Lost Honeymoon

With a far-fetched and often silly story, "Lost Honeymoon" is only mildly entertaining, and that mainly because of some decent performances by a mostly good cast. The romantic comedy story itself doesn't work very well.

Franchot Tone stars as a successful American architect who one day is confronted by an Englishwoman with two children, who claims to have married him when he served in England during World War II. The architect doesn't remember anything about it. Both the architect and the woman have secrets of their own, leading to an initially complicated, then rather silly, situation. While at times mildly entertaining, the story gets completely predictable very quickly, and is never very believable.

The only thing that keeps the movie from being a total loss is that the cast does a mostly acceptable job with some ridiculous characters. They do make you care a little bit about the characters, even though they are not very credible. Tone, in particular, does as well as anyone could with his situation. But this movie would only be of any real interest to those who enjoy all romantic comedies regardless of quality.

Lost Honeymoon which was produced by the short lived Eagle-Lion studio is a somewhat silly comedy about a man who married while he was having a bout of amnesia. He went back to America where he is now a successful architect and set to marry the boss's daughter.

But the wife he married in wartime Great Britain has died and her best friend has taken the two small mementos of the short lived marriage. And the friend has forged the passport in the name of the deceased wife. That can and does raise the eyebrows of immigration officials.

Franchot Tone is the lucky man about to find out he's a proud father of twins and Ann Richards plays the woman pretending to be his wife. This sad to say is just plain bizarre. Why not just get a passport and take them over yourself? The premise of this comedy is just plain silly.

Frances Rafferty is the boss's daughter and Clarence Kolb her choleric father. Tom Conway chips in with a rather droll performance as Tone's doctor and best friend who takes an interest in Richards himself.

It strikes me but this whole plot premise was done in a most serious vein and much better in Random Harvest.

Though Franchot Tone does not ever wear a tuxedo, he almost does but not quite, he does spend a great deal of the last 10 minutes of the film being chased by cops driving an automobile in his pajamas.

A really fine group of players in roles type cast for them can't really raise Lost Honeymoon above the mediocre.

From a social point of view, the setup of this is quite interesting as it lightheartedly shows the post war problem of kids left behind by their forces dads returning to the USA. Some criticise it for being a ridiculous setup but the lead character is actually just trying to get a better life by taking advantage of the situation. How many people were desperate to escape ruined Britain at that time? Passport to Pimlico dealt with exactly the same problem but in a much superior way. This film's setup is a bit silly but then lots are.

This is an average comedy in the end but it's played well by the actors and isn't a waste of time at all.

Ann Richards' friend and the mother of twins has just died. Apparently she was married to Franchot Tone during the War. Meanwhile, Tone is back in the US, about to marry Frances Rafferty. This will be explained by Tom Conway, Tone's best friend and doctor, as amnesia. Miss Richards, masquerading as the dead woman, comes to the US and says she is his wife, and these are your children. Complications ensue in a plot that becomes so fragmented that Tone has to wake Conway every night to explain what's going on.

There are some good lines in this movie written by Joseph Fields. Clarence Kolb seems to have more than his fair share of them, but perhaps Kolb, trouper that he is, is simply better at speaking them. Tone adopts an expression of satisfied stupidity that reminds me of Stan Laurel as time goes on, and Miss Richards speaks her lines as simply as possible, probably in an effort not to be held responsible. This is an Eagle-Lion production, produced by Arthur Krim and his crew as they worked at taking what had been PRC, and making it respectable. It seems to have been very early in the process.

I couldn't disagree more with the other review of this film. I watched it alone on Talking Pictures a few days ago and I thought it was wonderful. The appearance of Una O'Connor at the the start, the very two very attractive ladies in the female lead parts and Franchot Tone with his wonderful comedic touch. The depiction of post war America etc etc. I loved it all and went to bed a happy man