Dream Wife ** (1953, Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Walter Pidgeon, Betta St John) – Classic Movie Review 2,342

The 1953 MGM romantic comedy film Dream Wife is notable as the first of three movies that paired Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Grant plays a business tycoon whose gaze falls on the pretty Arabian princess Tarji (Betta St John). 

The 1953 MGM romantic comedy film Dream Wife is notable as the first of three movies that paired Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Co-writer/director Sidney Sheldon’s contrived and artificial comedy Dream Wife stars Grant as business tycoon Clemson Reade, whose gaze falls on the pert, pretty and pleasing Arabian princess Tarji (Betta St John). 

However, the marriage proposal that Clemson makes to Tarji isn’t exactly very diplomatic of him because he is already engaged to smart and capable professional working woman, US diplomat Priscilla ‘Effie’ Effington (Deborah Kerr). However, he apparently doesn’t really care because all he wants is a 1950s-style stay-at-home-body housewife.

Princess Tarji’s father is oil-rich king of Khan of Bukistan (Eduard Franz). The US State Department, worried about the oil situation and good political relations with Bukistan, assigns a diplomat to maintain protocol until the wedding of Clemson and Tarji – and that is Effie of course.

Based on a story by Alfred Lewis Levitt, this is a mediocre, erratic, and rather threadbare bedroom farce, with Sheldon fumbling both as director and chief screen-writer, along with Levitt and Herbert Baker.

Their screenplay is often weary, contrived and daft. But the movie would all have been much, much worse without the verve of the top-line cast of Grant, Kerr and Walter Pidgeon (as Walter McBride), all of whom effortlessly sparkle and show their class. The costume design by Herschel McCoy and Helen Rose received an Oscar nomination, so that is another touch of class. 

Dream Wife runs 100 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is produced by Dore Schary, is written by Herbert Baker, Alfred Lewis Levitt and Sidney Sheldon, is scored by Conrad Salinger, is shot by Milton R Krasner, and is designed by Daniel B Cathcart and Cedric Gibbons.

It was released on June 19, 1953.

A movie that paired Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr flopped! MGM recorded a loss of $456,000 on box office of $1,885,000 against a budget of $1,565,000. But Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr’s follow-up movies An Affair to Remember (1957) and The Grass Is Greener (1960) were very popular.

The cast are Cary Grant as Clemson Reade, Deborah Kerr as Effie, Walter Pidgeon as Walter McBride, Betta St John as Tarji, Eduard Franz as Khan of Bukistan, Les Tremayne as Ken Landwell, Donald Randolph as Ali, Bruce Bennett as Charlie Elkwood, Richard Anderson as Henry Malvine, Dan Tobin as Mr Brown, Movita as Rima, Gloria Holden as Mrs Jean Landwell, and Gordon Richards as Sir Cecil.

American actress, singer, and dancer Betta St John was born Betty Jean Striegler Betty Jean Striegler in Hawthorne, California, on 26 November 1929. Along with Shirley Temple, she was part of the Meglin Kiddies troupe of actors, singers and dancers. She debuted aged 10 in an uncredited part in Destry Rides Again (1939) and played an orphan in Jane Eyre (1943). Her first adult starring role was in Dream Wife. She appeared in The Robe, All the Brothers Were Valiant and The Student Prince.

Later, living in England, she appeared in starring roles in British films including High Tide at Noon, two Tarzan films, Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957) and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), and the horror films Corridors of Blood with Boris Karloff and Horror Hotel with Christopher Lee. She continued to act until her retirement in 1965.

Betta St John died at an assisted living facility in Brighton, England, on 23 June 2023, aged 93.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,342

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Betta St John (above left) with Deborah Kerr (right) in Dream Wife.