BEFORE: Day 7 of the (M)Archie Madness tournament, and as I go further back into the past, I encounter different rules of engagement in the battle between the sexes. Nothing really sums up the attitude toward women in the late 1940's better than the title of this one. OK, but if every girl should be married, what about the boys? Doesn't it logically follow that they should be married, too, or will they still be allowed to play around?
THE PLOT: Anabel Sims is determined to find the perfect husband. She thinks she's found her man in Madison Brown, a handsome pediatrician. She then prepares an elaborate scheme to trap him into marriage.
AFTER: Poor Cary Grant - this is the kind of film he had to endure starring in, just to get to better films later on, like "An Affair to Remember" and "Charade", which is leading the tournament right now by a country mile. And this is the type of actress he had to co-star with - no doubt he dreamed of the day when he could re-team with Ingrid Bergman or make a film with Deborah Kerr, or some voluptuous as-yet-undiscovered Italian or French beauty.
The lead female character here is one of the most annoying I've ever seen - it's not totally her fault, she's a product of her times, and society has told her that she simply must be married by a certain age, even if she has to trick a man into marrying her. Because if women don't get married and have kids, something bad will happen - maybe human society won't be able to carry on, even though there are several billion other people on the planet. What people (or their parents) are usually more worried about is that if they don't have kids, society WILL carry on, but their genes won't be a part of it - God forbid!
What I take away from this is that women in 1948 were generally boring, or had low self-esteem - why else would they feel the need to trick men into marrying them? Why couldn't they just get some hobbies, make themselves more interesting, meet a man with similar interests and just let things develop slowly and naturally? That's the best recipe for a lasting relationship anyway, right? But if you force two people together without common interests, they're not likely to stay together as long.
So I trace the love triangle plotline back to this one - I'll get to the bottom of this repeated storyline yet. Here the salesgirl sets her sight on a doctor, and to make him jealous, she fabricates a relationship with her boss, the millionaire owner of the department store. The only problem is, the store-owner assumes that she's fabricated the relationship with the doctor to make HIM jealous, so the lie threatens to become real. Eventually she's got both men interested in her - she's managed to make them both jealous of each other - and she has to tell even bigger lies to resolve the situation, which is not a great message to send out to the kids.
Yes, it's great that women came into their own in the mid 20th century, and I support equal rights (which is still apparently a work in progress) but this swings the pendulum too far - women in this film want the right to ask men out on dates, which is fine. But Anabel here wants the right to marry the man she chooses, thus removing all of HIS personal choice. Doesn't he even get a say in the matter?
Also, as I said, she's very annoying. Even if you overlook the stalking behavior, which is creepy and quite unacceptable, she flies off the handle and jumps to conclusions - you know the kind of girl that starts picking out baby names after one date with a man? Yeah, that's her - maybe that was more acceptable in 1948, but not any more. As soon as she finds out the man she's bumped into is a doctor, she's found her target - this selfish, gold-digger attitude is quite unacceptable also. Plus, she's very rude - conversationally she keeps interrupting people AND she's very forceful in her manner, determined that the whole world should change to suit her desires and needs. You can't make someone love you, honey, that's not the way it's supposed to work.
My wife and I have a little saying when we see or hear someone in public who's very annoying or out of control in their manner, which is, "I'd set the house on fire." Meaning that if we found ourself in a relationship with THAT person, and had to endure that voice or those manners or whatever, we'd take unreasonable actions, including arson, to get out of that situation. I maintain that Cary Grant's character here should have set the house on fire.
NITPICK POINT: Last night it was "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", and tonight it was "La Mer", a melody you may recognize since it was later turned into the song "Beyond the Sea". It's simply everywhere in this film, to the exclusion of any other piece of music. It's literally the only song in the film, and you'll be sick of hearing it by the end of the picture. How about spending a few extra bucks and maybe featuring two pieces of music in a film?
EDIT: It turns out that the lead actress here was Cary Grant's third wife. That actually explains a lot - namely how she got the role in this film, and also I can see why he moved on to wife #4.
Also starring Betsy Drake, Franchot Tone, Diana Lynn, Eddie Albert (last seen in "Roman Holiday").
RATING: 3 out of 10 pairs of baby booties
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