We're Not Married! (1952)

A sparkling all-star cast and a clever cinematic concept are the primary selling points of a surprisingly fun 1952 comedy called We're Not Married.Nunnally Johnson, who wrote the screenplay for How To Marry the Millionaire, also penned this story of a dotty old justice of the peace (Victor Moore) who receives his appointment papers before they actually go into effect and marries five different couples without realizing that he wasn't an actual justice yet. Two years later, the snafu comes to light and the five couples are all sent a letter informing them they are not legally married. What is so fun about this movie is that the news that they're not legally married anymore brings unexpected reactions from the various couples and the lives they have built together in two years.Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen play a couple who have a radio show together but they hate each other; however, their continued employment makes being married a contractual obligation; Marilyn Monroe plays a housewife and mother who is the breadwinner in her household by entering beauty contests for married women; Louis Calhern plays a wealthy businessman about to be taken to the cleaners by his hedonistic wife (Zsa Zsa Gabor); Paul Douglas and Eve Arden play a couple who are just in a rut and Eddie Bracken plays a soldier who learns his bride (Mitzi Gaynor) is pregnant and goes to extreme measure to make sure his child will be born legitimately.Despite the multiple story lines, this movie is surprisingly economic and moves along at a very nice pace, making each story just long enough to make the audience care but not become bored with them either. The performances are terrific with standout work from Rogers, Allen, David Wayne as Monroe's husband, and especially Calhern, who is absolutely brilliant in his vignette with Gabor. The film doesn't provide a lot in terms of production values, but what it does is provide solid entertainment that is still watchable some 60 years later

In 1952 the compendium film that dated back to at least 1932s Rome Express still had a little steam in it and We're Not Married was Fox's second entry in the genre following O'Henry's Full House. The premise is that old chestnut in which several disparate couples learn that their marriage is invalid. In chronological order the couples are Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers and once you get past the still-attractive Rogers settling for Fred Allen it's not a bad start. Allen, who of course made his name on radio and seldom ventured before the camera, very possibly had a hand in the script which is essentially a diatribe against sponsor-heavy radio shows. He and Rogers are the only couple actually seen getting wed (by Victor Moore with wife Jane Darwell as witness) and only do so in order to get their own Mr and Mrs radio show, an obvious take-off of Dorothy Kilgallan and Dick Kalmar. Next is the shortest sequence which is ironic as it is the one featuring Marilyn Monroe, then just coming up but today 'selling' the DVD. She plays a Beauty Quenn 'Mrs. Mississippi' and hubby David Wayne is not a happy bunny because manager James Gleason is constantly whisking her away on PR trips. This sequence typifies the sloppiness of the film as a whole; the letter informing Monroe and Wayne of their illegal marriage is clearly shown addressed to their home in Mississippi yet NO ONE in the entire sequence has a southern accent. The third segment involves two fine players in Eve Arden and Paul Douglas and both are totally wasted. Then comes Louis Calhern married to gold-digger Zsa Zsa Gabor, the good thing about this one is that Paul Stewart is also on hand as Gabors lawyer. Finally we get Mitzi Gaynor married to Eddie Bracken and pregnant. Bracken, a soldier, is literally shipping out overseas and is forced to go AWOL in order to re-marry Gaynor and ensure his offspring's legitimacy (this was 1952, remember). One of the best things about this is the casting, not only the featured players but also the uncredited players, Lee Marvin (with enough lines to justify a credit surely), Byron Foulgar, Tom Powers, Dabs Greer and Emile Meyer. Far from great but equally far from chopped liver.

