Young Bride

It seems like half of all films made in the early thirties used this same story - this one however does it really well and gives you a real authentic taste of early thirties life in the big city. Nothing exciting happens, there's no great revelations, there's no scathing indictments on society - it's basically just a soap but it's so well made it transports you mind and body back in time. Any picture featuring a taxi dance hall ticks my box!

Most surprising thing about this is that Eric Linden is actually good in it - on the level, no kidding! Eric Linden was often typecast as pathetic weaklings such as his limp and nauseatingly naïve 'Bud' in BIG CITY BLUES. He was usually so annoyingly pathetic that when he was playing Cagney's kid brother in THE CROWD ROARS, you wanted him to crash. This film however shows he could act! He really does convey the necessary levels of arrogance and selfishness required to make his self-obsessed waste of space both totally unlikeable and believable. At first it seems a bit weird watching him do a third rate Cagney impersonation but after a while you grow to accept it.

In the stage version of this role of 'Good Time Charlie' was taken by young Spencer Tracy whom you could imagine would have been a natural for this but Linden rises admirably to the challenge. His usually hidden acting skill gets you to really dislike his character immediately. He's not nasty, he's not a bad person, he's just a complete and utter botty hole. He's the sort of person that even the Delai Lama would want to punch in the face. As to why sweet Helen Twelvetrees, even though she's meant to have had a sheltered life, falls for him is beyond me.....but mis-matches like this clearly existed. That was life..... and that was one of the criticisms at the time. Contemporary reviews complained that it's just an everyday story of everyday life...... that however is exactly what makes this so watchable ninety years later!

Helen Twelvetrees plays the role she found herself often typecast into playing: that of the sweet and trusting naive long suffering wife but maybe she got typecast in such roles because she was so good at playing them. She's absolutely adorable in this and manages to engender real emotion in you. It's a great shame this lovely young lady worked for financially crippled RKO, or rather RKO-Pathé as it was then because when Selznick jumped ship, she was one of the many actors whom the company could no longer afford to keep - had circumstances been different, she might have been one of the great actresses. This pretty mundane but moving slice of life as a good example of how good she could be.

The great thing about Turner Classic Movies is that no matter how many old movies you have seen, you will regularly come across actors and actresses whose names you have never heard before, but once you see them, are fascinated, and glad to make their acquaintance. So it was with the beautiful and oddly named Helen Twelvetrees. She was a very good blond actress whose career barely spanned the decade of the 1930's. Here, in "Young Bride", she is delicate and vulnerable, but not in an annoying weak way; she has a face full of beautiful character, one that you want to comfort and murmur to how everything will be alright. A lovely find, and too bad she was not a major star.

On the other hand, I have never been a fan of Eric Linden, who plays her immature braggart of a husband. I think it is that horrendous Bronx accent of his; even when he is playing sympathetic, which is rare in this film, I just don't find him to be all that appealing. I don't think I was the only one who felt this way, as his career dried up quickly as the 1930's moved on.

A very interesting cultural aspect of this film is how so much of it takes place in a "dance hall"; this is a public tavern where men came and bought tickets to dance with the female hired help. It appears that there was a great demand for these kinds of establishments, as a way for men to meet girls and socialize in a pre-TV and pre-Internet Depression-era society. Particularly fascinating is that it seems that at a certain weird level, open lewd behavior was strictly prohibited; at one point in this film, the fellow who is in charge of watching the dancers sternly calls to Eric Linden to "keep your feet moving"! (ie - no hanky-panky on the floor!) I wonder if such places really existed. Certainly this is a portrait of an urban America that died a long long time ago...

When not in the dance halls or Twelvetree's apartment, most scenes take place in a public library. Isn't that a weird combination? Throw in the fabulously stuttering Roscoe Ates as a bartender and you have a unique, slightly odd movie that, primarily thanks to the delightful screen presence of Helen Twelvetrees, is worthy of an hour and a quarter of your time.

The forgotten Helen Twelvetrees is effective as a lonely children's librarian who falls for a small-time, big-talking guy beneath her station. He is played interestingly by the really forgotten Eric Linden. The floozy is Arline Judge, and she is great. She makes us want to smack her.

An antique that holds up quite well.

This is a fascinating film for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is showcasing one of the best performances given by Helen Twelvetrees, an actress with a fairly limited range of roles; once her studio discovered she played victimized women with great conviction, poor Helen was stuck in roles usually subservient to insensitive or brutal men.

All the more reason to watch this film, in which her one-note braggart husband, loud and crass Eric Linden, makes continued promises about future riches, about fidelity and business, but ultimately comes to terms of a kind with his now-pregnant wife.

Hundreds of films like this were churned out in the 1930's for women's matinées, and many stars were handed similar roles of beaten-down women--most, like Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Ruth Chatterson and Kay Francis were able to cope and now and then rise about the situation, but Young Bride is one of the few where Helen learned a thing or two.

