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Victor Moore, as a justice of the peace, who didn't realize that his authority to marry people didn't start until January 1. Therefore, all people he had previously married prior to this date were determined not to be married legally and were notified accordingly.

Here is where the fun begins. As would be the case in comedies, many of the couples don't have the best of marriages and some might use this as an excuse to exit from the scene.

The most hilarious of the group is the marriage between Zsa Zsa Gabor and Louis Calhern. She tries to get him involved with a hooker so that she can divorce him and under California law qualify for millions due to that state's laws. Does he turn the tables on her when it's determined that they're not married!

Marilyn Monroe has a bring fling as a beauty contestant in a Mrs. contest. When she wins, she is naturally ineligible as she and David Wayne aren't legally wed. Wayne uses this to his advantage to get Marilyn to stay home and take care of their youngster instead.

Thanks to the snafu, Eddie Bracken has married Mitzi Gaynor who finds herself pregnant as Bracken receives the news of their illegal marriage while being shipped off in the army. How the 2 manage to wed to provide the legitimacy cover for the baby is quite amusing.

Paul Douglas dreams of what the single life could be when he finds out that he is not wed to Eve Arden. Surprisingly, Arden is much restrained here. Amazing that her comic gifts were not utilized.

Fred Allen is awfully good along with his talk-show host wife Ginger Rogers, who battle off-air while fooling the public on their morning radio show. Isn't this a take-off of Dorothy Kilgallen and her husband Dick Kalmar?

A pleasant film. Before you wed, view the credentials of the person marrying you!

Back in the '50s, a common sitcom episode was the married couple finding out that they're not legally married.

"We're Not Married," a 1952 film, has five such couples, including Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe and David Wayne, Eve Arden and Paul Douglas, Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor, and Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

There were several episodic, anthology-type films from this period. "We're Not Married" deals with five very different couples and what the notice of non-marriage means to each couple. There's a wealthy man (Calhern) married to a gold digger (Gabor), a bickering husband and wife radio couple (Allen and Rogers), a couple in a slump (Paul Douglas and Eve Arden), an ambitious young woman and her husband (Monroe and Wayne) etc.

The best is the Calhern-Gabor, and Allen and Rogers make a good team and give bright performances. There are some funny sequences throughout.

Mores have changed a lot since this film, but it makes for pleasant watching with good direction by Edmund Goulding.

The chief virtue of this film is the marvelous casting, which could hardly be better. And there's a pleasing variety to the episodes. That said, the edge to the writing and direction is definitely not as keen as one would like. To give just one example of the problem: A letter is sent to each couple, telling them that, through a technicality, they're not really married. In the opening sequence, we hear the letter dictated. At the appropriate point in each installment, the letter is introduced with a special musical theme, and the reader of the letter reacts appropriately. But then, each time, just to make the point completely clear, we are shown a close-up of the identically worded letter. Another example: Paul Douglas dreams of dates with beautiful girls, AND DREAMS, AND DREAMS... Also, though one suspects that Fred Allen had a hand in the writing of his sequence--a parody of radio breakfast couples--here, too, the satire is a little too obvious, their banter being merely a string of not especially clever product plugs (one of them having the miracle ingredient, chicken fat).

Calhern rises above the heavily ironic divorce-lawyer skit, and James Gleason gives one of his finest performances as a hick hustler promoting Marilyn Monroe in a fledgling Mrs. America contest. Had the rest of the film been as sharp as Gleason's well written and well performed characterization, it could have been a classic. The final sequence is the most successful, because of the fine, unaffected performances of Gaynor and Bracken (particularly the latter) and probably also because Goulding was most at home with this simple romance. A point of interest in the film as a whole is how much attitudes about marriage have changed since the film was made.

AMC has shown an amusing deleted sequence with Walter Brennan in its HIDDEN HOLLYWOOD series.

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.

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.

This is a thoroughly entertaining little piece of fluff with a great comic premise and good performances from a fine cast. Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen, in particular, work wonderfully together as the bickering radio stars who must play a lovey-dovey couple on their morning show. It is too bad that Allen - who has such a wonderfully dry and cynical comic persona (sort of a Walter Matthau prototype) - didn't make more movies. This is a fun way to while away an hour and a half.

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.

A sparkling all-star cast and a clever cinematic concept are the primary selling points of a surprisingly fun 1952 comedy called We're Not Married.

