Watch The Well Groomed Bride For Free

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It was champagne that brought them together, and I'm wondering how much of the bubbly the screenwriter had when they wrote this, and how much champagne that Olivia deHavilland and ray Milland drank when they signed to make this. Milland, fresh from hiding booze in chandeliers in "The Lost Weekend" was celebrating his Oscar victory perhaps, but deHavilland's first Oscar was a year away. It wasn't for this, one of the more embarrassing examples of screwball comedy and long made after the height of that sophisticated genre.After searching San Francisco for much of the first half for the largest bottle of champagne, rivals Milland and deHavilland end up on his navy ship, arguing with captain James Gleason over why the navy should have the bottle to christen a ship over deHavilland who wants it for her wedding to another Navy lieutenant, that great screen actor of such raw emotional power, Sonny Tufts. It doesn't take Milland and deHavilland long to discover their feelings for each other, leading to more ridiculous complications that bring the film down even more.If the thought of Percy Kilbride and Marjorie Main is a bizarre combination, try Kilbride playing deHavilland's father. Slinky Constance Dowling adds sultry seduction as the woman who initiates a split between deHavilland and Tuft. Her hairstyle here is reminiscent to Lauren Bacall's, already copied by Lizabeth Scott and K.T. Stevens. This seems to be the type of script put together through shuffled word cards, formulating a plot that reeks of desperation for all involved.

Both Ray Milland and Olivia DeHavilland had to be asking how did they get into this rather slight comedy. The Well Groomed Bride is funny enough, but considering the history of these two stars they both should have figured for something better.In the case of Milland he had just come off his Oscar winning picture The Lost Weekend proving to Paramount he could handle heavy dramatics. This film is a return to what he'd been doing for a decade at Paramount.As for Olivia she had just gotten from Warner Brothers after a lengthy and historic battle to break her contact there. Jack Warner for the most part had cast her in these light comedies or has the heroine waiting for her man who was for the most part Errol Flynn. She had done Hold Back The Dawn with Paramount and gotten an Oscar nomination back in 1941. Maybe she figured she'd get good parts at that studio and instead was doing the same stuff she did with the Brothers Warner.Lt. Commander Milland is on a mission to obtain a magnum of champagne so a ship could be launched. But Olivia beats him to the last bottle of the bubbly that can be found in San Francisco and she wants to launch her marriage to former football hero Sonny Tufts with it. That starts a whole lot of maneuvering and of course ends the romance with Olivia and Tufts.Sonny Tufts was playing the part usually given Jack Carson over at Warner Brothers, the amiable blowhard. No wonder Olivia must have thought she never left.The Well Groomed Bride has its amusing moments, but it's chiffon light fare. Milland would continue to get light comic parts with a few dramatic ones to show his versatility. But Olivia's next few roles would earn her three Oscar nominations in a row and two Oscars with To Each His Own, The Snake Pit, and The Heiress.Turns out she made the right career move.

As a long-time deHavilland fan, I've been looking for this film for years. It's never been on VHS or AMC/TCM. Anyone know why it's MIA? Surely it's not her best or among the greatest by far, but it seems strange it's never turned up somewhere!

Before Olivia de Havilland made her remarkable comeback in 1946's To Each His Own, she stepped in as a last minute replacement for Paulette Goddard in 'The Well Groomed Bride', her first film after her two year legal battle with Warner Bros. Unfortunately, the script is so slight (about de Havilland and Milland fighting over rights to the last champagne bottle in San Francisco--she wants it for her wedding, he wants it to christen a ship). The laughs are scant although Olivia, Ray Milland and Sonny Tufts try hard to keep things bubbling. De Havilland manages to be pert and pretty as the heroine, Milland is his usual adept self at comedy and even Sonny Tufts manages to make his big "conceited muscle" role likeable at times--but the whole thing fails to get off the ground. The weak script defeats everyone, including Percy Kilbride as de Havilland's dad. Only avid fans of Ray Milland or de Havilland should watch this one--which does not turn up on TV these days--Paramount obviously deciding it wasn't worth saving.