This film is pre-code--one can actually see and man and wife in a twin bed together under the covers; two years later and such a scene could no longer be shown in any Hollywood film for over 25 years! There's also a good deal of salty language in some nifty set pieces depicting a dance hall, a chop suey joint, and a dusty library. Add to this several subtle performances by secondary players (Cliff Edwards, later the voice of Jiminy Cricket!) and you have a "weeper" worth your time.

Caution: ending of film is discussed.

From the moment of Eric Linden's first appearance, overwritten and overacted beyond any hope of later improvement, one wants to stop watching this one, because it's obvious that it's going to be tough going. And it IS a hard film to watch, because the Linden character is such an insufferable blowhard, and you know from the beginning that he's going to just treat her bad, treat her bad, through the whole film. Yes, this is yet another pre-Code story about a beautiful, intelligent woman, played by a attractive, talented actress, who marries an cocky jerk, played by a not-very-attractive, not-very-talented leading man. And Linden's performance is so embarrassingly deficient, with no nuance whatsoever.

The film is worth sticking out, though, because, although the Linden character is crudely written and played, overall it's an interesting film. Blanche Frederici plays 12trees' mentor with subtlety; neither an old crab nor warm and nurturing, a good person with a pragmatic sense of propriety. Cliff Edwards is fine as usual, fun and friendly, but playing a character who is ultimately not very nice, and as an actor up to dealing with that possibility. The script even tries to give the Linden character a good point: on their honeymoon he claims to know a Wall Street big shot, and we're surprised to find that the man does know him and does have some respect for him, if not for his deals. The film has a relatively fluid and pictorial style. The atmosphere at the dance hall is realistic and sleazily stylish. The popular jazz is funky, and the band looks suitably competent and slightly tacky.

Some of the more conscious efforts at cinema style, such as the lights being turned off at the library at closing time, seemingly turning off the lives of the young protagonists, may seem a bit self-conscious today, but they still work well. I particularly liked the closing lines of this scene, with 12trees railing against teaching children fairy tales. After the scene fades, you barely hear her voice continuing in a whisper, `It's wicked, wicked.'

What really makes the film is its unique point of view about depression romance and marriage, and Ms. 12trees' restrained but masterful performance. Neither of these are fully evident until the final scene when everything comes together and the whole film is brought into focus with an unusual clarity.

The film is about a quiet, intelligent woman, a librarian with a natural inner maturity. But because of her inexperience and her fairy-tale concept of romance, she gets her trapped in a marriage to a total washout who's all talk and no substance, and a cheat to boot. Before the honeymoon's over, she's completely aware that she's been had. But she sticks it out as long as she can, until she finally tells him off, spelling his faults out very clearly, with contempt rather than anger dominating her outburst.

Similar films of the period had endings in which the husband never had a comeuppance and in which the wife had to pretend a subservient role. In WEEKEND MARRIAGE, Loretta Young had to lie about her success and ask forgiveness, though it was her husband who was the drunk and the failure. Constance Cummings had to do the same in THE BIG TIMER. Ms. 12trees herself, in NOW I'LL TELL, had to pretend to return to her cheating husband, though at least that was only to ease his dying moments. Occasionally, such as 12trees in MY WOMAN, the wife got to throw off the conceited blowhard and find happiness elsewhere.

But the ending of YOUNG BRIDE is quite different. In the end, Linden sees the error of his behavior and has to beg forgiveness and clearly acknowledge his faults. But what's even more fundamentally different from the other films, almost radical, really, is the spirit in which she accepts him back.

After he pours his heart out on his knees as she sits on the day couch, he finally says, `Everything's all right now, isn't it?' and she answers, without much conviction, `I guess so.' The scene's well written, with him saying all the right things, and she giving quiet, rueful answers about reality versus expectations. He buries his face on her shoulder and the camera comes in on her face. She looks down on him with a touch of affection, and then gives a sad little smile and a sort of a shrug, and the scene fades into the end title. According to convention, everything has worked out for the best, yet as played and written it's the most realistic and sad of endings. Yes, she's taking him back, because she remembers how she first loved him, because she's going to have a baby and she needs a husband in the middle of the depression, because he's so sincere at this point. Yes, maybe things will be better... maybe. But, still, she knows she's just an innocent girl who's married a bum; even if he stays on the straight and narrow, he isn't at all what she hoped for. Her performance in this final scene is so simple, so good, so unaffected. My verbalized interpretation of her little smile is far less sophisticated than the actual performance, which is more subtle, more enigmatic. It conveys feelings that can't be put into words (and perhaps I shouldn't have tried).

This final shot illuminates what the whole film has been working toward. It's a heartbreaking message for a depression audience that came to see true love vindicated. Though the general quality of the production, with some original moments and well drawn characters, is good enough to keep one with it, this is really one of those films where the end justifies its existence.