Duelo Romântico

Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Cummings are married but having problems. She loves horses and he doesn't. He keeps getting caught in compromising positions that aren't of his own doing. Natalie Wood is one of their children. She has a very minor part. Sort of cute and worth watching if you like one of the stars.

In a recent biography of Barbara Stanwyck I read that The Bride Wore Boots was a flop at the post war box office in 1946. After watching the film my conclusion was that the movie going public was looking for more serious work in the post World War 2 world. Before 1942 this might have actually made some money for Paramount.

Stanwyck plays a Virginia girl from the country club horsey set who married a Yankee writer played by Robert Cummings. Barbara loves her horses and her husband can't stand them and is not at one with the horse when he tries to ride.

There's also Patric Knowles who is a neighbor and who is after Barbara and mushmouth southern belle Diana Lynn who is circling like a bird of prey over Bob.

The climax is a steeplechase race with Cummings as a game, but totally hopeless rider. Prety funny stuff.

Not the best of Stanwyck films out there, but not too bad.

I kept thinking about The Philadelphia Story while watching this; the masterful way George Cukor works out the story line with Grant, Hepburn and Stewart all competing for attention. Well, Irving Pichel is no Cukor, and while Stanwyck easily equals Hepburn in comedic skill, Cummings and Knowles don't match Grant and Stewart in ability. Stanwyck and Peggy Wood, playing her mother, supply all the fireworks in this one. Albert the horse does everything but talk, maybe he's the real star.

The film opens with Sally Warren (Stanwyck) and hubby Jeff (Cummings) out riding, and bickering over why they live in the country, instead of in the city where they had originally agreed to live. Then Lance, Sally 's old flame shows up, and honks the horn over and over, scaring the horses, causing Jeff to get tossed off yet again! (You'd think being a horse person, Lance would know better than to honk the horn over and over right near the horses...) This is a story of marriage, love, and the meaning of giving... it IS Christmas time, so Sally and Jeff get each other gifts that they think the other will like, but things take a strange turn along the way! Having Sally's old flame around only makes things worse. Robert Benchley is here for comic relief as Uncle Todd. And a young thing starts coming on to Jeff, which doesn't help either. Costumes by Edit Head, (of course) and directed by Irvinv Pichel, one of FIVE films he released that year! Good, clean fun, if you can take all the bickering. It looks like the only other project Cummings and Stanwyck worked on "together" was "Flesh and Fantasy", but they were in different chapters of that film, so not sure how much they actually worked together on that one.

The performance given by robert cummings is good.He gets caught by his wife barbara stanwyck in the arms of diana lynn several times.Not by his own doing but he gets blamed anyway.Diana Lynn played a role of manipulation and did it very convincingly.And barbara stanwyck played the wife who is always one step ahead of everyone.