Wir sind gar nicht verheiratet

A stellar cast fills this comedy drama about five couples who went to Niagara Falls to get married, only to learn two years later that their marriages weren't legal. These couples now live all across the country, and the news that they aren't legally married affects each couple differently. There's humor in each couple's particular circumstances, and a couple of them are real lulus.

"We're Not Married" spans a couple of years during WW II. It begins when Melvin Bush marries his first couple on Christmas Eve. Ramona and Steve Gladwyn (Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen) are the lucky first couple to be married by the new justice of the peace, played by Victor Moore. Jane Darwell plays Mrs. Bush, and helps the befuddled elderly and newly commissioned JP do his thing. The film doesn't show the other four couples getting hitched by Bush, but they were married by him between Christmas and New Year's Eve that year.

The trouble for the couples - and, ostensibly the State of New York, began when Attorney General Frank Bush discovered that his cousin, Melvin, had married five couples before the effective date of his commission and appointment as a JP. Melvin has been summoned to the office of Governor Bush, where all three meet over the problem. It turns out that when Melvin got the notice of his appointment in the mail, he didn't bother to read it carefully and note that his commission wasn't effective until the first of the new year

By now, the humor is obvious in the apparent nepotism within the Bush family. The governor and attorney general had to stand for election, but cousin Melvin was appointed a justice of the peace by his attorney general cousin. After some discussion about the seriousness of the matter, they decide that the state must notify each of the five couples that their marriages were not legal so that the couples can take whatever follow-up steps they desire. Those individual stories unfold from there.

The film has a great cast of well-known actors of the day. Besides those already mentioned, Marilyn Monroe, David Wayne, Eve Arden, Paul Douglas, Eddie Bracken, Mitzi Gaynor, Louis Cathern and Zsa Zsa Gabor play the roles of the other four married couples. Each story is different and all are good and well-acted.

But the best is saved for last. Calhern and Gabor play Frederick and Eve Melrose. From the other stories, I couldn't guess how this one would come out. But it has the funniest and most satisfying ending. Most people, adults especially, should enjoy this film. Not that it's an adult film, but it's the stuff of grownups that most kids find boring. That was so in the early 20th century, and it seems even more so today.

Just watched this on Netflix Streaming. In this one, Victor Moore plays a justice of the peace who presided over six weddings before his license to do so took effect. That means none of those couples are legally married. An explanation of one of them is provided in discussion so only five is seen as depicted on screen: Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers are the first we actually meet and see attempting to get hitched just before they start their morning radio show. They're the funniest as they argue just before airtime before then acting all lovey-dovey plugging various sponsors. Reminds me of an actual skit Allen did with Tallulah Bankhead on his actual radio show in which they also played a married couple on the air doing both the lovey and bickering version of their banter that I heard once on a long playing 33 1/3 rpm record back in the late '80s. The next segment has Marilyn Monroe as a Mrs. America contestant while hubby David Wayne is taking care of their baby and doing housework. Then there's Eve Arden and Paul Douglas as a slightly boring couple with Douglas doing a little fantasizing with other women when he gets his letter. The next one has Louis Calhern as a Dallas oil executive (talk about coincidence as this is my next review concerning original "Dallas" cast members in my movie/TV appearances list in chronological order though the cast member I'm referring to here was Wayne who was the first Digger Barnes there) who gets a divorce summons from Zsa Zsa Gabor (known for many such cases herself in her real-life future). And, finally, there's Eddie Bracken as an Army man who doesn't want his pregnant wife-Mitzi Gaynor-to birth an illegitimate child while he's away. Like I said, the first segment was the funniest with the Monroe/Wayne, Calhern/Gabor, and Arden/Douglas ones also providing some laughs but the most touching is the last one. By the way, it's fascinating seeing Lee Marvin in that one not playing a tough guy. In summary, We're Not Married is quite a good mix of various short stories put in one feature.

It's a clever premise, but the results have dated rather badly. Unfortunately, the comedy level never reaches the sparkle it needs, though the opening vignette (Rogers and Allen) comes close. Perhaps that's not surprising given Director Goulding's credits, which suggest he's more at home with Bette Davis melodrama than with material of this sort. Also, I'm surprised a big-budget studio like Fox didn't film this in Technicolor, which would have added a lot to the atmospherics. Instead, we get dour gray tones that undercut the light-hearted mood, making the movie look older than it is. But then, 1952 was a year Hollywood was looking to retool in the face of TV's onslaught. The following year would see an explosion of wide- screen color beyond the reach of the livingroom tube. As a result, this comedy venture may have been caught in the transition.

