternoon. It's about Mr. and Mrs. Cugat and their circle of friends, as well as Mr. Cugat's business connections, whom, as per the social mores of the 1940s, Mrs. Cugat was expected to mingle with, entertain and impress. Mr. Cugat is the Vice President of a bank in an unnamed town, presumably in the Midwest. As such, he has to deal with a certain number of visiting dignitiaries with whom the bank wishes to transact business deals. Cocktail parties, dinners, theatre engagements, even the local Costume Ball... Mrs. Cugat gamely appears at all these functions and tries to support her husband's career by being the perfectly charming hostess or guest. But something always goes wrong... only to be fixed at the very last moment. Once it's an old flame of Mr. Cugat's appearing suddenly, causing Mrs. Cugat to feel the pangs of irrational jealousy. Once it's a tiddly Mr. Cugat getting stuck in his suit-of-armor costume while smoking a cigarette. Mrs. Cugat struggles with her checkbook, with her desire for a brown mink coat, with her hope of changing Mr. Cugat's taste in hats.... but no matter how complicated the situation gets, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat always come through for each other.
It appears that this book was the inspiration for the TV series "I love Lucy", and while the Cugats have a more bourgeois type of lifestyle than Lucy and Desi, the basics are here : a comic, sympathetic description of newlywed life in a time that seems far removed from the way we live today.
It appears that this book was the inspiration for the TV series "I love Lucy", and while the Cugats have a more bourgeois type of lifestyle than Lucy and Desi, the basics are here : a comic, sympathetic description of newlywed life in a time that seems far removed from the way we live today.
April 14, 2016
The germ of I Love Lucy! More of a short story collection than a novel; the stories here are light, witty, sometimes a little crazy, and beyond charming.
As funny as the book is, it does have its flaws. Here and there are some dated slang terms whose meaning I couldn't quite always get.
Two stories are marred by racism, something of an inevitability in reading older stories. The first consists of a few lines between incidental characters, a supposedly learned man making a terrible statement about indigenous peoples and going unopposed. Though the man and his agreeing listener are made to look quite the fools, the dialogue is out of place and can make a sensitive reader wince. The second is the all-t00-common black caricature of the time, though compared to others I've encountered it is pretty mild. One hopes that the author was merely going along with a pervasive convention and not actually displaying her own convictions.
Lamentable as these flaws are, they do not change the fact that I laughed a lot at this book. Sometimes out loud, to my embarrassment in public. For anyone interested in the roots of the modern sitcom, this book is not to be missed.
As funny as the book is, it does have its flaws. Here and there are some dated slang terms whose meaning I couldn't quite always get.
Two stories are marred by racism, something of an inevitability in reading older stories. The first consists of a few lines between incidental characters, a supposedly learned man making a terrible statement about indigenous peoples and going unopposed. Though the man and his agreeing listener are made to look quite the fools, the dialogue is out of place and can make a sensitive reader wince. The second is the all-t00-common black caricature of the time, though compared to others I've encountered it is pretty mild. One hopes that the author was merely going along with a pervasive convention and not actually displaying her own convictions.
Lamentable as these flaws are, they do not change the fact that I laughed a lot at this book. Sometimes out loud, to my embarrassment in public. For anyone interested in the roots of the modern sitcom, this book is not to be missed.
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