The Doctor Takes a Wife is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Alexander Hall and starring Loretta Young, Ray Milland, Reginald Gardiner, Gail Patrick and Edmund Gwenn.

Young and Milland portray a best-selling author and medical school instructor, respectively, who find it convenient to pretend to be married, even though they initially loathe each other.

Young had recently left 20th Century Fox after turning down Darryl F. Zanuck's offer of a new contract and going freelance, it was her first film at Columbia since Man's Castle in 1933.

After she badgers him into giving her a lift from the isolated Connecticut hotel in which they are both staying, a misunderstanding leads to the newspapers declaring that she has turned her back on her beliefs and married him.

Variety felt it was "a light comedy with farcical trimmings that depends on punchy dialog and semi-slapstick situations for a good supply of laughs" while the New York Times review noted "thanks to Mr. Milland's genteel clowning and a couple of dependable farce situations - one of which is the frantic business of keeping two unsuspecting parties going in adjacent apartments at the same time - the comic pace is generally maintained".