Nunnally Johnson, who wrote the screenplay for How To Marry the Millionaire, also penned this story of a dotty old justice of the peace (Victor Moore) who receives his appointment papers before they actually go into effect and marries five different couples without realizing that he wasn't an actual justice yet. Two years later, the snafu comes to light and the five couples are all sent a letter informing them they are not legally married. What is so fun about this movie is that the news that they're not legally married anymore brings unexpected reactions from the various couples and the lives they have built together in two years.

Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen play a couple who have a radio show together but they hate each other; however, their continued employment makes being married a contractual obligation; Marilyn Monroe plays a housewife and mother who is the breadwinner in her household by entering beauty contests for married women; Louis Calhern plays a wealthy businessman about to be taken to the cleaners by his hedonistic wife (Zsa Zsa Gabor); Paul Douglas and Eve Arden play a couple who are just in a rut and Eddie Bracken plays a soldier who learns his bride (Mitzi Gaynor) is pregnant and goes to extreme measure to make sure his child will be born legitimately.

Despite the multiple story lines, this movie is surprisingly economic and moves along at a very nice pace, making each story just long enough to make the audience care but not become bored with them either.

The performances are terrific with standout work from Rogers, Allen, David Wayne as Monroe's husband, and especially Calhern, who is absolutely brilliant in his vignette with Gabor. The film doesn't provide a lot in terms of production values, but what it does is provide solid entertainment that is still watchable some 60 years later

First you have to believe these men, who for the most part are not only incredibly unattractive physically, but have the same in personality but each landed a model level beauty wife. How exactly did that happen? Money? And I am speaking from a man's perspective. That makes the suspension of disbelief harder than anything. If you can get past that the movie has some funny parts.

The issues of money are addressed in a somewhat familiar way. A nullified marriage makes for a funny premise. The acting is very good. Marilyn Monroe's short time on screen has a magnetic presence.

If you enjoy a light hearted comedy and a not too serious character study you may not have such a bad time.

Painfully lame comedy. Victor Moore gets a license to marry people on Christmas, but doesn't realize it doesn't go into effect until New Year's Day. In that span, he marries five couples, and this film tells the five stories of what happens when they find out. The answer: nothing at all interesting. Not a single one of these scenarios is the least bit amusing. Only Marilyn Monroe completists ever need watch this film. I seriously don't even remember her story, though. I think she was a beauty pageant contestant who finds out she can't compete if she's married, but then she finds out she's not, so everything's okay. That's the level of storytelling we're dealing with here. Also starring Ginger Rogers, Mitzi Gaynor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Paul Douglas and Jane Darwell.

This film had funny parts and it had good story lines but it needed so much more....the ending leaves you wanting.

Large cast of recognizable stars is involved in this interesting comedy. It all begins when a new justice of the peace marries a couple (Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen) on Christmas Eve who has no romantic feelings for each other. They wed merely because they play a married couple on radio.

Two and a half years later, they receive a letter telling them they are not legally married, because the justice of the peace did not have the power to marry at that time. The rest of the story deals with the consequences of that notification, for them and for four other couples:

Marilyn Monroe, a pageant winner, is married to David Wayne.

Paul Douglas, who dreams of being single again, is married to Eve Arden.

Louis Calhern, a wealthy businessman, is married to Zsa Zsa Gabor. This story is the most satisfying.

GI Eddie Bracken, who is married to Mitzi Gaynor, is worried about what the marriage revocation might mean for their new child.

Each of the couples has a different take on what the notification means to them. Each complete story has its own appeal.

Watch for character actors James Gleason and Victor Moore; and Lee Marvin, who is uncredited.

WE'RE NOT MARRIED was a terrific film--highly enjoyable and in a format very reminiscent of a great old film, IF I HAD A MILLION (1932). Both stories have many small stories that are all connected by a common theme. In MILLION, a variety of strangers are given a million dollars and the impact of this on their lives is explored. Here in WE'RE NOT MARRIED, the theme is that six marriages turn out NOT to be legal! It seems that the justice of the peace jumped the gun and married these couples just before his license took effect! You hear about the first case they discovered and then the rest of the film follows the remaining five couples. Most of the stories are comical and even the more serious ones still have a funny twist.

Each story is excellent, though probably the weakest of these is the one, unfortunately, that gets the most attention when you look up the title on IMDb. This is because it happens to co-star Marilyn Monroe. While she is just fine in the film, she really has little to do other than to look pretty and her role is one of the smaller ones in the film--so naturally publicity department guys plastered her all over posters and video cases!! In fact, no one star dominated in the film--it was truly a group effort. And, fortunately, none of the stories were poor and a few were simply terrific (especially the Louis Calhern/Zsa Zsa Gabor one as well as the Eddie Bracken/Mitzi Gaynor ones).

