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.
