Wedding Present (1936)

When Charlie Mason is promoted from irresponsible reporter to hard-nosed city editor, it costs him his girlfriend, ace reporter Rusty Fleming. After he hears she's engaged to another, he quits and tries to win her back.

Director:

Richard Wallace

Writers:

Joseph Anthony (screenplay), Paul Gallico (based on the story by)

Stars:

Joan Bennett, Cary Grant, George Bancroft

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Joan Bennett	...	Monica 'Rusty' Fleming
Cary Grant	...	Charlie Mason
George Bancroft	...	Pete Stagg
Conrad Nagel	...	Roger Dodacker
Gene Lockhart	...	Archduke Gustav Ernest
William Demarest	...	'Smiles' Benson
Inez Courtney	...	Mary Lawson
Edward Brophy	...	Squinty
Purnell Pratt	...	Howard Van Dorn
Douglas Wood	...	Willett
George Meeker	...	Gordon Blaker
Damon Ford	...	Mike Haley
Lois Wilson	...	Laura Dodacker
Mary Forbes	...	Mrs. Dodacker
George Offerman Jr.	...	Sammy Smith

Storyline

Charlie Mason and Rusty Fleming are star reporters on a Chicago tabloid who are romantically involved as well. Although skilled in ferreting out great stories, they often behave in an unprofessional and immature manner. After their shenanigans cause their frustrated city editor to resign, the publisher promotes Charlie to the job, a decision based on the premise that only a slacker would be able crack down on other shirkers and underachievers. His pomposity soon alienates most of his co-workers and causes Rusty to move to New York. Charlie resigns and along with gangster friend Smiles Benson tries to win Rusty back before she marries a stuffy society author.

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Plot Keywords:

prank | female reporter | royalty | newspaper | funny gangster | 

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Taglines:

Miss Big Brown Eyes would rather race to a fire than trip to the altar and Cary is the lad who tuned the fire-gongs to the Wedding March.

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Genres:

Comedy | Romance

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

9 October 1936 (USA)

Also Known As:

Bonne blague

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

81 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

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Quotes

Marriage License Clerk: [Reviewing a marriage license] Do you solemly swear that the statements are?... Say! What's the matter with you? You've got the day of your birth down here August 4, 1934. That makes you two years old!
Charlie: That's right. Next year I'll be eligible for the Kentucky Derby... and if you were marrying a girl like mine, you'd feel that young yourself.

User Reviews

Stories, Sex, Writing, Image

One thing I absolutely love about films from the 30s is the now obsolete devices around which some films are centered. Locomotives and ships of course. They're a bit obvious. Then, they were symbols of technology and modernity. Technology as physical power — something in everyone's cinematic imagination then — now made quaint by microchips we cannot even see. And films are the worse for it.

Another device is the newsroom. We don't have these today in the same way. Reporters and cops don't mix it up as they used to. We don't actually "get the story," instead get some sort of manufactured fiction that glues facts together in appealing ways.

But 70 years ago there was a magical confluence of what it meant to make or discover stories, what it meant to "see," and what it meant to be an American. Mixed in there was this notion of an alert woman.

Its hard to impress on youngsters beyond a cartoonish awareness that women in society and film were extremely limited in options. Homemaker, secretary, teacher, nurse. Whore. If a woman was intelligent and witty and active, she was a reporter.

Seeing and discovering was sexy. Its lost today, that effect. This is post-code; "Picture Snatcher" is a better example where the sexiness is darned explicit.

Imagine a film that presents a woman far beyond your experience, what you know from real life. Imagine her witty and sexually available outside marriage, at least temporarily so. Smart, full of humor and ready to play severe and grand jokes. Its impossible to do today where Angelina can fight, Tilda can control and Julianne can affect.

But just imagine the cinematic power of a newsroom with such juice. The folding, of course with them writing stories and we seeing stories simultaneously. Our admiration of her just as Grant's and both of us conspiring in creating a spectacle around her.

(For those who haven't seen it the story is Cary and Joan are lovers — copulation is obvious — and both are star reporters. They decide NOT to marry as not to "ruin things." He advances to control the paper (the story) and she becomes engaged to a book writer. The books in question are vapid "self-help" books that lack the vim of "real" stories. Grant, drunk and with the help of a gangster pal, conspires to give her firetrucks, policecars, ambulances, even a hearse, all responding to the house where she will wed. That's the present: life.)

Oh how I wish we had such power to pull from in film today! Where's the sex in story, the newsroom of today?

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.