Maryrose et Rosemary

Roland Young is the Marquis of Buckminster. He enjoys his bachelorhood. He's also dependent on the largess of his aunt -- I imagine he doesn't collect much rent on the palace. She insists he get married, and from a very short list of high-born ladies. Discussing this problem with two of the ladies he's actually friends with, twins Wendy Barrie and Joan Gardner, Young discovers they're engaged to two commoners who lack noble ancestors, and of whom their families heartily disapprove: John Loder and Maurice Evans, who rejoice in the names of "Bimbo" and "Tootles." He figures that if he can get all the eligible young women married, he's safe for another twenty years, and decides to start with these two.

It's an amusing P. G. Wodehouse sort of story, although it lacks the hilarious imbecility of the Master. Young is fine as the diffident, aging youth, and the cast is nicely filled out Merle Oberon as the unrealized object of his affection, George Grossmith, Lady Tree and Diane Napier.

... as it lampoons both the working and upper classes and how they see themselves and one another in this British romantic comedy from director Alexander Korda.

The film opens with the presses being held at a major London newspaper for details of an upper class wedding. At a working class flat in London a man arrives home to find his grown daughter reading about the wedding and he is told his dinner is not ready because his wife is at the wedding. He goes into a "workers of the world unite" tirade against the upper classes, but then he hears some tidbit about the wedding and it appears he is just as easily taken up by the story as his daughter and next door neighbor.

That newspaper article I mentioned gets the attention of the dowager Marchioness of Buckminster, who is annoyed that her grandson the Marquis (Roland Young, ), a confirmed bachelor, is once again a best man and not a groom. She demands that he get married or risk being financially cut off. She gives him a list of eligible women of proper breeding from which to choose. At the top of the list are the Roxbury twins (Wendy Barrie and Joan Gardner), but they have their hearts set on "Bimbo" (John Loder) and "Toodles" (Maurice Evans). Young facilitates the marriage of those four, and then sets out to see all of the other women on the list are married to others, too. Young's antics are observed under the scornful eye of his grandmother's secretary (Merle Oberon).

Everybody is just wonderful in this film including George Grossmith as the Earl of Stokeshire and the father of the twins who does a wonderful unintentional impression of the Monopoly Man, and Lady Tree as his sweetly addled-pate wife and mother of the twins. She has a hilarious scene where she is trying to explain the facts of life to the twins before the wedding using the example of prepackaged food. You'd think she'd figure they already know that, as they have an abundance of cats and dogs who have recently given birth which would at least give them the general idea.

Although the basic plot is straight out of P. G. Wodehouse -- wealthy relative threatens to cut off playboy's allowance if he doesn't get married to one of the "acceptable" girls on her list, so he sets out to preemptively marry them off to someone else -- along with its leisurely pacing, "Wedding Rehearsal" is something of a hit-and-miss affair. This is more a pleasant comedy of manners in the British mode, with a dollop of social commentary, than a romantic farce. If you approach it as such, it has its small rewards, some nice comic characterizations and occasionally witty dialog.

You certainly can't fault the quality of the actors, or the production values, not to mention the location shots of London in the early 30s. There are some great moments, such as when the dowager steels herself to give her twin daughters the "what to expect on your wedding night" speech on the eve of their double wedding, while the twins try their best to look innocent.

I wouldn't recommend "Wedding Rehearsal" to most modern viewers, but if you're a fan of actors like Roland Young and Merle Oberon, and like that between-the-wars British aristocratic milieu, you might find yourself enjoying the film. I did.

Korda had gone from Hungary to the US before landing on these shores.In this first film we see the early London Films logo and much of the trademark signs of Kordas films.It is no surprise that this his first British film is concerned with manners of the British aristocracy much the same as his penultimate film as a director "An Ideal Gentleman".The most impressive part of the film though is the beginning where the news of Vesuvius erupting and killing thousands of people is displaced from the front page by news of social happenings with the undercurrent of a chorus.It feels like Korda is digging with sly humour at the aristocracy.This is really a rather amusing film and at 76 minutes was clearly designed to qualify for the quota requirements.

Roland Young stars in "Wedding Rehearsal," a 1932 British film with Wendy Barrie, Joan Gardner, and Merle Oberon. Young plays the Marquis of Buckminster who has to get married or get cut out of a will which would enable him to inherit quite a lot of money. Plus, his mother wants grandchildren. She gives him a list of suitable women, and the Marquis manages to get them married off so he doesn't have to marry one of them himself. Then he realizes he's in love with someone who didn't make the list.

Several of these actors went to Hollywood - most notably, Roland Young, Wendy Barrie, and Merle Oberon. Oberon is gorgeous and hardly in the film. Barrie and Gardner play twins Lady Mary Rose and Lady Rose Mary. Gardner was married to Alexander Korda's brother Zoltan until his death in 1961; she eventually retired to raise a family.

This is a charming film, very light, with a sweet ending. It doesn't have a lot of substance, though, and it drags. Still, it has its charms.