Always a Bride

Rosemary Lane has two suitors. John Eldredge is a successful businessman who can give her everything she wants. George Reeves is a lazy good-for-nothing with a smile and a good word for everyone. Naturally, Eldredge doesn't stand a chance. But Miss Lane's parents are adamant: Reeves must gt a job to support her. So he runs for mayor of their small city as the candidate of the phony reform party; everyone figures he won't stand a chance against the well-oiled machine.

This pleasant lightweight comedy is based on a stage play by Barry Conners and has the air of something that had been hanging around since the 1920s. Fortunately it has a similarly lightweight director in Noel Smith, and the result is a fluffy bit of nonsense that looks like everyone else passed on the roles, and it still turned out amusing.

The main reason I decided to see this movie was because George Reeves was in this movie. I had of course seen him in re-runs of Superman as a young child. I briefly saw him in Gone With the Wind. I think this movie has a clever dialog. I liked the fact that the relationship of the older couple was not the usual that is seen in many movies of this time where the woman is submissive and polite to the husband. They are a typical couple arguing. I liked the way the election campaign turned out and the last line of the movie is the best political sarcasm I have heard in a long time. It was much more than I expected, of course looking at George Reeves is a treat in itself and I could not pass up one of my childhood heroes.

I thoroughly enjoyed TV "Superman" George Reeves with Rosemary Lane as the girl he pursues and tries to "win over" from John Eldridge. George does play his out-of-work, contrarian, devil-may-care role "over the top," because that's JUST THE CHARACTER HE IS: a' la Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, Joel McCrea in Sullivan's Travel, etc. Imagine either of those two actors, Bob Cummings, Robert Young--any of these would have played the part the same. It's BOY meets GIRL, BOY loses GIRL and BOY wins GIRL back by being himself. Good supporting cast, too. With all the renewed interest in poor George via Hollywoodland, see this picture for yourself when it comes on Turner Classics again. You'll really enjoy it: the underdog, march-to-the-beat of his own drummer vs. the staid, safe world out there--who should a girl (and her parents) choose?Some clever dialogue about marriage, nifty mayoral race tactics and a love triangle to boot. GO SEE IT for yourself. It's NOT awful. It's pretty darn good, and only about an hour long!

Always a Bride is another Warner Brothers shortie from director Noel Smith and George Reeves! A lover's triangle where Alice (Rosemary Lane) is being courted by two gentlemen callers. Marshall ( John Eldredge) manages to get a ring on her finger JUST before his counterpart Mike (George Reeves... yes, that's television's Adventures of Superman). The film is a series of confrontations between the three of them; one scene is a private discussion between the two men, then another at a dance where EVERYONE chimes in. This doesn't have the fun, happy, upbeat undercurrent that we felt in Smith's Father is a Prince. There is more arguing and yelling in this one, but it's entertaining enough. Over the course of an hour, Alice finds out what the guys are really like, and must make her decision. Each one has their pros and cons. Like Mike (and my grandmother) said, "here's mud in your eye!"

ALWAYS A BRIDE (1940) stars Rosemary Lane, a couple years removed from her late-1930s musical successes with her sisters, and a little-known George Reeves, early in his Hollywood career and a decade before he'd become famous as television's Superman. They're surrounded by a cast of D-list actors in this third-rate production.

The story is weak and the ending, coming only an hour into the film, caught me off-guard. I was expecting the story to continue a little further and was surprised to see it "conclude" where it did. The film feels more like an episode of a television (or radio) series. It's a short story, not a novel. Not quite enough material for a feature-length movie.

Reeves is charming, though, as a sweet-talking idler who first must win back his sweetheart and then finds himself in the middle of a mayoral race.

Rosemary Lane didn't have the kind of Hollywood success that her sister Priscilla enjoyed, but she's always been a personal favorite of mine. Her movie career didn't go very far without her sisters and I would've liked to see her in more (and better) films.

ALWAYS A BRIDE is pretty inconsequential. A cheap quickie with the minimum allowable entertainment value, buoyed only by George Reeves's charm. The movie is really only of interest to fans of Reeves or Lane.