Champagne pour deux

The plot for "The Well-Groomed Bride" is incredibly thin...too thin for an entire movie. This is odd, as Olivia de Havilland had just recently won the right to break her contract with Warner Brothers and was now a free agent...and she made THIS??

When the story begins, a navy ship is about to be launched and the Captain (James Gleason) orders his Lieutenant (Ray Milland) to go buy a French Magnum...NOT an easy task considering that the war had just ended and champagne production (and everything else in Europe) was a mess. When he finally does locate a magnum, one of the only ones on the entire West Coast, Margie (de Havilland) has just purchased it. He tries to weasel it off her, but she needs it because her fiance (Sonny Tufts) is returning from the war to marry her...and he's instructed her to find the biggest bottle of champagne she can for the occasion. That is pretty much the entire plot, though in the course of things, the lady and the Lieutenant fall in love...which is pretty much what you'd expect.

Is this a bad film? At times (such as when the Lieutenant SLUGS Margie!!), it is. But for the most part it's a forgettable time-passer that starred two actors who simply were too good for this sort of film. As for Sonny Tufts, well, this sort of fluff was pretty much as good as it gets for him and his somewhat sordid career.

Captain James Gleason orders Lieutenant Ray Milland to get a bottle of French champagne to launch the new aircraft carrier. However, Olivia de Havilland has just bought the last bottle of French champagne in San Francisco for her nuptials with Sonny Tufts, who has spent two years in the Aleutians. How is Milland going to get the champagne and Miss de Havilland in this randomly named film?

It's a rather flat romantic comedy directed by the usually very competent Sidney Lanfield, full of random gags and misunderstandings. Miss De Havilland had just spent two years fighting Warner Brothers in court so she wouldn't have to appear in muddled, unfunny comedies, and she had launched her newly serious career auspiciously enough with TO EACH HIS OWN and DEVOTION, only to follow it up with this rote effort. Neither of the leads shows any sparkle; the two comics, Gleason and Percy Kilbride (as de Havilland's father) lack any zest and Sonny Tufts, despite being the object of lust for a brace of screen beauties, remains a dull hunk of beef.

Before Olivia de Havilland made her remarkable comeback in 1946's To Each His Own, she stepped in as a last minute replacement for Paulette Goddard in 'The Well Groomed Bride', her first film after her two year legal battle with Warner Bros. Unfortunately, the script is so slight (about de Havilland and Milland fighting over rights to the last champagne bottle in San Francisco--she wants it for her wedding, he wants it to christen a ship). The laughs are scant although Olivia, Ray Milland and Sonny Tufts try hard to keep things bubbling. De Havilland manages to be pert and pretty as the heroine, Milland is his usual adept self at comedy and even Sonny Tufts manages to make his big "conceited muscle" role likeable at times--but the whole thing fails to get off the ground. The weak script defeats everyone, including Percy Kilbride as de Havilland's dad. Only avid fans of Ray Milland or de Havilland should watch this one--which does not turn up on TV these days--Paramount obviously deciding it wasn't worth saving.

This is not the funniest comedy ever made, but it is proficient, as written by Claude Binyon and directed by Sidney Lanfield, both of whom had done far better work than this; and while it's no masterpiece it's not a total loss by any means. There's a touch of late screwball in Ray Milland and Olivia de Havilland warring over a champagne bottle. And the mood of austerity in the America of the war and immediate postwar years is well-captured, albeit in a stylized and slick fashion. Still, champagne is champagne, and the movie's fetishistic obsession with it is indicative of Hollywood's desire to get back to making more formalized, safer films, of which this is a fairly decent attempt. But it is at its best an aborted effort to capture a mood that was pretty much gone by the time the movie was made, as the mood of the film gives no indication of where the postwar world was heading. Still and all, it's a nice stab at staving off the inevitable.

Both Ray Milland and Olivia DeHavilland had to be asking how did they get into this rather slight comedy. The Well Groomed Bride is funny enough, but considering the history of these two stars they both should have figured for something better.

In the case of Milland he had just come off his Oscar winning picture The Lost Weekend proving to Paramount he could handle heavy dramatics. This film is a return to what he'd been doing for a decade at Paramount.

As for Olivia she had just gotten from Warner Brothers after a lengthy and historic battle to break her contact there. Jack Warner for the most part had cast her in these light comedies or has the heroine waiting for her man who was for the most part Errol Flynn. She had done Hold Back The Dawn with Paramount and gotten an Oscar nomination back in 1941. Maybe she figured she'd get good parts at that studio and instead was doing the same stuff she did with the Brothers Warner.

Lt. Commander Milland is on a mission to obtain a magnum of champagne so a ship could be launched. But Olivia beats him to the last bottle of the bubbly that can be found in San Francisco and she wants to launch her marriage to former football hero Sonny Tufts with it. That starts a whole lot of maneuvering and of course ends the romance with Olivia and Tufts.

Sonny Tufts was playing the part usually given Jack Carson over at Warner Brothers, the amiable blowhard. No wonder Olivia must have thought she never left.

The Well Groomed Bride has its amusing moments, but it's chiffon light fare. Milland would continue to get light comic parts with a few dramatic ones to show his versatility. But Olivia's next few roles would earn her three Oscar nominations in a row and two Oscars with To Each His Own, The Snake Pit, and The Heiress.

Turns out she made the right career move.