I Was a Male War Bride ***** (1949, Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan) – Classic Movie Review 2343

Director Howard Hawks’s zany 1949 screwball comedy is delightfully hilarious, sharply written and incisively made, and a triumph for its star, Cary Grant. Always game for a laugh, he appeared in drag more time than anyone remember, but this must be his definitive cross-dressing performance. Here, he has the enormous benefit of being perfectly teamed with the graceful Ann Sheridan.

Set just after World War Two, its story finds French Army officer le capitaine Henri Rochard (Cary Grant) finding that marriage to American Women’s Army Corps lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan) gives rise to bizarre complications since no provisions are being made for war grooms.

When Rochard is assigned to work with Gates, they fall in love and marry, so Rochard tries to to go back to the United States with Gates and the other war brides. To get on the boat home with Gatesfrom occupied France to America, Rochard faces a mountain of paperwork, and the ultimate test of his manhood – dressing in drag pass as a war bride – in a hysterical confusion of gender-bending antics.

The ideally paired stars are at their peak, and Grant in Women’s Army Corps uniform and dead-hair wig sure is a sight for sore eyes. The hilarious screenplay by script-writers: Charles Lederer, Hagar Wilde and Leonard Spigelgass is exactly spot on target.. And Hawks’s direction is fast and furious but never frantic or fumbled. All of that adds up to one of Hawks’s most enjoyable, brilliant farces.

Also in the cast are Marion Marshall, Randy Stuart, William Neff, Kenneth Tobey, Russ Conway, Eugene Gericke, Ruben Wedorf and John Whitney.

Roles played by King Donovan, Charles B. Fitzsimons, Robert Stevenson and Otto Waldis were deleted from the film.

It was made in Heidelberg, Germany, Shepperton Studios, London, and Los Angeles at 20th Century Fox Studios. It is based on I Was an Alien Spouse of Female Military Personnel En route to the United States Under Public Law 271 of the Congress, a biography of Henri Rochard, a Belgian who married an American nurse.

Filming lasted more than eight months due to the illnesses of cast members. Sheridan contracted pleurisy that developed into pneumonia, suspending shooting for two weeks. Hawks broke out in unexplained hives throughout his body. Grant came down with hepatitis complicated by jaundice, and production was shut down for three months, until he recovered and regained 30 pounds. The delay in production pushed the budget over $2million but the film grossed over $4.5million.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2343

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