The Well Groomed Bride

This is not the funniest comedy ever made, but it is proficient, as written by Claude Binyon and directed by Sidney Lanfield, both of whom had done far better work than this; and while it's no masterpiece it's not a total loss by any means. There's a touch of late screwball in Ray Milland and Olivia de Havilland warring over a champagne bottle. And the mood of austerity in the America of the war and immediate postwar years is well-captured, albeit in a stylized and slick fashion. Still, champagne is champagne, and the movie's fetishistic obsession with it is indicative of Hollywood's desire to get back to making more formalized, safer films, of which this is a fairly decent attempt. But it is at its best an aborted effort to capture a mood that was pretty much gone by the time the movie was made, as the mood of the film gives no indication of where the postwar world was heading. Still and all, it's a nice stab at staving off the inevitable.

The plot for "The Well-Groomed Bride" is incredibly thin...too thin for an entire movie. This is odd, as Olivia de Havilland had just recently won the right to break her contract with Warner Brothers and was now a free agent...and she made THIS??

When the story begins, a navy ship is about to be launched and the Captain (James Gleason) orders his Lieutenant (Ray Milland) to go buy a French Magnum...NOT an easy task considering that the war had just ended and champagne production (and everything else in Europe) was a mess. When he finally does locate a magnum, one of the only ones on the entire West Coast, Margie (de Havilland) has just purchased it. He tries to weasel it off her, but she needs it because her fiance (Sonny Tufts) is returning from the war to marry her...and he's instructed her to find the biggest bottle of champagne she can for the occasion. That is pretty much the entire plot, though in the course of things, the lady and the Lieutenant fall in love...which is pretty much what you'd expect.

Is this a bad film? At times (such as when the Lieutenant SLUGS Margie!!), it is. But for the most part it's a forgettable time-passer that starred two actors who simply were too good for this sort of film. As for Sonny Tufts, well, this sort of fluff was pretty much as good as it gets for him and his somewhat sordid career.

Before Olivia de Havilland made her remarkable comeback in 1946's To Each His Own, she stepped in as a last minute replacement for Paulette Goddard in 'The Well Groomed Bride', her first film after her two year legal battle with Warner Bros. Unfortunately, the script is so slight (about de Havilland and Milland fighting over rights to the last champagne bottle in San Francisco--she wants it for her wedding, he wants it to christen a ship). The laughs are scant although Olivia, Ray Milland and Sonny Tufts try hard to keep things bubbling. De Havilland manages to be pert and pretty as the heroine, Milland is his usual adept self at comedy and even Sonny Tufts manages to make his big "conceited muscle" role likeable at times--but the whole thing fails to get off the ground. The weak script defeats everyone, including Percy Kilbride as de Havilland's dad. Only avid fans of Ray Milland or de Havilland should watch this one--which does not turn up on TV these days--Paramount obviously deciding it wasn't worth saving.

Ray Milland is the Navy officer in search of a Magnum of Champagne to launch a battle ship. Olivia Dehaviland is in search of the same bottle to launch her wedding to Sonny Tufts. They collide over and over again when they find only one bottle in the whole of San Francisco. Not a lot of chemistry between Ray and Olivia, but enjoyable anyway. I read that Paulette Goddard was the first choice for this film, and would have probably been better in the part, because she had great moments with Milland in other films. I thought it odd that Olivia got top billing when this film was released after the remarkable performance of Milland in The Lost Weekend. His Oscar should have been the reason to put him first on the marquee, unless it came after the fact.

As a long-time deHavilland fan, I've been looking for this film for years. It's never been on VHS or AMC/TCM. Anyone know why it's MIA? Surely it's not her best or among the greatest by far, but it seems strange it's never turned up somewhere!