June Bride

A rare Betty Davis film that's funny. She works well playing off of Robert Montgomery. Biting, witty, satirical dialogue is very funny between the two. I would never imagine these two actors together, but in this film, it works! Could have been a cloying, icky sweet film but isn't. Wonderful supporting players (Mary Wickes, Sandra Gould, Jerome Cowan, Fay Bainter). Wish someone would write films like this again, films for smart people. Alas, we are left with monosyllabic grunts most of the time. For a break, rent this film!

The funny thing is, Bette Davis made other films with just about all of them - Fay Bainter, Mary Wickes, and Betty Lynn (she was Thelma Lou on the Andy Griffith Show). George O'Hanlon as the magazine cameraman was Joe McDoakes in a series of Warner Brothers shorts.

But this is the first and only pairing of Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis. Montgomery, as Carey Jackson, dumped Bette Davis, as Linda Gilman, without even telling her, when three years before when he started thinking they were getting too serious. So he's been writing in Europe, but then his magazine's office closed and he's back in New York. He ends up on the staff of Home Life, edited by Linda.

Linda is over Carey, but she insists he realize she is the boss or she will fire him. She is afraid he will look for "angles" in every straightforward assignment she gives him. She is not wrong. This is a great and nuanced performance by Davis, and she actually does well as the 30 something independent sophisticate, making it in what was very much a man's world at the time. Carey, by his maneuvers, is not over Linda physically, but that seems to be as far as it goes for him, and he gets very annoying with his antics. As much as I like Montgomery, it seems like that would be difficult to do, but he manages to pull off making me dislike his character because he is so smarmy.

The bulk of the film is set in Indiana as Linda's staff are there to do a feature article about a wedding. It's basically a "bunch of fish out of water" story with the New York sophisticate magazine staff trying to make the homespun Brinker house fit for a layout in their magazine with the sexual tension between Linda and Carey playing out along with the fact that all is not right with the romance between the bride and groom to be.

The supporting cast is fine and the dialogue sparkles with wit, but it really cries out for the zaniness of Loy and Powell in the lead and a director like Leo McCarey to get it to where it is a first class screwball comedy. Instead we have Bretaigne Windust in the director chair, who mainly directed television and to date doesn't even have a bio section on this website. And that is unusual among directors.

If it ever comes your way I'd give it a chance, just because it is a somewhat unjustly forgotten item in Bette Davis' filmography.

June Bride has some fine moments, but it never really gets going as a first-rate comedy, mostly because of Bette Davis' stiff and somewhat dour performance. She and Robert Montgomery have very little chemistry. Poor Bob has to do all of the work, which leads to an exaggerated performance at times, but at least he brings some energy to the film and saves it from being a complete disaster. Davis looks like she didn't want to be making the picture. Unlike Stanwyck or Hepburn, she seems incapable of moving back and forth between drama and comedy. If Montgomery had been teamed with one of those two, or with Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert, or Myrna Loy, this could have been a small classic. The writing is very smart at times, even though the story itself is fairly predictable and a bit too cute. There are some excellent comic moments, including two great ones with Tom Tully's Mr. Brinker. The film has a good pace, apart from Ms. Davis' leaden performance, and the direction is efficient and sensible. Given the number of great comedies from the 30s and 40s one can live without seeing June Bride, but it can suffice in a pinch.

Pleasing, breezy comedy loosely in the "screwball" style has Davis as a women's magazine editor, and Montgomery her writer. The pair of ex-lovers heads to the heartland of America to do an article on a wedding -- but complications, of course, arise. Davis and Montgomery have fine chemistry, but Montgomery's character smug mannerisms get annoying. Not too much of note here, but there are worse ways to pass the time. Will please most fans of the star duo looking for something a bit different from their usual 40s fare.

This is a delightful film, one of my favorites. There is a brief scene that is not to be missed, between Bette Davis (as Linda), Mary Wickes (as Rosemary) and Tom Tully (as Mr. Brinker), in which Linda and Rosemary are discussing "Mrs. Brinker's bust" as Mr. Brinker looks on. The audience knows what they're talking about, but poor Mr. Brinker does not, and his expressions and reaction are hysterically funny. The whole film is definitely worth seeing. Robert Montgomery drunk on cider is also not to be missed.