The Bride Wore Red **** (1937, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Robert Young) – Classic Movie Review 6,768

MGM’s 1937 vehicle for Joan Crawford, The Bride Wore Red, is a well-crafted, very jolly escapist romantic comedy film, made by Hollywood’s one-time only woman director, Dorothy Arzner.

Based on the Ferenc Molnar play The Girl from Trieste, MGM’s 1937 vehicle for Joan Crawford, The Bride Wore Red, is a well-crafted escapist romantic comedy film, made by Hollywood’s one-time only woman director, Dorothy Arzner.

Crawford played a series of roles where she was a low-class dame posing as a socialite, but this may be the best. Looking like Madonna, she gives an exuberant performance as Anni Pavlovitch, a low-level waterfront café singer pretending to be a mysterious classy society dame on a posh two-week holiday in the Tyrol.

She is persuaded by aristocrat Count Armalia (George Zucco) into this masquerade to fool his high-class friends and prove that luck of birth is all that separates the rich from the poor. Then dashing Giulio (Franchot Tone, Crawford’s real-life husband) and Rudi Pal (Robert Young) arrive on the scene as the postman and playboy she has to choose between, and it comes down to a choice between love or money.

Alas, although The Bride Wore Red was one of the peaks of Crawford’s career, Tess Slesinger and Bradbury Foote’s adaptation of the Ferenc Molnar play The Girl from Trieste did not click strongly with the public. It may be daft but it is very jolly indeed.

Also in the cast are Billie Burke, Reginald Owen, Lynn Carver, Mary Phillips, Paul Porcasi, Dickie Moore, Frank Puglia, Anna Demetrio, Charles Judels and Ann Rutherford.

The Bride Wore Red is directed by Dorothy Arzner, runs 103 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Tess Slesinger and Bradbury Foote, is shot in black and white by George J Folsey, is produced by Joseph L Mankiewicz, and is scored by Franz Waxman.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,768

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