June Bride

This movie surprised me. Typically, although I adore Bette Davis in dramas, I don't usually care for her in comedies. And, I don't care for Robert Montgomery at all...but I liked him very much here. But to me, this is not a comedy per se, although there is a lot of humor in it.

Robert Montgomery plays a foreign correspondent who reluctantly accepts a job under his former flame -- Bette Davis. He still loves her, she doesn't still love him...at least not at first. They go to Indiana to cover a "typical American wedding," but it turns out not to be quite so typical.

Another thing I rarely find funny in films are drunk scenes. Here, however, Robert Montgomery is hilarious as a drunk.

Aside from strong performances by Davis and Montgomery, this film has an extremely strong cast. Fay Bainter is wonderful, as always, although I would have wished her part was more substantial. You'll recognize Tom Tully, but perhaps for his roles in John Wayne-type films...much different here as the father of the bride(s). And you'll recognize Mary Wickes and Marjorie Bennett.

While this won't find a place on my DVD shelf, I did truly enjoy it. I think you will, also.

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!

I have just lost a review I have just written about this film, so I will attempt to recapture some of it. Bette Davis looks elegant and beautiful in this fluffy comedy and it is her delivery of sometimes very witty lines that makes this scenario work so well. She is the editor of a magazine, strong willed and good at her job and as she says in one scene not short on male company. Then an ex-lover needs a job and reluctantly accepts to work for her. Despite my not liking much Robert Montgomery as an actor he delivers well and with near equal wit, but it is Davis who rules. That is until the final scene which I found threw away a lot of what went before, and my reaction to it is so strong that I have to give this film a 7 and not a 9 which I would have liked. No spoilers except to say Davis and her co-workers go to a small town far from New York to cover the ' story ' of a June bride wedding. The twists and turns here are well directed and well acted by all. Fay Bainter stands out, as Davis's female assistant and Tom Tully is excellent as the father of the bride. I could name them all, and there is not a trace of bad or poor acting anywhere. Some critics consider it as a minor Davis film but I disagree. As if rehearsing for ' All About Eve ' to come two years later it just shows that with good direction and fine acting no film is minor. Pity about the final scene and in my opinion another kind of scenario could have been written. But then the roles of women, especially forceful ones were perhaps unable to totally succeed and win alongside men back in 1948. Not in Hollywood anyway.

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.

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.