Almost Married

Jane Frazee has auditioned as a singer for a bunch of night clubs in New York. Every one admits she's good looking, has a great voice, and can put a song over. But she has no name, and so she's off to Vermont and her father, horse doctor Eugene Pallette. But a mix-up leads her to socially prominent Robert Paige, whose engaged, but doesn't want to get married. She agrees to tell his fiancee she's married to him, which gets rid of her. But the next morning all the papers cover the marriage, and they need to get divorced. But how can they, when they're not married?

Charles Lamont directs this as a series of short comedies, separated by Miss Frazee or Slim and Slam singing a song. There are lawyers named Bright and Early.... I mean Hurley, and such comedy pros as Elizabeth Patterson, perpetual butler Charles Coleman, and even Walter Tetley. For a comedy programmer it's very enjoyable, and yes, Miss Frazee sells the songs.

This relatively short feature film is primarily a screwball comedy, but also a musical film. It is generally very well done. One of its two main problems is the same one that the main female protagonist has: the actors don't 'have a name', and the film doesn't make up for this by being really outstanding.

With a star cast this could easily have become a classic despite (or because of) the silly premise that throws the competent but unknown nightclub singer together with the 'most eligible bachelor in the country' (The Star Dispatch) in a fake marriage. The couple does everything in a very unorthodox order, and the film's second problem is similarly an issue with sequencing: All the best scenes are in the beginning, there are some very good ideas in the middle, but the end is no more than just good.

Although things are wrapped up neatly in the end, it does feel as if time and money ran out. Or maybe the idea was that this would primarily be watched by couples who would pay more attention to each other at the end than to the movie?

In any case I think the film is really worth watching once if you like screwball comedies, and I am likely to rewatch the first half occasionally.