Cinq mariages à l'essai

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.

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.

It's a clever premise, but the results have dated rather badly. Unfortunately, the comedy level never reaches the sparkle it needs, though the opening vignette (Rogers and Allen) comes close. Perhaps that's not surprising given Director Goulding's credits, which suggest he's more at home with Bette Davis melodrama than with material of this sort. Also, I'm surprised a big-budget studio like Fox didn't film this in Technicolor, which would have added a lot to the atmospherics. Instead, we get dour gray tones that undercut the light-hearted mood, making the movie look older than it is. But then, 1952 was a year Hollywood was looking to retool in the face of TV's onslaught. The following year would see an explosion of wide- screen color beyond the reach of the livingroom tube. As a result, this comedy venture may have been caught in the transition.

To me, the Allen-Rogers sequence is the best. It's actually a rather scathing look at entertainment make-believe and the relentless assault of commercial advertising. In private life the two are barely speaking, while on radio they play a pair of happy marrieds who trade comic barbs in between pushing the sponsors' goofy products. It's rather deftly and bitingly done, even though the 57-year old Allen looks like he's been on a two-week bender. In passing—note that even though we see a number of living rooms, no TV's are in sight, only radios! This was Hollywood in its final stage of denial.

The other vignettes are mildly entertaining, with a look at a number of performers on the way up the ladder-- Monroe, Marvin, Wayne, Gaynor. Especially satisfying is the delicious opportunity the letter provides Calhern to turn the tables on the gold-digging Gabor and her grasping attorney. At least the screenplay had the good sense not to reconcile these two at the end. But notice how the script insists the others be reconciled in typical 50's happy ending style. This certainly rings hollow in the case of the feuding Allen-Rogers. Given a second chance, it's hard to see how they could possibly stay together. In the case of Douglas-Arden, the most incisive of the vignettes, they may be totally bored with one another (check the dinner scene), but are too complaisant to actually change. That strikes me as maybe not the funniest, but at least as the most realistic of the episodes.

Anyway, whatever the comedy lacks in sparkle, it is revealing of its time—radio, beauty pageants, war in Korea (implied in Bracken's troop ship). But I'm afraid that the clever premise plays better than the mild results.

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.

The chief virtue of this film is the marvelous casting, which could hardly be better. And there's a pleasing variety to the episodes. That said, the edge to the writing and direction is definitely not as keen as one would like. To give just one example of the problem: A letter is sent to each couple, telling them that, through a technicality, they're not really married. In the opening sequence, we hear the letter dictated. At the appropriate point in each installment, the letter is introduced with a special musical theme, and the reader of the letter reacts appropriately. But then, each time, just to make the point completely clear, we are shown a close-up of the identically worded letter. Another example: Paul Douglas dreams of dates with beautiful girls, AND DREAMS, AND DREAMS... Also, though one suspects that Fred Allen had a hand in the writing of his sequence--a parody of radio breakfast couples--here, too, the satire is a little too obvious, their banter being merely a string of not especially clever product plugs (one of them having the miracle ingredient, chicken fat).

Calhern rises above the heavily ironic divorce-lawyer skit, and James Gleason gives one of his finest performances as a hick hustler promoting Marilyn Monroe in a fledgling Mrs. America contest. Had the rest of the film been as sharp as Gleason's well written and well performed characterization, it could have been a classic. The final sequence is the most successful, because of the fine, unaffected performances of Gaynor and Bracken (particularly the latter) and probably also because Goulding was most at home with this simple romance. A point of interest in the film as a whole is how much attitudes about marriage have changed since the film was made.

AMC has shown an amusing deleted sequence with Walter Brennan in its HIDDEN HOLLYWOOD series.