John & Mary & Fred & Lilly

Patricia Neal was TCM's Star of the Month in January, and one of her movies that I hadn't mentioned here before is her movie debut, John Loves Mary. So I recorded it to do a review on it here.

Neal plays Mary McKinley, daughter of US Senator James McKinley (Edward Arnold) and living with the whole family in an apartment hotel. John Lawrence (Ronald Reagan) is a US Army soldier who has just been demobilized from World II and is returning home from Europe. Mary knows he's returning home today, and is anxiously waiting because she's expecting they'll get married. John would be perfectly willing to get married, and frankly it would make sense if they waited long enough to organize a wedding suitable for a Senator's daughter, which would take several weeks. But Mary wants to get a marriage license now, wait the requisite three days, and then get a civil ceremony, because she's already waited long enough for John what with him serving overseas for the past few years.

John, it turns out, has other reasons for wanting to wait. While in Europe, he was shot and saved by his army buddy Fred Taylor (Jack Carson). Fred having done a big favor for John, John wants to return that favor, and found a way to do so. While the two were in England waiting to be shipped over to France, Fred fell in love with music hall singer Lilly (Virginia Field). They lost contact when the music hall was bombed in a raid and Fred, believing Lilly had died, returned to America some time before John. But John was able to find Lilly, and since she loved Fred as much as he loved her, John would like to help Lilly and Fred get together again.

There are a few catches, however. The first is that getting Lilly into America isn't going to be easy, since transatlantic travel at that time was more expensive and Lilly doesn't have a work visa. John did figure out one way to get Lilly here, though. He could marry Lilly which would allow her to come over as his wife! Then they'd go off to Reno for six weeks at which they could get a quickie divorce and Lilly would be free to marry Fred. This would explain why John wants to wait before getting married to Mary -- in fact, he can't marry her right now, at least not legally. And one can understand, I suppose, why John wouldn't want to tell Mary this.

Ah, but I said at the start of the paragraph that there were multiple catches. The other one is that when Fred couldn't find Lilly and she was presumed dead, John told him no to be stuck in the past and move forward in life. Fred moved forward by returning to America and... getting married. Some time ago, too, as his wife is now nine months pregnant (the wife is never seen, but this is obviously Fred's child; no shenanigans going on with that part of the story). So Fred can't marry Lilly.

And Lilly is on a boat a few days behind John, so she's about to show up right in the middle of this big mess that John has made for himself trying to make everybody else's lives happy. How is John going to get himself out of this.

John Loves Mary was based on a Broadway play, and you can see both where it had its origins on the stage as well as why some people would really like this one. The cast is good and mostly well suited to comedy. However, I found myself quite put off by the film, for a reason that I've discussed in relation to several movies I've reviewed over the years. John Loves Mary is one of those films in the genre that I'd call the "comedy of lies", where a character starts off with a little white lie that might even be well-intentioned, but has to build lie upon lie on top of it to keep out of bigger trouble. I understand that transatlantic communication was much more expensive in those days, but I can't help but wonder whether John would have been better served sending a telegram to Fred and/or Mary when he found Lilly. As it is, John's lying and Fred's helping him are more grating to me than funny.

But since this is a genre I'm not fond of, it's also the sort of movie that is really something the rest of you should watch and judge for yourself. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection.