User reviews

This is a very dated story about two people in love, Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Raymond, and their marital problems. Stanwyck plays a model who came from a poor home, and she doesn't want to give up her $50 a week job and live on only Raymond's $35/week salary. He talks her into it anyway, though she screams all the way down the aisle. Soon she finds herself in money trouble and gets involved with a playboy, Robert Young. To ease her financial problems, she works on the sly.

The performances are delightful, but it's a slim story and then there's the business of this guy not wanting his wife to work. I normally don't have a problem watching films in the context of their times, but in this case, the husband seemed unreasonable to me. Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick are hilarious. Stanwyck is always fresh and sincere. Gene Raymond is attractive, but I've always failed to see why he was so important to MGM that Mayer forced Jeannette Macdonald to marry him. The film didn't really hold my interest, but Stanwyck is always worth seeing.

... in a production that is an OK time passer but is based on entirely archaic ideas on the subject of marriage. If I'm going to watch a film from 1936, I guess I should be prepared to deal with the values of 1936, but this is just too much.

Mike Martin (Gene Raymond) is an engineer who basically nags model and long-time girlfriend Carolyn (Barbara Stanwyck) into marrying him. The arguments begin at their quickie civil marriage ceremony and continue as Mike's estimate that $35 a week is enough for them to get by on is incorrect. Plus no wife of his is going to work! It's a Martin tradition. Before this film is over I felt like if it was a Martin tradition to walk a tightrope strung between high rises on your 30th birthday Mike would be up there doing it. He's not exactly a deep thinker.

Meanwhile, Carolyn is stuck making Mike's maxims work. Mike gets to live the dream of supporting a wife that doesn't work, but his dream is really a mirage. Carolyn is the one that actually deals with overdue bills and the bill collectors coming to the door threatening repossession. After their furniture is repossessed and is only returned because wealthy friend Hugh McKenzie (Robert Young) pays the amount due - all happening before Mike gets home and thus without his knowledge - Carolyn decides to go to work so their budget will stretch and hide the fact from Mike. When Mike beats Carolyn home one day and discovers the truth, it is actually the knuckle-dragging groom that walks out.

All through the film there is the involvement of wealthy Hugh, who loves Carolyn but wants her to be happy whatever she decides. Let me tell you, Robert Young does not play a drunk well at all. In fact he's quite annoying as drunken partying Hugh. But when he plays a sober Hugh he's a stark and pleasant contrast to the Neanderthal Mike.

Now this is a 1936 production code era romance, so you know it's going to work itself out in some conventional way already, so I'll just let you watch and find out how that happens.

I give this five stars because Barbara Stanwyck makes almost any film watchable, plus there are the hilarious antics of Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick as Paul and Mattie Dodson, friends of the couple who don't seem to like each other at all and can't even remember what town in which they were married. When Carolyn asks them why they get married in the first place they say "because it was raining", whatever that means.

I would consider this film a take it or leave it proposition.

If you can get passed the far-outdated trappings (newlyweds in separate beds, and a wife who is forced to give up her well-paying job to live on her husband's measly salary), there are some laughs to be had in this charming romantic comedy from RKO. Screenwriters P.J. Wolfson and Philip G. Epstein, working from a story by Howard Emmett Rogers, manage to throw in some funny, sneaky little laugh lines, and the supporting characters add a great deal of bounce, including sidekick Ned Sparks (who talks like a Myna Bird) and Hattie McDaniel(s) as a sassy cook. The bride (Barbara Stanwyck, who never disappoints) does indeed walk out--into the arms of a millionaire!--and the way the plot is resolved is amusing and clever. **1/2 from ****

Comparing this film to THE PALM BEACH STORY is an exercise in ignorance. It's OK, but lacking in wit and spark. If anything, it's yet another example of how films of this era shot down women who had hopes of making something of their lives. For that, it is perhaps worth seeing. If you're looking for a sparkling, witty comedy, move on. Fans of Stanwyck will find her at her best, as always...but Gene Reynolds, as always, brings things to a crashing halt. Helen Broderick is at her wise-cracking best, but it's not really good enough to save what is basically a formulaic, Depression-era comedy...one with an all-too-familiar ending. Ho-hum, and all that.

Carolyn (Barbara Stanwyck) and Michael Martin (Gene Raymond) are getting married, but they are already fighting over money. They keep fighting and making up and fighting and making up. He doesn't make enough and their money trouble only mounts after their cheapie quickie wedding.

Normally, a couple bickering over money is not that much fun. It can get annoying. Stanwyck and Raymond are better than expected. They still annoy me at times. The wealthy admirer does present a problem, but the movie skirts most of that. It's an up and down relationship and so is this movie. In the end, it has more ups than downs.

Although this film was made before the television era, in some ways it resembles an extended episode of a TV sitcom. The main characters are Michael and Carolyn Martin, a young newlywed couple from New York. The plot centres upon the disharmony caused in their marriage by their financial difficulties. Michael is an engineer earning $35 per week. In the Depression era of the thirties this would probably have been regarded by most Americans as a good living wage, but it is not enough to keep Carolyn in the middle-class style to which she has become accustomed. Before her marriage she worked as a model earning $50 per week, but Michael has old-fashioned views about married women working (old-fashioned by today's standards if not those of the thirties) and refuses to let her go out to work. Carolyn, however, is unable to limit her spending (she impulsively buys a dress costing over $40) and soon the couple are in financial difficulties and their furniture is repossessed. An added complication is that Carolyn has a wealthy admirer in the shape of Hugh, the foppish son of a department-store owner. (At least, he is a fop some of the time. His character seems to veer between a drunken playboy and a perfect gentlemen).

The film resembles a sitcom in that the humour arises out of the situations in which the characters find themselves rather than from any particularly witty dialogue. As another reviewer has pointed out, the main comic relief is provided by Billy Gilbert as the repo man and Ned Sparks as Michael's colleague Paul, but as Gilbert's party piece seems to be pretending to sneeze (in which he is joined in a duet by Barbara Stanwyck) and Sparks's speciality is talking out of the side of his mouth while holding a cigar firmly clamped between his jaws, I can only think that audiences of the thirties were more easily pleased than those of today would be.

The main problem with this film for a modern audience, however, is its outdated social attitudes. The jocular references to wife-beating, for example, do not seem tasteful or funny today. Although the film is fairly sympathetic to Carolyn's desire to work, a woman's job is seen not in terms of a fulfilling career but in terms of a way of providing pocket-money to keep herself in luxuries. There is also a racist joke when Carolyn's maid (about the only role open to black actresses in the thirties) remarks that black men are too idle to support themselves and prefer to live off their wives. The film as a whole seems very dated today. "Halliwell's Film Guide" describes it as "thin" but "pleasing". The first adjective may be apt; the second certainly is not. 4/10

New York model Barbara Stanwyck (as Carolyn) marries up-and-coming engineer Gene Raymond (as Michael Martin) and reluctantly gives up her career. The couple agrees to the "traditional" marriage, with the woman talking care of the house while the man works. When they are unable to make ends meet, Ms. Stanwyck offers to go back to work, but Mr. Raymond refuses. To complicate matters, Stanwyck arouses the interests of alcoholic department store owner Robert Young (as Hugh McKenzie)...

Should Stanwyck try a relationship with the perpetually tipsy Mr. Young or stick with husband Raymond - only time will tell… Raymond gets deadpan comic support from Ned Sparks (as Paul Dodson) while Stanwyck converses with his wife Helen Broderick (as Mattie) and "mammy"-type maid Hattie McDaniel (as Mamie), who is scripted to foolishly mangle a quote from Abraham Lincoln. Billy Gilbert does his bit as an "Acme" furniture man and Charles Lane holds court, but nothing really lifts this comedy.

*** The Bride Walks Out (7/10/36) Leigh Jason ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Raymond, Robert Young, Ned Sparks

This is kind of a movie version of an I Love Lucy episode - It's the trials & tribulations of a couple, accompanied by their sidekicks, the other married couple. The girls stick together, the guys stick together. Then Robert Young walks in to "help", but things get all mixed up. Clever script. Helen Broderick plays the same sarcastic, older but wiser friend that sticks by the young bride when things get tough that she played so many times (Father takes a bride, Smartest Girl in Town, Top Hat) Robert Young is the dashing interloper that really does want to help out, but just makes things worse. Ned Sparks is a riot, always muttering things under his breath, the poor suffering husband with a cigar hanging out the corner of his mouth. This movie makes light of some of those old fashioned sexist ideas,(domestic violence, man/wife roles) so may offend some, but then it was made for a different time. Seems to be a remake of "Ten Cents a Dance" from 1931, which also starred B. Stanwyck. I have tried to find the video for sale, have not had luck as of yet.

One of Barbara Stanwyck's lesser efforts, The Bride Walks Out gets in a few jabs about chauvinistic pride but with little velocity behind its screwball intent it never reaches home plate.

Mike and Carolyn get hitched and he immediately puts his foot down about her working outside the home. As the bills mount she takes a job on the side to stem the tide of debt collectors but he finds out and the couple split. Miserable without each other they shakily attempt to reconcile.

Save for the abrasive Gene Raymond as Mike, Bride fields a decent enough acting squad with Babs, Robert Young as a well heeled interloper and a broad comic support line of Ned Sparks, Helen Broderick, Hattie Mc Daniel and Billy Gilbert. But lightweight director Leigh Jason fails to get cast or tempo out of its lethargy and the Bride Walks Out deserves one itself.

Pure romantic comedy that doesn't hit every mark, but is well worth it. If you loved Palm Beach Story, you'll at least like this.

Story of fashion-model married to $35/week surveyor, failing to make ends meet. He won't let her work, but she does anyway. She's tempted by rich playboy Robert Young. He's egged on by wife-hating Ned Sparks. Sparks, who delivers every line around a cigar stub, and Billy Gilbert, the repo man, steal every scene they are in.

Husband's refusal to see wife's point of view makes him look stupid, which was not the intent. Guess how it turns out? True lovers of this period have to learn to overlook this kind of sexism, I'm afraid.

Fashion model Barbara Stanwyck is making $50 a week. Aspiring but as-yet-unsuccessful engineer Gene Raymond is only making $25 but wants her to marry him and quit her job and stay at home. Like a dummy, she lets herself be talked into it.

Presumably in 1936 some viewers would have been sympathetic to Raymond's insistence that "No wife of mine is going to work." That's not the problem with this movie. The problem is that Raymond's character is pushy and arrogant and we just don't see any sparks between him and Stanwyck that would make us believe that she could find him tolerable, much less irresistible.

Anyway, Stanwyck stays home and keeps house, eventually getting behind on the bills to the point where she secretly goes out and starts modeling again. The bills are getting paid now and she can even afford to hire Hattie McDaniel to come in and cook.... But what will happen if Raymond finds out that she's working? Oh my.

Solid supporting actors do their best to cheer things up but they don't have much to work with. Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick play the wisecrack-spouting old married couple who hang out with Stanwyck and Raymond. Robert Young is a rich drunken playboy who hangs around trying to help.

Unfortunately, the strong cast and decent production values just can't keep this picture moving...it's one of those that seems longer than its 81 minutes.

I doubt you'll ever see The Bride Walks Out remade today with the message this film sends for today's woman. In fact the title isn't even factually correct because it's the husband Gene Raymond who walks out.

Even at Depression Era values asking a married couple to live on $35.00 a week is a bit much. Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Raymond live on that because Raymond being an old fashioned guy and a bit of fathead insists that the woman be barefoot, in the kitchen and if possible pregnant. God help them if a kid does come along. And with all this somehow they still employ Hattie McDaniel as a maid.

Quite frankly if rich department store playboy owner Robert Young were after me, if I were Barbara I'd drop Raymond in a New York minute. She wants to work and today there would be no question but that she would.

Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick provide good support and a few laughs as the married couple who are best friends to the leads.

Old fashioned to say the least and not in a good way.

I give this movie 10 stars because I'm in favor of bona fide wives who stay home, and the financial fallacies presented in this film are a hoot!

The money struggles in this movie amuse me and make me plead for a Dave Ramsey intervention; the idea that a woman poorly manages a household budget and thinks that if she works more money will make the difference is a totally amusing fallacy.

As old fashioned as the movie may seem due to the idea of a wife staying home, it's actually quite modern in terms of showcasing poor financial management by spending money on frivolities while bills go unpaid, and the idea of a woman who can't master her kitchen and instead of getting better with her skills she avoids it by getting a job; these are modern ways of living in 2022.

I believe women can do anything they set their minds to, but if they don't set their minds to being the best bona fide housewife they can be by managing the money properly and supporting their husbands by believing in them, then maybe women are better off getting a job that expects less of them.

I'd recommend this movie for newlyweds because it does highlight some valuable marriage lessons between the lines: finances must be discussed without hiding bills, living within a budget must be a goal for both, and don't expect everything to be great the first week or even the first year; it's getting through the challenges together that makes marriage worth it.

Considering the star power of the three leads in this film, "The Bride Walks Out" is quite a lousy film. As several others have noted, the title is wrong - actually, it's a lie because it's backwards. One can't help but wonder if there hadn't been some real changes in the writing of this film and it was originally planned that way - for the bride to walk out rather than the groom. But the screenplay is so bad, and the direction is so lousy that three top stars of the day can't save this film.

Sure, Philip Epstein and P. J. Wolfson could write great screenplays, including comedies. This very same year they did the screenplay for "Love on a Bet" that starred Gene Raymond and Wendy Barrie. It had nowhere near the star power of this film, but was a very funny, smash hit comedy. And both were made by RKO. And the director, Leigh Jason, was the same for films. It should be noted that this film did make a modest profit for RKO, but it was far out of the top 100 films in box office for the year. More than four dozen comedies finished ahead of it.

