Here Comes the Groom

It's a lightweight comedy, but this film has unforgettable moments. Plotwise, it's postwar Capra claptrap complete with French orphans-- but also some dazzling camera work and a few did-I-just-see-that? Surrealistic touches.

The first is a hologram of sorts: Bing's in France listening to an audio letter from fiancée, Jane Wyman-- a Dear John recordio-gram. As it's playing, Wyman materializes on the spinning record, Princess Leia-like. So I should have been prepared for anything, but when Der Bingle is on the plane back to America, he (of course) starts singing to the orphans. The tune is "Misto Cristofo Columbo"-- and suddenly Louis Armstrong walks into the airline cabin, complete with trumpet and hankie-- then up pops the bottom of the Hollywood barrel: Dorothy Lamour, Frank Fontaine and Phil Harris, all singing.

When the plane, and the plot, land in Boston, Bing has to win Jane back from Franchot Tone, which he does via a Pygmalion subplot involving Alexis Smith and men's pajamas. Hubba hubba. Best of all though is one of film's great tracking shots (nothing compared to "I Am Cuba," but still), a song-and-dance number through an office building to "In the cool cool cool of the evening." If only they'd brought Satchmo back for the big double-wedding ending.

Frank Capra in his autobiography called Bing Crosby, "the master of the cultured ad-lib." A lot of time Crosby would drop several ad-libs into a script and Capra kept them in. According to Capra they were better

than what the screenwriter had written. Of course partnering with Bob Hope in several films and thousands of radio, television, and live shows Bing had to be quick on the uptake.

Capra wanted to do another of his populist films like Mr. Deeds etc., in the three picture deal he signed with Paramount. But after doing Riding High and doing it well with Bing Crosby, he wanted to do one of his type film. The Paramount brass said no, but since he was unhappy at Paramount they agreed to drop their last picture commitment on his contract for one more Crosby film. Just make a good one.

Capra was as good as his word. This film is entertainment plus and a lot of that has to do with the chemistry between Bing and Jane Wyman. Most of Crosby's leading ladies were nice women who just melted with the Crosby charm. Not so here. Ms. Wyman gives as good with the wisecracks as Crosby does and is no pushover. What she is here is a fiancé who's grown tired of waiting for her man who's out gallivanting all over the world as per his job as correspondent. When he finally does come back he has two French orphans in tow. But Jane's decided to marry millionaire Franchot Tone. Bing has to get her back or those kids will be deported. That's where the fun starts.

By now Paramount was giving Crosby vehicles some respectable budgets and that included letting Frank Capra hire a lot of his favorite supporting players. Those folks make a Capra film an enjoyable experience.

Franchot Tone does nicely as millionaire rival and critics were astounded at Alexis Smith who turned out to have a real flair for comedy. Funny parts she wasn't getting at Warner Brothers. She plays a "kissing" cousin of Franchot Tone and figures prominently in Bing's machinations.

They were also astounded at Jane Wyman who nobody realized could sing. Why they were is beyond me since she did start in musical choruses. The song In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer won an Oscar for best song and became one of Bing's million selling records, dueted with Jane Wyman on screen and on vinyl.

The rest of the score is by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans who were under contract to Paramount and for some reason or other never wrote another Crosby film score. Probably because Paramount didn't assign them because many years later they scored and arranged a whole album of duets with Bing and Rosemary Clooney called That Traveling Two Beat Time. And Bing did pretty good with a song written for his friend Bob Hope by them called Silver Bells.

One of the Livingston-Evans songs was a patented philosophical number called Your Own Little House. A nice song on record, on screen it's a great impromptu style number that so many of Crosby's seemed to be. Sung with a group of kids who are French war orphans, Bing does some gentle kidding of fellow entertainers Jimmy Durante and Maurice Chevalier.

This is one of Bing's best and great entertainment.

A new and improved Jane Wyman appears in this picture with Bing Crosby. She is no longer the violated waif we saw in Johnny Belinda, but a self-confident woman who knows how to sing and clown around. Check out the moment where she visits Mr. Crosby in the guest house and proceeds to fall flat on her face in that larger-than-life dress! And she's sweet in the scenes with the kids, too.

But in case we forget that she's also a serious dramatic actress, there are moments of toughness between her and costar Alexis Smith. The film is a treat for any Wyman fan who enjoys watching the actress prove her versatility time and again, not that she ever had to. We have known about her talent for quite some time now.

"Here Comes the Groom" is the sort of schmaltzy fluff that Bing Crosby did best. While I am quick to admit that this is a very slight film, it is also a very, very enjoyable film. Deep? Nah--but fun.

The film begins with Bing hanging out with a bunch of cute orphans in post-war France. He's supposed to be coming back to the USA to marry his fiancée (Jane Wyman) but he cannot leave the kids in a lurch--particularly two cute kids who he plans to adopt. The only trouble is that after he's done all the paperwork to bring them to America, he's returned so late that his girlfriend has called off the wedding and is now planning to marry her boss (Franchot Tone). You really can't blame her too much--Bing never told her he'd be late or why he'd be late. In other words, she wasn't feeling very appreciated.

There is a problem with Bing not getting married, however. In order to adopt the kids and keep them he MUST get married...and quick. Bing isn't about to try to find another girl and he really does care about Jane, so he's determined to break up the engagement and marry her himself. Here is where it gets interesting--Bing tells Franchot and Franchot actually allows him a chance to win her back. After all, if she isn't 100% ready to marry him, why not let her marry Bing? Where all this ends is very predictable--but a film like this always is. Along the way, you have some nice comedy (particularly the portions with Alexis Smith) and really nice songs--and it's quite enjoyable and cute. Perhaps it's too cute and saccharine for some--I could understand that. But, if you don't mind and are looking for an old fashioned family film, it's well worth your time.

Another Bing Crosby vehicle and another job for Frank Capra at Paramount, his last, Here Comes the Groom is a light and frilly affair that takes too long to do too little but is intermittently charming along the way. It's a largely unremarkable film that doesn't try to make a whole lot of sense, especially in its ending, but at least Crosby and Jane Wyman work well together.

Pete Garvey (Crosby) is a war correspondent still in Paris several years after the end of WWII, latching onto an orphanage of war orphans about whom he is writing a series of stories about in order to get them adopted and sending them back to his editor George (Robert Keith) who is getting tired of them since the world has moved on. He also has a girl back home, Emmadel (Wyman), who has grown sick of waiting for her beau to return and sends him a record of her voice telling him that she's leaving him. It's really the only fun bit of filmmaking in the whole thing since Capra has her superimposed on top of the record to speak the lines and even ends with a fun bit of nonsense around the mechanics of the player itself.

Well, Pete gets the bug to go back home, but not before he disappears for two months to find the birth certificates of his two favorite orphans Bobby (Jacques Gencel) and Suzi (Beverly Washburn). I think this is supposed to establish Pete as forgetful but dedicated, and yet the rest of the film is him laser focused on getting what he needs without wavering. It's almost like the script by Virginia Van Upp, Liem O'Brien, and Myles Connolly was kind of just slap-dashed together, or something.

Anyway, the only real reason to see this film is Crosby himself. He's a charming lead and much more in line with the tenor of the overall picture here than he had been in Riding High. Here, he's a lovable heel who needs to find a way to get back home, convince the woman he loves that she still loves him, and undermine her quickly scheduled marriage to Wilbur Stanley (Franchot Tone), the latest in the line of a wealthy and powerful Bostonian family. The competition that develops between Pete and Wilbur is friendly and leads to no real hard feelings on any front, even when Wilbur conspires to have the orphans adopted if and when Pete doesn't get married on time (a condition of the adoption since he's a bachelor). It's almost like none of the characters consider there to be anything like stakes around the place.

Well, the bulk of the film is Crosby charming his way back into Emmadel's heart (the first rendition of the Oscar winning song "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" is a delightful narrative treat since it shows the two still having a connection that develops over the song), spruce up Wilbur's cousin (fourth-cousin once removed) Winifred (Alexis Smith) so that she can become attractive to Wilbur instead, all while George hangs around for little reason other than to give some funny quips now and then. The finale is the big, to do wedding with many important guests and some bit of farce to get Pete on the altar instead of Wilbur that everyone just accepts because the feelings of the orphans are important and this very real ceremony isn't real, or something. It makes just this side of no sense, made all the weirder by Wilbur's reaction to it all which is like he didn't care.

So, it's very slight. It has some real charm to it. It's loosely told and kind of nonsensical. It has a nice song that it overplays (I didn't need to hear "Evening" three times, but whatever, it's not like there's a whole lot else). It's primarily a vehicle to showcase Bing Crosby's charm, and it does that reasonably well.

I think it would have worked better at 90 minutes instead of 110, though.