Taken for Granted

Wedding Present (1936) is what you might call a non-classic screwball comedy.

Cary Grant and Joan Bennett are a couple of rowdy newspaper reporters. They are going to get married, but Grant pulls a practical joke, and Bennett can see that they aren't ready for marriage. But they stay pals, breaking up a royal wedding, saving the life of a drowning gangster (William Demerest, with Ed Brophy as henchman) and high-jacking an airplane to hunt down a shipping disaster, all in one late night and early morning spree.

But when he is promoted to editor, and becomes the kind of ambitious slavedriver they had always warred against, she can't take it anymore. She goes to New York, stops taking his calls, and gets engaged to the usual pompous windbag. So Grant and gangster pal Demerest have to break up the wedding.

Unfortunately, the whole wedding subplot starts about 3/4 of the way through the movie. And it isn't a very good subplot - with a terrible ending. It really cements your sneaking suspicion that Grant's character (and maybe Bennett's) isn't a very nice person to know. The whole movie is kind of disjointed, especially after the big opening. It works pretty much only because of the charm of Grant, Joan Bennett and some of the character actors, like Demerest and Brophy.

Well, they can't all be His Girl Friday.