To me, the Allen-Rogers sequence is the best. It's actually a rather scathing look at entertainment make-believe and the relentless assault of commercial advertising. In private life the two are barely speaking, while on radio they play a pair of happy marrieds who trade comic barbs in between pushing the sponsors' goofy products. It's rather deftly and bitingly done, even though the 57-year old Allen looks like he's been on a two-week bender. In passing—note that even though we see a number of living rooms, no TV's are in sight, only radios! This was Hollywood in its final stage of denial.

The other vignettes are mildly entertaining, with a look at a number of performers on the way up the ladder-- Monroe, Marvin, Wayne, Gaynor. Especially satisfying is the delicious opportunity the letter provides Calhern to turn the tables on the gold-digging Gabor and her grasping attorney. At least the screenplay had the good sense not to reconcile these two at the end. But notice how the script insists the others be reconciled in typical 50's happy ending style. This certainly rings hollow in the case of the feuding Allen-Rogers. Given a second chance, it's hard to see how they could possibly stay together. In the case of Douglas-Arden, the most incisive of the vignettes, they may be totally bored with one another (check the dinner scene), but are too complaisant to actually change. That strikes me as maybe not the funniest, but at least as the most realistic of the episodes.

Anyway, whatever the comedy lacks in sparkle, it is revealing of its time—radio, beauty pageants, war in Korea (implied in Bracken's troop ship). But I'm afraid that the clever premise plays better than the mild results.

When Justice of the Peace Victor Moore learns that he jumped the gun in marrying traveling elopers passing through his state it causes great consternation in the lives of five random couples across the USA who discover that We're Not Married. In discussing the matter with the wife played by Jane Darwell he actually comes out with the clever notion that if these folks made a mistake they're getting a second chance at marriage without going through the pangs of divorce.

We're Not Married chronicles the lives of these five couples when they learn of the rush to marry mistake caused by Moore when he married them before his commission took effect. Usually the story that gets the most critical acclaim is the one involving Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers who play a nationally broadcast happily married radio couple. That's for public consumption actually these two bicker about everything. Screenwiter Nunnally Johnson was at his satiric best when he spoofed such radio personalities as Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenberg who did just that kind of broadcast perpetually hawking their sponsor's products.

The others are pretty good too. David Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have an unusual arrangement where she goes out and wins beauty contests and he stays home taking care of the kid. The non-marriage throws them for a while as she as just won the Mrs. Mississippi contest, but they make lemonade out of the lemon.

Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor have a more serious problem, he's a soldier with orders for Korea, she's in a family way. It takes quite a lot to get that situation resolved and not an entirely happy ending for Bracken.

The weakest episode by far is Paul Douglas and Eve Arden. I was surprised that Arden who usually gets some of the best lines in her films is strangely muted by the script. They play a couple who has settled into boredom and the episode was the most boring of the bunch.

But my favorite is Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor. He's an oil millionaire with a gold digging wife who has a bottom feeding lawyer in Paul Stewart. What happens to Zsa Zsa and Stewart is classic.

The idea of a marriage suddenly not being legal was tried out in one of Alfred Hitchcock's few comedies Mr.&Mrs. Smith with Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard being the suddenly unmarried couple. We're Not Married increases the idea by a factor of five. I wouldn't say this film is five times better than Hitchcock's, but it's still very good and done by people more at home in the genre.

This is another early Marilyn Monroe picture; in this case, it's a compendium of stories involving a handful of marriages – presided over by reliable Victor Moore – which are discovered to have been illegal because his term of office hadn't yet officially started when the ceremony was performed! So, he's made to send each of these a letter explaining the awkward situation and, according to where they stand at that particular moment in their married life, see how they decide to act upon it. The couples are played by Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers, David Wayne and Marilyn Monroe, Paul Douglas and Eve Arden, Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor. The least episode is the one with Douglas and Arden, where the latter becomes suspicious of just what goes on during the former's business trips; the Calhern-Gabor episode is mildly interesting for having her turn out a schemer – planning to appropriate her husband's fortune with the help of shyster lawyer Paul Stewart…until he's saved by the propitious arrival of Moore's letter!; Wayne has a hard time adjusting because of Monroe's triumph in a "Mrs. Mississippi" contest – believing his troubles over when the marriage is revealed to have been null, his 'wife' promptly enrolls in a "Miss Mississippi" competition (which, naturally, she wins); Bracken is a soldier who goes AWOL in order to consolidate his wedding vows when it transpires that his child (whose birth is imminent) may be declared illegitimate – Lee Marvin appears briefly as Bracken's buddy in this, one of the two most satisfying episodes; the other is the one featuring constantly-bickering pair Rogers and Allen, which unbearable situation threatens to sink their early-morning radio show (where they're ironically billed as the ideal married couple)! Again, the film is handled with utmost professionalism – and is undeniably entertaining while it's on – but which now feels dated and undistinguished.