Due to limited wartime housing, Army lieutenant Danny Ferguson (Frank Latimore) and fiancée Maggie Preston (Jeanne Crain) must postpone their wedding until a room in the Craig Hotel, where married officers stationed at nearby Camp Fielding live with their wives, becomes available.
When their accommodations are ready, Maggie arrives with her wealthy parents Henry and Vera (Eugene Pallette and Mary Nash), who are unhappy about the living conditions their daughter will be forced to endure.
Initially Maggie is too happy to care, but once the newlywed is left alone during the day while her husband is on the base, she begins to become disenchanted with her surroundings and the lack of service her privileged background has groomed her to expect.
When Danny finds himself the target of snide remarks made by his fellow officers, he discovers Maggie asked her father to use his influence to keep his son-in-law based in the States instead of being shipped overseas.
“The purpose of In the Meantime, Darling (other than dubious entertainment) is to show Americans the need to pull together across class lines…Hollywood endorsed this message, and was adept at turning it into plots by using marriage as the metaphor.”—Film historian Jeanine Basinger in I Do and I Don’t: A History of Marriage in the Movies (2012)[1] The initial draft of the screenplay, entitled Paris, Tennessee, was completed in July 1943, and 20th Century Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck assigned the project to Archie Mayo.
Joseph Breen, who headed the Production Code Administration, was certain the British Board of Film Censors would object to a scene showing the newlywed couple in bed and recommended Preminger restage it, although the shot remained in both the US and UK releases.