A Noiva Caiu do Céu

When I watch a movie, I like to laugh, and that's why this is my favorite movie of all time.

It's the only pairing of James Cagney and Bette Davis, and the sparks do fly. You might call this a variation on the theme of "It Happened One Night." James Cagney plays a cargo pilot asked to aid in an elopement that would result in a disastrous marriage for an heiress. Her father offers him payment if he delivers her home unmarried. The ending is predictable, but the journey to it is not. Great fun.

Oh, I know there are so many other "important" and wonderful movies out there. I love a lot of them. But rarely has one tickled and surprised me the way this one did.

Let others favor the big famous movies. I'll take this little gem.

I'm surprised that more people haven't recognized its charm.

Though Bette Davis dismissed this film as a piece of fluff it was an entertaining piece of fluff. For the one and only time in her career Davis entered the world of screwball comedy. This film is the sort of stuff that Cary Grant and Carole Lombard would have been right at home with.

Davis is paired for the second and last time with James Cagney. During the mid Thirties she and Cagney did a film called Jimmy the Gent which was not memorable for either of them. The Bride Came C.O.D. was far better material.

Davis is a young heiress who is being pursued by bandleader Jack Carson and columnist Stu Erwin who wants the story of their elopement. Cagney owns a small charter aviation company and the finance company man in the person of Ed Brophy is pursuing him. This is after Carson has chartered Cagney's plane.

Knowing that Davis's father Eugene Palette wants the marriage stopped at any cost, Cagney hits upon a mad scheme to kidnap Davis and fly her to Palette. He does it, but her antics forces a crash landing in the desert near a ghost town, inhabited only by Harry Davenport.

It gets pretty wild after that with everyone in the cast and his brother descending on that ghost town for their own agendas. Cagney and Davis worked very well with each other and Cagney was one of the few actors she didn't have a disparaging remark about.

It's entirely possible that players more experienced in the screwball comedy genre might have made The Bride Came C.O.D. a classic. But Cagney and Davis and the marvelous cast of some of the best supporting players around, made a pretty funny film in any case.

This is a pretty obvious take on "It Happened One Night" except in a post gangster pre war era, narrow and short lived as that era was.

Joan Winfield (Bette Davis) is a spoiled heiress who is about to elope and marry bandleader Allen Brice (Jack Carson) after having known him for only four days. They are going to fly to Las Vegas on Steve Collins' (James Cagney's) plane, if the finance company doesn't repossess the plane first. As such, Joan's wealthy father (Eugene Pallette), who hates Brice, agrees to pay Collins the money he needs to keep the finance company at bay if Collins delivers Joan to Amarillo unmarried. Collins manages to take off with Joan and without Allen Brice, but the plane crashes in the desert when the engine stalls. Fortunately, they are near an almost abandoned mining town. Complications ensue, one of which being that nobody knows where they are.

This is definitely an odd one - a definite B effort from Warner Brothers with their two biggest A list stars of the time. There is so much slapstick that it resembles a Looney Tunes cartoon. I half way expected Davis and Cagney to erupt into a "Duck Season! Rabbit Season!" exchange at some point. And after the pair make it to the abandoned mining town with the lone but friendly inhabitant, the script literally goes in circles for about an hour waiting for the energetic and reinvigorated conclusion.

Anything with Davis and/or Cagney is worth seeing, and maybe that was why Jack Warner didn't put much effort into this one. Because he realized that too.

Bette Davis and Jimmy Cagney had been teamed once before in "Jimmy the Gent", also a comedy. That picture and this one are two of the relatively rare Bette Davis comedies. Jimmy the Gent was pleasant and fast moving, and featured the two stars relatively early in their career's. Here, they are both at the top of their game, and they elevate the mediocre material into something fast paced, fun, and easy to watch. It's a real pleasure to see two of the screen's greatest stars together. Nothing great, but definitely worth seeing for fans of the stars or of screwball comedies of that era.

I quite liked THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. It's an obvious riff on the screwball structure established by the much superior IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, but Cagney and Davis really make it so much better than it could have been without their personas and chemistry there to liven things up. If you love the Warner Bros. acting stable of this period, then you're in for a good time.

The plot isn't clever or original, but I laughed quite a lot. Considering how hard it is to get me to laugh aloud when watching a movie, that alone makes this an achievement.