Married Before Breakfast

Robert Young had been hanging around hollywood for about ten years by this time, and was already the dashing, well dressed figure. Tom invents a cream that makes razors obsolete, and is now a very rich man. he makes all kinds of plans. going to marry the snobby girlfriend, going to take a cruise around the world, going to give all his friends the things they need most. and about halfway through, we take a left turn, and we all go along for the ride. Tom and a new girlfriend (Florence Rice) go gallivanting around the city, and have various adventures. stealing taxis and buses, getting caught up in robberies. it's all silly and over the top, but it's a fun caper from MGM. Directed by Ed Marin, probably best known for directing some of the Maisie films. died quite young at 52.

MARRIED BEFORE BREAKFAST is about one night. Recently rich Tom Wakefield (Robert Young) embarks on an adventure with Kitty Brent (Florence Rice); you see, he has to convince a stubborn milkman to purchase an insurance policy from Kitty's fiancé, Kenneth (Hugh Marlowe). If the milkman purchases the policy, he will be promoted, and he and Kitty can be married.

In order to go on this adventure, Tom must leave his own fiancée in the lurch for a while.

The movie is the night and the adventure. You want Tom and Kitty, both engaged to someone else, to hook up and… I won't give away the ending. But the adventure – with cops, cabbies, gangsters, firemen, and milkmen – is a delight.

When old-timers say that the B-movies of their day were oftentimes superior to the so-called A-movies of today, "Married Before Breakfast" would make a good Exhibit A. This brisk, gloriously loopy, screwball comedy has more laughs than all three "Austin Powers" combined. It's sort of a "Bringing Up Baby"/"After Hours" hybrid with the male in this case (an infectiously optimistic Robert Young) the lovable screwball who turns the world into his own personal circus and everyone he meets into a clown - including gangsters, bus drivers, and of course, police desk sergeants.

He plays a fast-talking inventor whose ship finally comes in to the tune of $250,000 who is as generous with his fortune as many of us dream we would be were we in his shoes. His biggest challenge is a pretty travel agent he's just met (pretty Florence Rice, who has a Ginger Rogers quality about her) who admits that what she really wants to is to be married - presumably to her longtime fiancé (a very young Hugh Marlowe) a bit of a stuffed shirt who has been told by his company that he'll only receive a big promotion - and thus become marriageable - if he can sell an insurance policy to an intractable local milkman. But Young is scheduled to set sail with and marry his snobbish longtime fiancée (June Clayworth) first thing next morning, so he dedicates his last night as a bachelor to convincing the milkman to sign the insurance policy, enabling Marlowe and Rice to marry. But when Rice insists that she tag along to lend a hand, Marlowe's and Clayworth's nights become a living hell, and the movie ascends into screwball comedy heaven on the wings of kindred spirits Young and Rice.

Director Edwin Marin handles the material masterfully, and the two leads have marvelous chemistry, particularly in a brilliantly written scene where they are forced to hide from the cops in a cramped janitor's closet ("Are your eyes really green or is that just the light?" Young asks her) that crackles with sexual tension and reminds one of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed sharing the phone in "It's a Wonderful Life." "Married Before Breakfast" is a smart, very funny little gem that holds up extremely well 68 years after the fact.

Inventor Robert Young has just sold one of his inventions for a lot of money, and so can satisfy a lot of wishes. One friend gets a piano. Another get a hundred share in a publicly traded company. And Young will marry his socialite fiancee June Clayworth the next morning and they will honeymoon in Europe. But first, Florence Rice shows up and he offers her a wish. Her fiance, Hugh Marlowe, has to sell an insurance policy to Tom Kennedy, which will gain him a promotion. So Young sets out with her to do that, and gets involved in some odd adventures.

It's a surprisingly sprightly, wide-eyed comedy, not at all the sort of thing that MGM did particularly well, even with the usual gloss available for Metro's roster of character comedians. I attribute it to a well-built script, ably punched up by George Oppenheimer. He had helped found Viking Press in 1925, had four plays on Broadway, ghost-wrote for George S. Kaufman and Robert E. Sherwood, helped write three Marx Brothers movies and ended his career as a drama critic. He died in 1977 at the age of 77.

This bears all the hallmarks of the MGM studio system.Although only 3 writers are credited it changes direction so often that it feels as if about 30 writers have had a hand.The comic premises are so laboured that you can see them coming at least one reel before they arise.If the plot is flagging well stick in an eccentric character or a well known plot device.We have for example the standard jail scene.Either the idea was copied from Bringing Up Baby or was done much better by the later.Although this film is only 70 minutes long it feels double that length and by the time it limps to its daft finale one can only sigh with relief.So if you are looking for a screwball comedy or any sort of comedy forget this.