Lost Honeymoon (1947)

i must have seen a different film!!

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A ridiculous but reasonably amusing comedy of manners that is held together by the efforts of an amiable cast led by Franchot Tone, Tom Conway, Ann Richards, Frances Rafferty and particularly Clarence Kolb.Pacy direction by Leigh Jason from the start and almost to the climax -- where it tends to stall a bit -- helps overcome the constant twisting of the plot in its amiable efforts to get the scenario past the censor. Just how well Jason succeeds is a matter for the viewer, not the critic. I would not be surprised if the movie had amassed ratings from zero to a hundred here at IMDb.Personally, I thought that the movie held together rather well until the action reached a climax that in my view was both too far nonsensical on the one hand and too much of an obvious sell-out to the Legion of Decency on the other.But you can't say the cast and the director were asleep on the job! Production values are reasonably enticing. The film is available on a very good quality Alpha DVD.

Despite the presence of Franchot Tone and Ton Conway, "Lost Honeymoon" is a truly dreadful film--with a stupid premise and amazingly bad writing. It made me cringe and I pray that you read this review and think twice about seeing this turkey.When the film begins, you learn that a British lady has died and her twin children are being kept by her landlady. However, there IS a father--some American named John Gray. So, an amazingly stupid lady (Ann Richards) decides she's going to go to the States to find the man--a guy who married the now dead lady while was stationed in Britain during the war. However, instead of going about this is a sane manner, she decides to tell the Red Cross that she IS the dead woman and gets them to pay for her voyage with the two children. Once she's in America, she seems to automatically know that THE John Gray she wants is the one played by Tone--even though it's a relatively common name and he might not be the one. So, despite having no hard evidence, she strikes like a blitzkrieg--not caring what sort of repercussions there might be.Now if this isn't bad enough (and amazingly contrived), it turns out that this Gray might just be the one. However (uggh, this is bad writing), he doesn't know if he is or isn't because he had a head injury and six weeks of his life are missing. During that time he MIGHT have gotten married and fathered the kids--but he doesn't know! Later (in yet another badly written twist), he learns that the woman pretending to be his wife is a liar...and he now is in love with her and must have her!!!The bottom line is that none of this film makes sense. It's built on one dopey premise after another and the movie is one of the most contrived and silly films I've ever seen. The end result is impossible to believe, quite stupid and really a waste of decent actors. Not worth your bothering with this one.

Imagine to return home after the war with little memory of your last days and all of a sudden find that you had a wife and child that you didn't know you had. That is the theme of this sweet, if preposterous comedy, where the wife dies and the child's nurse arrives with the kid and in order to make sure the child whom she has grown to love gets a home pretends to be the dead wife. Sound unbelievable beyond belief? My first thoughts exactly, and while the screenplay may slight on reality, it doesn't slight on entertainment. Franchot Tone is a bit long in the tooth to be believable as a World War II hero (after all, he was acting in glossy MGM soaps of the early '30's) but there you have it, and he runs with it in spite of that. He's engaged to the bitchy Frances Rafferty, and a friendly rival (Tom Conway) goes after the fake wife (Ann Richards) in attempts to create more of a romantic quadrangle which you know instantly what the outcome will be. Some great comic supporting players (Clarence Kolb and Una O'Connor) round out the cast, and Winston Severn is adorable as the young son. There's all sorts of comical confusion as Richards arrives at the hotel just as Tone is celebrating his upcoming wedding to the shrill Rafferty, and all sorts of chaos ensues as the press moves in for the kill. This is the type of film where you must suspend all disbelief and just accept it for what it is, post-war comic entertainment of a softer screwball nature. Considering that the post-war years of Hollywood had little to offer in the way of comedy (both on screen and behind the scenes), this is a nice little distraction in the historical sense. Joseph Fields, a very talented writer of some of the best comedies of the 1940's and 50's, came up with this sweet concoction, and if it ain't no "My Sister Eileen", its certainly better than a lot of the comic misfires Hollywood threw at audiences of the time.

In Great Britain, an American man fathers some children during World War II service. He seems to desert them, but may actually have amnesia. The mother goes to America where she finds the man does not remember having amnesia. He is going to marry another woman, which would give him two wives. However, the man begins to like the wife and children he doesn't remember. He must choose between the two women, but also please the new one's father who happens to be his boss. This movie originally seemed average, but a second viewing has made me forget some of the finer points.*** Lost Honeymoon (3/47) Leigh Jason ~ Franchot Tone, Ann Richards, Tom Conway, Frances Rafferty