No Room for the Groom

Although I see in the reviews that many blame director Douglas Sirk for this film, I think the main problem is the script. It creates many unfunny situations and just isn't funny...in fact, it's often irritating.

The film begins with Alvah and Linda (Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie) getting married. He is in the military and only has a short leave...and on their wedding night he turns out to have chicken pox and their marriage is never consumated.

Skip ahead 10 months. During the time since their marriage, Linda hasn't told most people about her being married. This is mostly because her manipulative mother always develops heart palpitations whenever Linda tries to talk about Alvah. Additionally, Linda's mother has invited 14 relatives to move in with them! Did I mention this is Alvah's home, not the mother-in-law's?! More complications result.

As my wife and I watched this, my wife remarked "I don't like this" and she pretty much sums up the film. The plot makes no sense and Alvah puts up with a house full of freeloaders and a mother-in-law who is just plain nasty. To make this worse, they cast Spring Byington as the mother-in-law...perhaps the actress with the sweetest persona in Hollywood. It just doesn't fit her at all...and the film is devoid of laughs. Talk about a misguided project. Overall, I'd say this film really sucks...loudly.

The wartime comedy of frustration -- wherein a young couple is thwarted from consummating their marriage through a series of mishaps -- is carried to new lengths in this almost pathologically frustrating film. The comedy, unfortunately, is very thinly written, and depends largely on a huge cast of characters all having moved into young husband and soldier Tony Curtis's home while he is away, fighting in World War II. (Curious to note that this film was made about seven years after this subject might have been topical.) What really lets us down is that the couple has no backbone, constantly caving in to the whim of mother-in-law Spring Byington, who wants the marriage annulled so that bride Piper Laurie can marry rich Don DeFore. The worst of it is that our bride is truly under Mama's thumb for nine-tenths of the picture, and that we are so far ahead of her. Particularly galling, as well, is the child Donovan, who seems omnipresent and has no redeeming qualities (and is very noisy to boot). Curtis, fortunately, looks great (especially in a tight T-shirt) and does what he can with this woeful material. An hour and a half that feels like three.

When they were young contract players at Universal Pictures Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie made four pictures together, Tony was teamed with her almost as much as with his own wife Janet Leigh. Even though No Room For The Groom was about a young married couple unable by circumstances to consummate the deed, these two never consummated anything in real life according to Curtis in his memoirs. Romance surely would have been killed by an airing of this film.

Tony plays a young GI on leave to get married to sweetheart Piper Laurie, but on his wedding night comes down with chicken pox. Back to Korea for 10 months before the deed is done, but he allows his bride to move into his house. And Piper moves in with her mother and a dozen or so deadbeat relatives. This is what Tony comes home to and in addition Piper has never told her mother Spring Byington that they're married because Spring wanted her to marry Don DeFore the richest guy in town and who Piper works for.

A nice cast is really thoroughly wasted on this tripe. Why Curtis just didn't throw them all out bag and baggage and get down to business still eludes me. I was also surprised that Douglas Sirk who directed some of Universal's best dramas with Rock Hudson in the Fifties was in charge of this mess. I guess he was just fulfilling contractual obligations and couldn't wait to get to a Hudson film. The film does have a hurried look to it, like everyone wanted to get on to other projects.

Fortunately Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie went on to do much better work in the Fifties than No Room For The Groom.

Douglas Sirk's reputation lies solely on his expertise within the melodrama genre. But as a director under contract he was afforded the opportunity of directing a wide range of movie genres. His success with these (which included a western, a sword and sandal saga and light musical comedies) was notably unremarkable. They remain watchable, but mainly of interest not for their intrinsic qualities but rather as stepping stones toward Sirk's major contribution to the movies.

In his later years Sirk gave an in depth interview to Jon Halliday which was then turned into the book "Sirk on Sirk". In it he discusses in some detail his works from his pre-Hollywood days until the untimely end of his career at the end of the fifties. While he speaks much about his acknowledged successes, he has little to say about the weaker films. "No Room for the Groom" is given but one sentence in the entire book. Sirk says, "I think I had to do it as a tryout for Tony Curtis…… I don't remember anything about it at all".

Since he remembers much about movies made long before this, one can only surmise he has blotted this one out from his memory. It's a wise move, since this is simply the worst film Sirk ever put his name to.

"No Room for the Groom" is a screwball comedy, something Sirk was woefully unequipped for. But its doubtful that even a master of the genre could have pulled it off since the dialog is to put it bluntly, atrocious.

The situations which are intended to be humorous are downright irritating. A young Tony Curtis desperate to prove himself in the "tryout", acquits himself valiantly. But its truly a terrible mess of a movie.

Other than for Sirk completests, this is one to steer clear of.

Small vinyard owner and draftee Tony Curtis elopes with Piper Laurie despite the objections of her mother, Spring Byington. Unfortunately he comes down with measles and they do not consummate the marriage. Then it's off to Korea; when he returns on a furlough, Miss Byington has moved fifteen relations into his house, and Miss Laurie has a job working for cement manufacturer Don Defore, who wants to put a railroad spur right through Curtis' house. Also, Miss Byington is scheming to break up the marriage so Miss Laurie can marry Defore.

It's another brittle comedy of the era, where little is funny -- although Defore gets a couple of good lines -- and the only sympathetic person is Lilian Bronson as Miss Piper's old-maid aunt. Even the usually delightful Miss Byington is rote here. I blame director Douglas Sirk, whose comedy chops were pretty feeble. This means that producer Ted Richmond must also be blamed, since who asked him to choose a director of stylish weepers to direct this?