Meet the Stewarts

they don't make 'em this good anymore!perfectly charming 40's comedy with holden in young but top form.supporting cast is excellent.this was one of holden's last films before going to war and ended up the lower half of a double bill...and shouldn't have.

Even for the early 1940s, this movie is seriously, and ludicrously, sexist. The bride, who has a dim grasp on money, comes from a privileged family; if she were a man, she'd be considered a dashing playboy, but as a woman, she is shown as just silly and bubble-headed, But when she begins to understand that they are living beyond their means, she gets a job--over the husband's serious objections: he feels entitled to come home to a well-kept house (which appears to be a three-room cottage) and a hot meal on the table. The trite situations between do nothing to modify this attitude. When the young wife wants to cook dinner for their family, she--of course--muffs it, rinsing the vegetables with soap, serving a roast too tough to carve, and smoking up the house from a badly lit fireplace (why that last is her fault, I don't quite understand, but somehow it seems to be, as is the embarrassment of learning that her father has revoked her country-club privileges. Somehow the young husband is never at fault, he is a pompous jerk but seen as a noble and upright young man. Adequate acting aside,the movie is painful to watch.

If Bill Holden had to choose a typical part that he was trying to avoid being cast as before Sunset Boulevard, chances are he would pick his role in Meet the Stewarts as exhibit A.

Holden used to call these his 'smiling jim' roles, the decent young married or newlywed that his dual studio masters, Paramount and Columbia would insist on casting him in.

The film is based on a series of short stories by Elizabeth Dunn based on the trials of a young married couple, Candy and Mike Stewart. What we have in this film is an episode of a half hour TV situation comedy stretched out to fill up a B feature film.

In fact Meet the Stewarts might very well have been the inspiration for Bewitched. Mike Stewart is a sober industrious young man who happens to fall in love with an air headed débutante, Candy. Remember the way Darren Stevens insisted that Samantha live on his salary without using any nose twitching magic? Holden is the same way about Dee, insisting that they live without any assistance from his in-laws.

Meet the Stewarts is not a horribly bad film, but you can see how desperate William Holden was to get away from these kind of parts.

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.

Living within a budget just about sums up the entire plot line of this feeble little domestic comedy, MEET THE STEWARTS, which serves to show WILLIAM HOLDEN and FRANCES DEE as a squabbling young couple who dive into marriage without enough money to finance her extravagant ways.

Dee is pretty but plays a rather flighty housewife, sweet but a bit unreasonable in some of her temperamental outbursts. Holden has the sort of "Smilin' Jim" roles he came to detest in time, but does an acceptable job that reveals an early flair for comedy.

There's strong support from a cast that includes ANNE REVERE, GRANT WITHERS and ANNE GILLIS, but a very unfunny role for MARGARET HAMILTON as an inept maid.

Summing up: Never rises above being more than a formula programmer that gives Holden and Dee a chance to make an early impression.