The Well Groomed Bride (1946)

Perfect cast and a good story

Absolutely brilliant

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It was champagne that brought them together, and I'm wondering how much of the bubbly the screenwriter had when they wrote this, and how much champagne that Olivia deHavilland and ray Milland drank when they signed to make this. Milland, fresh from hiding booze in chandeliers in "The Lost Weekend" was celebrating his Oscar victory perhaps, but deHavilland's first Oscar was a year away. It wasn't for this, one of the more embarrassing examples of screwball comedy and long made after the height of that sophisticated genre.After searching San Francisco for much of the first half for the largest bottle of champagne, rivals Milland and deHavilland end up on his navy ship, arguing with captain James Gleason over why the navy should have the bottle to christen a ship over deHavilland who wants it for her wedding to another Navy lieutenant, that great screen actor of such raw emotional power, Sonny Tufts. It doesn't take Milland and deHavilland long to discover their feelings for each other, leading to more ridiculous complications that bring the film down even more.If the thought of Percy Kilbride and Marjorie Main is a bizarre combination, try Kilbride playing deHavilland's father. Slinky Constance Dowling adds sultry seduction as the woman who initiates a split between deHavilland and Tuft. Her hairstyle here is reminiscent to Lauren Bacall's, already copied by Lizabeth Scott and K.T. Stevens. This seems to be the type of script put together through shuffled word cards, formulating a plot that reeks of desperation for all involved.

Ray Milland is the Navy officer in search of a Magnum of Champagne to launch a battle ship. Olivia Dehaviland is in search of the same bottle to launch her wedding to Sonny Tufts. They collide over and over again when they find only one bottle in the whole of San Francisco. Not a lot of chemistry between Ray and Olivia, but enjoyable anyway. I read that Paulette Goddard was the first choice for this film, and would have probably been better in the part, because she had great moments with Milland in other films. I thought it odd that Olivia got top billing when this film was released after the remarkable performance of Milland in The Lost Weekend. His Oscar should have been the reason to put him first on the marquee, unless it came after the fact.

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.

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.