The ol' amnesia gimmick plus "screwball" comedy plus W. S. Van Dyke plus Willam Powell and Myrna Loy equals "I Love You Again" (1940).
Workaholic, unfun Larry Wilson gets conked on the head and wakes up as an amusing grifter named George Cary. (Hollywood amnesia will do that to you, apparently — completely revise your personality.) But in his new and at the same time prior state, Larry/Geoge has to come to terms with Larry's wife Kay, who wants a divorce from the melancholy cheapskate half of the compound hero. And yet It comes to pass that Kay prefers the grifter.
Much forced hilarity ensues.
Once again, amnesia proves to be the most malleable of maladies. Bop on the head, he's Larry; another boy, he's George. Amnesia is a gas, even to the pont that Myrna Loy, unhappy with what she's got, picks up a vase to re-transform William Powell into the way she wants him. Mechanical (not medical) amnesia anticipates Danny Kaye in The Court Jester: a snap of the finger he's a duellist; another snap and he's a clown.
It's obvious a) that amnesia easily combines with the Jekyll-Hyde doppelganger scenario, and b) that even by 1940, movie-amnesia could be a target of ridicule.
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