WE'RE NOT MARRIED was a terrific film--highly enjoyable and in a format very reminiscent of a great old film, IF I HAD A MILLION (1932). Both stories have many small stories that are all connected by a common theme. In MILLION, a variety of strangers are given a million dollars and the impact of this on their lives is explored. Here in WE'RE NOT MARRIED, the theme is that six marriages turn out NOT to be legal! It seems that the justice of the peace jumped the gun and married these couples just before his license took effect! You hear about the first case they discovered and then the rest of the film follows the remaining five couples. Most of the stories are comical and even the more serious ones still have a funny twist.Each story is excellent, though probably the weakest of these is the one, unfortunately, that gets the most attention when you look up the title on IMDb. This is because it happens to co-star Marilyn Monroe. While she is just fine in the film, she really has little to do other than to look pretty and her role is one of the smaller ones in the film--so naturally publicity department guys plastered her all over posters and video cases!! In fact, no one star dominated in the film--it was truly a group effort. And, fortunately, none of the stories were poor and a few were simply terrific (especially the Louis Calhern/Zsa Zsa Gabor one as well as the Eddie Bracken/Mitzi Gaynor ones).By the way, one of the other better skits has an interesting story. The Fred Allen/Ginger Rogers story is quite good, but Fred ALSO used this bit on the radio and made it a good bit funnier. Along with Tallulah Bankhead, Fred did the same sappy and commercial ridden bit on the radio. Then, he did the same bit again with Tallulah assuming the couple were having a really, really bad day. They slap the kid and call her names, they shoot the canary and have a thoroughly miserable morning. Having this story end this way in the film would have been great, but instead a more conventional ending was used. And by the way, I am NOT old enough to remember this radio bit--but I heard it on a record album a while back featuring great radio bits.

In the early 1950s there were several episodic movies that came out of 20th Century Fox, two of which had early performances of Marilyn Monroe. The two were O'HENRY'S FULL HOUSE and this film, WE'RE NOT MARRIED! The O'Henry anthology had stories that were funny ("The Ransom of Red Chief") and stories that were moving ("The Gift of the Magi"), and stories that were tragic ("The Last Leaf"). But WE'RE NOT MARRIED! was pure comedy, and as such worked quite well.It is based on an old plot ploy that turns up in other films, like Hitchcock's MR. AND MRS. SMITH. What happens to a married couple, after a couple of years of marriage, when they discover that there is a flaw in their marriage that invalidates it? Like MR. AND MRS. SMITH, the flaw here is the legality of the license...of the justice of the peace. And in WE'RE NOT MARRIED, the nice but bumbling justice of the peace is Victor Moore. Moore had gotten word that he was appointed to the job, and began marrying as soon as he got the letter. He did not notice that he was not to marry anyone until a particular date. As a result there are at least six couples that he married who are technically living in sin.How do they handle the problem? In MR. AND MRS. SMITH, Robert Montgomery's attempt to dismiss it as a minor problem almost destroyed his marriage (as Carole Lombard wonders what kind of man he really is). Here the stories are able to look at the situation carefully. The results are far more cynical in three cases.Louis Calhern, a millionaire, marries Zsa Zsa Gabor (a gold digger) who arranges to frame him so she can divorce him and get a bundle. Calhern, confused and not knowing what to do, gets the letter from Moore and suddenly realizes Gabor has no legal standing to do anything (this was long before the concept of "palimony"). Suddenly, to the consternation of her attorney (Paul Stewart) and Gabor, not only is Calhern cooperative, but he's positively full of information about hidden assets. At the very conclusion he drops the shoe on Zsa Zsa by giving her the letter as a personal message of a deep feeling for her. As he leaves the room we hear her faint.Walter Brennan (in a section of the film that was cut originally but has been restored) is a backwoods Lothario who loves to charm Hope Emerson. Emerson is married with several kids (which Brennan knows about) but he keeps saying how he'd love to marry her if only she were free (Brennan does this because he really loves Emerson's cooking - charmed by him she is feeding his lying face). Then she gets the letter from Moore, and asks Brennan to read it (Hope can't read). Brennan realizes what it's about, and hastily lies about the contents, and says it is junk mail. Then he destroys it. Little does he realize, after that sequence ends, that Moore and his wife (Jane Darwell) are discussing the rural address and problems of delivery there, and decide to send a second copy just to be certain.Paul Douglas is married to Eve Arden, but their marriage is in one of those rut periods. When he gets the letter, he starts imagining his new freedom, dating another good looking woman each night. Only at the end of this dream does he suddenly envision the cost of such a lifestyle (an expensive cost for 1952). At the end he decides to forget about the gorgeous women and look at how nice, peaceful, and stable that rut he's in really is.There are also stories involving Mitzi Gaynor and Eddie Bracken, Marilyn Monroe and David Wayne, and (possibly best) Fred Allan and Ginger Rogers as a bickering couple who are like Dorothy Kilgallen and her husband Dick Kalmar on radio's "Breakfast With Dorothy and Dick". While not the greatest of film comedies, it's pretty consistently amusing in getting as much mileage out of the central plot ploy. Certainly worth watching and enjoying when it turns up on television.