Even with some comical one-liners, this film can't score as a very good comedy. So, what could be the difference if not the plot and the story itself? Here are some points that glare as awful or not good. Gene Raymond's frequent persona is a guy who uses short, snappy comments. They were tremendous in "Love on a Bet," and worked superbly with the other characters and their dialog. Here they are flat and seem to float off on their own. Others have noted the complete lack of chemistry between Barbara Stanwyck's Carolyn and Raymond's Michael Martin. Then they are the gaping holes in the plot. For instance, Carolyn had steadfastly refused Michael's proposals, and the next thing they are getting married. A script that had a little amour between the two might have helped some.

The deadpan humor off Ned Sparks as Paul Dodson and Helen Broderick as Mattie stands out in left field all alone. It's almost as though four or more writers were creating their own stories with no coordination in a plot, and then all four were just folded together.

Others have pointed out also some incongruities of the film - things that also make it less plausible and funny. How could Carolyn afford a maid (Hattie McDaniel), even though she had been making more money as a model than Michael was as an engineer?

I think someone was grasping at straws with this plot. Perhaps they rushed the story to include so many disparate characters that didn't play well off one another with the script they were writing. The rich Hugh McKenzie, played by Robert Young, is a good example. He's always tipsy and just pops in and out of Michael and Carolyn's life out of nowhere. But there's no comical dynamic to it. It's just an awkward piece of the plot in places.

Normally, I wouldn't give this much detail to a movie that's such a dud or turkey. But, with such a cast of top leads of the day and some of the best supporting cast, it's puzzling that the film should be so bad. There is no way to tell, of course, but I suspect that the tremendous cast was the draw with the public to see this film. But, if there had been surveys of moviegoers coming out of the theater, most would have given a thumbs down on this one. The star cast was enough to draw audiences for a few weeks, but there were few to no good comments passed on to friends and neighbors so this film didn't continue to grow at the box office like dozens of other comedies did that year.

My four stars are generous, but the supporting cast of those already named and the rest, deserve some credit - among them, Billy Gilbert, Willie Best , Irving Bacon, Ward Bond, and others.

Here are some lines from this film, which don't seem as funny as they should have been, because of what went before and after them.

Paul Dodson, "When I married you, you didn't have a rag on your back." Mattie Dodson, "Oh, well, I've got plenty of 'em now."

Paul, "Outside of my wife, I'm comparatively alone in the world. Even with my wife, I'm comparatively alone in the world."

Carolyn, "I asked you not to make me marry you. I begged you."

Carolyn, "How was breakfast, darling?" Michael, "Unorthodox. You toasted the eggs and scrambled the toast."

Michael, to a tipsy Hugh McKenzie, "What's the address?" McKenzie, "The Address?.. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent...."

Bride Walks Out, The (1936)

** (out of 4)

Disappointing film from RKO has Barbara Stanwyck playing fashion model Carolyn who is courted by a blue collar working man (Gene Raymond). The two are married and he forces her to quit her job as he thinks they can survive on his $35-a-week paycheck but soon she goes to work behind his back and is courted by a rich man (Robert Young) who is in love with her. THE BRIDE WALKS OUT starts off pretty flat and just continues to go downhill from there. Despite the good cast there's really no life in this comedy-drama for a number of reasons but the biggest has to be the lack of chemistry between Stanwyck and Raymond. Not for a second did they feel like a real married couple and throughout the movie I had a hard time believing these two people would ever actually be together. Another problem is the screenplay, which for some reason makes the husband out to be the dumbest man I've seen from any Hollywood film of the 1930s. I watch dozens, if not hundreds, of films from this era and for the life of me I was struggling to come up with a dumber male character. The film has a very sexist attitude about it, which goes against many of the roles Stanwyck played throughout the decade but there are several bits of dialogue where it's said that for a man to be "manly" that he should hit a woman. Add on more sexist stuff including the fact that he doesn't believe women should work and that he's constantly doing and saying one dumb thing after another, the viewer really can't help but hate the guy and want to see Stanwyck get away from him. The one good thing in the film is the chemistry between Stanwyck and Young but you'll be disappointed in how the screenplay plays this off in the end but what's an even bigger head-scratcher is that it's never really explained why Young becomes such a vital part in her life. Ned Sparks tries to add some comic relief and fails and film buffs will also enjoy seeing Hattie McDaniel and Billy Gilbert in small roles. You can also quickly see Willie Best at a court sequence but he's not given a single line of dialogue. This attractive cast might make fans tune in when the film is shown on TCM but you're bound to be disappointed.