Kiss the Bride Goodbye

This romantic comedy made at the Hammersmith studio in the UK in 1945 during the last year of WWII is remembered today chiefly because it features two great English beauties playing sisters, young Patrica Medina and the teenage Jean Simmons, before their Hollywood days The great surprise here is Medina, particularly appealing and believable as a high-spirited lass. It's shame that she never got to play anything like this in her long and undistinguished Hollywood career. (Most of the time, she just stood around looking gorgeous and/or mysterious.) The film also benefits from excellent direction from Viennese-born Paul L. Stein, one of the many refugees from Europe who emigrated to England in the !930's, and a splendid cast of perfectly cast character actors including Marie Lohr (Prof. Higgin's mother in Pygmalion), Claud Allister, and Irene Handl. There's even a song sung by Medina with words by Eric Maschwitz, best known for the lyrics for "These Foolish Things." Vey entertaining!

My summary headline translated from Italian means "the eyes" and is from page 59 of Patricia Medina Cotton's autobiography which she wrote in 1998.In subject film there are several close ups of her showing how darkly vivid were her eyes.I am drawn to beautiful 1940s actresses with raven black or dark brunette hair such as Vivien Leigh, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner etc. and 16 year old Jean Simmons who also plays Joan's younger sister in this 1945 film.Jean plays the part in a similar way to the wayward young girl she played in "Give us the Moon"(1944).Patricia plays opposite Jimmy Hanley who plays a penniless soldier who is home on a 3 week leave.Meanwhile Joan's social climbing mother wants her to marry an affluent factory owner and tries her level best to sabotage her daughter's romance with Jimmy Hanley.However "amor vincit omnia" in the end.

There are some rather sudden edits and a strange uncle & aunt in the screenplay who don't listen to the young pair when they come to visit them so lapsing into farce.Overall I rated it 6/10 as the production values are somewhat economical but I enjoyed seeing Patricia in a lead role.

Missing believed lost, this is a frivolous but not a very good movie. The fact that it has been discovered means at least you get to see an early role from Jean Simmons.

Factory girl Joan Dodd (Patricia Medina) attracts the attention of a wealthy older man Adolphus Pickering (Claud Allister,) her mother encourages this relationship as it means climbing the social ladder and they soon prepare to marry.

However on the day of her wedding Joan's boyfriend Jack Fowler (Jimmy Hanley) returns from the army on leave and both of them run away to eccentric relatives in the country with Joan wearing her bridal gown. The relatives think that Joan and Jack have just married.

The film is rather ridiculous and dull at times.

'Saucy', studio-bound shenanigans that provides a unique opportunity to see a young Patricia Medina & Jean Simmons as sisters; both sporting bigger hair and bigger shoulders than one is accustomed to seeing them wearing after they arrived in Hollywood. Also much younger than one is used to seeing her is Ellen Pollock as their ghastly controlling mother.

Intensely lovely Patricia Medina has been pushed into getting engaged to rich, older Claud Allister by her ambitious mother, Ellen Pollock. On the day of her engagement, her real love, Jimmy Hanley turns up and is tossed out. But the morning of the wedding, Miss Medina reads how he is back in town, has won a DSM, and puts two and two together. She goes to see him, and they take to train to Scotland and her uncle, Frederick Leister and his wife, Marie Lohr. To give them time to think, they tell the older couple they've been married at the register's office, but don't want to consummate the marriage until they've been married in church. Leister arranges that for the next day, tells them they're as married as they'll ever be, and locks them in a room together.

Hanley and Miss Medina are sweet, even when they are bickering. Leister is quite funny as he talks pompously from one position to the next, always as if his opinion has never changed, and it's Marie Lohr who easily carries the acting honors.

In many ways, this reminds me of Preston Sturges' HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, with the very real love of Eddie Bracken and Ella Raines coming through at the end, as it does with Hanley and Miss Medina. Of course, the subject is handled much more seriously here, the societal details are far less egalitarian, and Sturges' sense of humor and satiric observations knew no bounds. But this movie faces the problems of two young people in love with no money far more squarely.