June Bride **** (1948, Bette Davis, Robert Montgomery, Fay Bainter, Tom Tully, Betty Lynn, Debbie Reynolds) – Classic Movie Review 5,735

Bette Davis tries a useful change of pace with the 1948 film June Bride, a cute romantic comedy about a woman’s magazine editor who gets her chauvinist old flame, reporter Robert Montgomery, to help her cover a typical American wedding in Indiana. The bickering ex-lovers Linda Gilman and Carey Jackson find their plans go slightly awry.

Bette has fun with her fairly witty banter lines, and spars well with the dryly amusing Montgomery, an under-rated, largely forgotten talent. ‘Even when I was making love to you, I felt you were wondering what time it was,’ Davis says.

[Spoiler alert] Initially Davis’s Linda gives Montgomery’s Carey a typically hard time, but then of course the bickering turns to renewed love.

Director Bretaigne Windust jollies things along nicely for a pacey, snappy film, partly making amends for directing one of the weakest films from Davis’s prime – Winter Meeting (1948).

Ranald MacDougall’s screenplay is based on Eileen Tighe and Graeme Lorimer’s play Feature for June.

June Bride also stars Fay Bainter, Tom Tully, Betty Lynn as ‘Boo’ Brinker, Mary Wickes, Jerome Cowan and Barbara Bates. It is Debbie Reynolds’s first film appearance, aged only 16, in an uncredited role as Boo’s girlfriend at the wedding.

Also in the cast are James Burke, Raymond Roe, Marjorie Bennett, Ray Montgomery, George O’Hanlon, Sandra Gould and Esther Howard.

Ted D McCord shoots this Warner Bros movie in black and white, Henry Blanke produces and David Buttolph scores, with sets by Anton Grot.

The film’s recurring theme tune is called The Love Nest and comes from the 1920 Broadway show Mary, but it was best known as the theme music of TV’s The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950).

Linda: ‘Oh, you’re incredible, perched on that pinnacle of masculine ego, peering down at poor defenceless females and pitying them because they don’t have beards.’

Carey: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, if you had a beard I wouldn’t look at you twice.’

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,735

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com