Meet the Stewarts

The good news: William Holden and Frances Dee make a perfectly believable couple, and the Wicked Witch's brief turn as a maid was a pleasant surprise.

But the plot wasn't credible, with the wife constantly keeping secrets from her husband for no clear reason other than to hold the story together. And the bit at the end, where the moving man casually admits that he regularly beats his wife and she bails him out and apologizes to him later, was creepy even for the era. (And keep in mind that the script was written by a woman.)

And what was the deal with the strawberries at the end? Did I miss something?

I guess this is one of those movies that people watched in the pre-television era, when they were starved for entertainment and wanted to get out. Fortunately, we have more options now.

This came out in 1942. In the early fifties, it could (title and all) have been the first episode of a television show. (That includes William Holden's calling wife Frances Dee "kitten." That's just like in "Father Knows Best," though there it's the title character's daughter's name.) It's a pleasant movie. Holden and Dee are a believable enough couple. It is a familiar story but the plot takes some different routes: She comes from a rich family. He is working class. She wants to try. She indeed does try. (Margaret Hamilton is thrown in, as an inept housekeeper.) The highlight is Anne Revere. What astonishing presence that woman had! She plays Holden's sister, a school principal. She's cold, strong, judgmental, and (of course) in the end kind.

An inspired portrait of the first steps in marriage. And a seductive young couple. It could be a moral lesson or a seductive comedy. But it use the humor in wise manner and propose a real interesting image of compromises, adaptation to reality, essence of family. And , sure, beautiful performances. A young William Holden and charming Frances Dee. Seductive work of Anne Revere and beautiful story. One of good examples why the old movies are, in deep sense, unique.

Pretty much a remake of the Bride Walks Out from 1936, right down to the same gags with the money, the furniture, the maid. Mike (William Holden - Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina) marries Candace (Frances Dee - Little Women, Of Human Bondage), and all their problems boil down to surviving on just the husband's income. The bright spots in this movie come from the supporting characters - running gags from the taxi driver (Don Beddoe) and the maid (Margaret Hamilton - the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of OZ!) One difference from the Bride Walks Out is that here, the families of the couple are involved, but in the first version, all the interaction was with their neighbors. Meet the Stewarts is a little more mature; a little darker - grownups talking about real life issues; in The Bride Walks Out, they seemed like fun, young kids who never really took themselves too seriously.

Honestly, I was rather bored with this silly cartoonish script about an untalented wife who couldn't cook or learn to economize on her husband's small salary. I still enjoyed it mainly to see Bill Holden so young and handsome and debonair and funny. However, the last part of the film, near the end, the slapstick comedy became so hilarious that I laughed my head off! That redeemed the film for me. Humor solves a myriad of problems in life. :)

So if you love William Holden definitely add this film to your watch list. As others here have mentioned: later in life he tended to make fun of his early lightweight comedies, but still, it's worthwhile watching him so effortlessly pull his character off in this frothy bubble of a romantic comedy.