Travessuras de Casados

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.