Ma femme en feu

Next time I Marry stars Lucille Ball and any ensemble cast – it's just like an episode of her TV show – it even has a silver air stream trailer in which she would make the "The Long Long Trailer" almost twenty years later with Ricky. In the usual RKO mixed up love story caper, the rich girl must marry a common everyday guy (the dashing James Ellison) before she gets her family money, but she has many secrets and tricks up her sleeve, most of which don't work out as planned. Ellison's best-known role was Buffalo Bill in "The Plainsman" 1936, along with parts in many westerns. Lee Bowman plays a foreign count whose accent comes and goes in an un-convincing supporting role. As with most Lucy roles, as long as you buy into the story, you'll have a fun time. Look for Richard Elliott, the short jolly mayor from Andy Griffith, as the Justice of the Peace. Story is credited to Thames Williamson, but movie buffs will recognize a similar plot from four years before this. Also appears to be the second movie that Garson Kanin directed. Fun but a little silly!

This odd little movie sets out to prove that any white American male, randomly selected off the street, can easily outsmart a team consisting of a foreigner, a woman and a black person.

Lucille Ball's recently-deceased father insists, in his will, that she must marry a "plain American" to inherit his fortune. So she offers money to various "plain American" men on the street in return for agreeing to marry her, and finally one accepts. After she marries the man, Ball sets off for Reno in the company of the foreign husband she really wants to marry and her black "yowza, ma'am" chauffeur, to get a divorce and collect her father's inheritance. But our smug and somewhat smarmy "plain American" blocks her at every turn, which includes forcibly putting her over his shoulder and kidnapping her, soaking her with a hose, and locking her in a trailer while driving recklessly through rough terrain, until she flees in panic and is nearly raped by two passers-by. Yeah, quite a laugh riot, all right.

But on the plus side, being saved from a near-rape seems to cause Lucille Ball to fall in love with the "plain American." So there you go.

The phrase "mighty white of you" makes its appearance just minutes into the film, and a string of "yowzas" emerge from the black guy a little bit later. While I promise you I'm in no way a member of the Politically Correct squad, the whole movie made me cringe, and really prevented any enjoyment I may have gotten from it. Were things that much different in 1938? Maybe so, but I'm glad we've moved to where we are now.

I love Lucy, and she's adorable as usual in this pleasant outing, but James Ellison shows why he should have been cast in many more and different roles.

Yes, he was a great cowboy, but as a leading man, he was good-looking and manly and confident and in control.

As another reviewer said, this is pleasant fluff; and it has a story that has been used probably countless times in one form or another, but the four major characters are played so well, with Lee Bowman as the competitor for the rich woman and Mantan Moreland as his chauffeur, it's more than worth watching, just to see them.

Other, even unbilled, performers such as the great Earl Hodgins, work beautifully under director Garson Kanin and make this fun and worth the time. Enjoy.

Rich girl Lucille Ball pulls up in her huge car alongside a WPA ditch-digging project. She offers handsome laborer James Ellison $1000 to marry her, after which she immediately ditches him and goes off to a ritzy party. Lucy is actually kind of obnoxious….will she learn her lesson before the end of the picture?

Not a lot of surprises in this mild comedy, but Lucy is fun to watch, Ellison is fine as the dogged and resourceful leading man, and Lee Bowman is hilarious as Lucy's goofy-accented South American fiancé.

We learn early on that Lucy's father's will requires her to marry a "plain American"—thus her rush to marry and get her money. When Ellison figures out that she's married him only to quickly divorce him, he vows to divorce her first, and from there on it's a race to Reno.

Besides its human cast, the picture stars a dog named Mike in a funny role, and also a little streamlined camper-trailer that Ellison pulls behind his car. The camper is at the center of much of the film's action, including a scene where Lucy sets it on fire in a harebrained attempt to escape.

No classic, I guess, but it's fast-paced and and has some solid laughs. --Oh, and a clever ending featuring a preacher and family piling into the car....

Heiress Nancy Crocker Fleming (Lucille Ball) grabs a random guy on the WPA ditch digging line and pays him $793 to get marry. Anthony J. Anthony has only his dog and his car trailer. Nancy's dead father had left his fortune to her only if she marries a "plain American". She intends to divorce Tony as soon as the money comes in and end the secret fake marriage. Foreigner Count Georgi is eager to marry her. When she accidentally drives away with Tony's dog, he come looking for her. The cops are called in and he's arrested for kidnapping.

The humor is definitely of its time. At least, Lucille Ball is allowed to do some physical comedy. Lighting the trailer on fire is something akin to I Love Lucy. The movie stays in that pocket of weird quirkiness. The subject matter is weird. Nancy and Tony could do a funnier meet-cute. The start is rushing too quickly. The first meeting would work better if Nancy's dilemma is explained at the top. Comedy is in the eye of the beholder. Time and culture has a way of making jokes not funny. I try to keep this in mind. This is a comedy of its time.