By the way, one of the other better skits has an interesting story. The Fred Allen/Ginger Rogers story is quite good, but Fred ALSO used this bit on the radio and made it a good bit funnier. Along with Tallulah Bankhead, Fred did the same sappy and commercial ridden bit on the radio. Then, he did the same bit again with Tallulah assuming the couple were having a really, really bad day. They slap the kid and call her names, they shoot the canary and have a thoroughly miserable morning. Having this story end this way in the film would have been great, but instead a more conventional ending was used. And by the way, I am NOT old enough to remember this radio bit--but I heard it on a record album a while back featuring great radio bits.

We're Not Married (1952) : Brief Review -

How a piece of paper saying that "we're not married" can destroy and save lives. This film consists of five stories, making full use of the screenplay within a short time. A couple of the stories seem like they could have made a full-fledged film, but they end up being cute shorts. Mr. Bush is appointed Justice of the Peace on Christmas Eve and starts marrying couples. However, he overlooks the date of his appointment, which is January 1. As a result, all six marriages performed by him become legally invalid. One of the couples files for divorce and realizes that they are not married in the first place. That's the end of one couple. Then the governor sends notices to the remaining five couples, informing them that they are not married. Mr. Bush believes that it's good from one point of view: the couples get a second chance to think about their marriage and whether they want to stay married or not. Among those five, the first couple is working as husband and wife on a talk show but cannot stand each other in reality. They have to stay married to keep their jobs. The second couple involves a househusband and his beautiful wife participating in beauty contests. He is fed up with household duties and baby duties and is happy when he gets the letter from the governor. The third couple consists of a husband with many affairs and a loyal wife. He burns the letter to keep his wife uninformed about the marriage becoming illegal because he can't afford to lose her. The fourth couple involves a young gold digger framing her rich husband for 50% of his assets. The notice arrives just in time to save the rich and kind-hearted fellow. This was my favorite story. The last one is dramatic and emotional. A soldier learns about his wife's pregnancy just after leaving town and then decides to get married by breaking the law because he does not want his child to be called illegitimate if he never returns from the war. He calls his wife to meet at the airport so that they can get married, but he is caught by local cops since he has no pass. This one has an emotional ending. Overall, it's a good one-time watch by Edmund Goulding. Some highs, some lows. But that's okay.

RATING - 6/10*

By - #samthebestest.

A previous person described this film as "fluff." This is a perfect word to describe it, and should contain a capital "F."

But it's also entertaining and interesting. It has a host of 1930's and 1940's actors (and some pre-dating talking pictures), as well "youngsters," Mitzi Gaynor, Marilyn Monroe and Lee Marvin (latter in an uncredited bit part).

The premise is pristine, and the "plot" revolves in a silly fashion around the supposed customs of that period, with people scurrying about with issues which wouldn't warrant any dramatic presentation today.

The thin plot involves several couples whose marriages were ruled invalid by the governor, since they were married by a justice-of-the-peace, near the end of the year sometime back, with his certification not valid until the following January 1st.

Rogers and Allen are a pair with a morning "couples" radio program (seemingly consisting of nothing but sponsor plugs and inane "nasty-nice" banter), with a sham marriage for purely economic purposes. Bracken and Gaynor are a young couple who need to be remarried before his army unit embarks, or else their expected child won't be legitimate, but (according to his sergeant) "a foul ball." Golddigger Gabor (not a stretch here) literally faints when the letter from the governor arrives at her wealthy husband's (Calhoun) office, while her lawyer is discussing her plundering his assets during a divorce settlement (precipitated by a set-up when a fully-clothed impostor, who resembles a conservatively-dressed elementary teacher poses as his wife in a hotel room, for about three minutes, while her confederates note the incident).

Although released in 1952, this is strictly a "40's" flick. Even then, certainly the governor would simply have effected a special edict making these unions legitimate, and even if not, Gabor, however devious her purpose, would have been able to claim some sort of common-law entitlement, or rights under whatever passed for "palimony" then.

Still, it's now a nostalgic piece, with nearly all the thespians gone, except for a couple or so, including Zsa Zsa, now 90, plus however many years are still fudged from her birth date.

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.