Never a Dull Moment (1950 George Marshall)

Katharine Faulkner "Kay" Swift (April 19, 1897 – January 28, 1993) was an American composer of popular and classical music, the first woman to score a hit musical completely. Written in 1930, 'Fine and Dandy' includes some of her best known songs; the title song has become a jazz standard. "Can't We Be Friends?" (1929) was her biggest hit song. She was a close friend and collaborator of George Gershwin. In 1939 she met a rodeo cowboy and eloped with him two weeks later. In 1943 she wrote her only novel 'Who Could Ask For Anything More?' and it was this that provided the source for Lou Breslow and Doris Anderson's screenplay for this. (The marriage did not last.)

I'm interested in all this because the film has not a very satisfactory ending and I wondered how the book was different. Not only is it out of print, it's not even on Abebooks, so it's hard to know, but this review on https://www.kirkusreviews.com suggests it was quite another thing:

Breezy, smartly personal history of a cafe society celebrity (musician, lyricist, and mother of grown children as well), falls in love with and marries a rodeo star from the World's Fair. Here -- with a dramatic gesture -- is back to the primitive life with a hang. An Oregon ranch, authentic, ungilded, provides the new setting, and this is anecdotal adventure of their life there, of carnivals and parades, of peripatetics among the hired help, of Pegleg Pete who turned out to be a fighting drunk, of the blackmail of a friend, of cattle and butchering, of visitors --and spongers, of Porgy, the ranch poodle, and Bess, imported as his mate, and of an acquired family. Casual, candid, really superficial, but it just might go -- on a minor scale.

The film ending is that Fred MacMurray persuades Irene Dunne to come back to the ranch despite the fact that mean neighbour William Demarest won't let them have any water (thus it will fail), Fred's become crap at being a rodeo rider and Irene has lost her musical touch (her lyrics are now full of references to sagebrush and spurs), which I would have thought would not please audiences particularly. We were fully expecting Irene to win over Demarest somehow and all end happily.

Dunne's character endures having a house party foisted on her, having her bedroom invaded at four in the morning, falling out of a stable, being windswept and dirty, falling off a horse and accidentally killing a prize bull. It's a miracle she put up with harsh farm life, which is what it really was...

Dunne is very energetic doing all this. Her inherited daughters are played by Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau. Andy Devine is Fred's rodeo partner and Ann Doran is the woman Fred didn't marry. Joe Walker shot it for RKO and there are three of Kay's songs in it.

Thanks to Wikipedia and The Independent for source info.