'Wedding Present' is a gift for Cary Grant fans

Wedding Present (1936)
Starring: Cary Grant, Joan Bennett, William Demarest, Edward Brophy, Gene Lockhart, Conrad Nagel, and Purnell Pratt
Director: Richard Wallace
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Charlie and Rusty (Grant and Bennett) are big-city journalists who are colleagues and lovers who spend as much time tracking down leads and working on stories as they do pulling pranks and staging elaborate practical jokes. When Charlie is promoted to editor, and he suddenly has to be serious about managing writers and assignments, his relationship with Rusty falls apart. It isn't until she's about to marry a stuffy author of self-help books (Nagel) that Charlie quits his new job, reverts to his previous self, and tries to win her back with the help of a notorious gangster (Demarest).

"Wedding Present" is a fast-moving, witty comedy. It's a little too fast-moving in some ways, as the first half of the film feels more like you're watching a series of loosely connected sketches rather than a movie. It put me in mind of some comedy television series, such as "Faulty Towers" or "'Allo, 'Allo" where most episodes unfolded with a series of almost free-standing sketches that were only united by a circumstance which framed them. 

As the film continues, the story begins to coalesce firmly around the rocky romance of Charlie and Rusty. At about the halfway-mark, the film ends up firmly in romantic comedy territory. It's almost like we're watching a sequel to the first half, as this part is comes complete with its own beginning, middle, and end. Some of the "skits" from the first half turn out to be crucial to the story here, but if we'd walked in late, we wouldn't have missed anything, because characters remind us of what went on and why they're doing what they're doing. 

This is not a great movie, but it's not a terrible one. Its odd structure is a bit distracting, but it's not a fatal flaw. In some ways, what I view as a flaw might make it more enjoyable for some viewers, especially those who are big Cary Grant fans.

"Wedding Present" is one of the first films where Grant was unquestionably the star. While Joan Bennett certainly holds an important role in the story, has lots of screen-time--most of it in scenes with Grant--it is Grant who carries the movie. His is the character the audience is primarily invested in, and the story that's ultimately told is that of Charlie's road to life-long happiness (if not maturity). It's also the film where, I feel, that he clearly has come into his own as a comedic screen actor. Thanks partially to the episodic nature of this film's first half, we get to see Grant perform in different comedic styles, playing off different actors and situations... and even being the straight man in a scene or two. 

Cary Grant is so much fun to watch in this film--especially in scenes shared with Joan Bennett (who gives as good as she gets, every single time) and William Demarest (who does a great job at walking the line between seeming funny and dangerous) that I almost gave it Seven Stars. The totality of the odd structure, though, made me decide to give it the highest possible Six Star rating. This is a highly entertaining, but flawed, film that contributes to making the "Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection" well worth the purchase price. (I've watched three of the five films in the set so far, and each was almost worth the price by itself.)

Oh--a fun way to watch this film is to consider it a prequel to "His Girl Friday". It's very easy to imagine the lead characters from this film being those portrayed by Grant and Rosalind Russell in that one. Maybe you should get both and have a double-feature watch party with friends!

'Big Brown Eyes' is worth looking into

Big Brown Eyes (1936)
Starring: Cary Grant, Joan Bennett, Walter Pidgeon, and Lloyd Nolan
Director: Raoul Walsh
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A police detective (Grant) and his manicurist girlfriend turned-firebrand-newspaper-reporter (Bennett) alternatively bicker and work together to catch a mysterious jewel thief and to find out who fired the shot that accidentially killed a baby in the park.

The script for "Big Brown Eyes" was based on two different short stories, and the stitches show, because there are a number of story elements that don't quite fit together. The most obvious being the clever and refined jewel thief who happens to also be the insurance investigator who is assigned to catch himself (Walter Pidgeon, who takes an excellent turn as the bad guy in this picture) working with a pair of dimwitted henchmen that he doesn't really need. However, the excellent performances given by each and every castmember more than make up for the shortcomings of the script.

From beginning to end, this is a fun movie. The irrational jealousy of Joan Bennett's character toward Cary Grant's when it's obvious he's meeting with a woman as part of his investigation is a little irritating, but, like the above mentioned glitch with the script, it's a flaw that can be forgiven because everything else about her performance and her character is so good. Grant, meanwhile, plays a character that is a little different from what we're used to seeing him as, but he does a flawless job. The two of them make a nice on-screen couple, which is another reason it's easy to forgive the foolish jealousy of Bennett's character.

A personal reason for why I enjoyed this film, which is totally divorced from anything that actually appears in in it, or was intended by the filmmakers, is that in my imagination, the story here serves as a nice "prequel" to the Torchy Blane series--with the characters here being younger, more impulsive versions of the couple featured in those movies.

"Big Brown Eyes" is one of the film included in the five-movie set Screen Legends Collection: Cary Grant. This may be one of the lesser known films that either Joan Bennett or Cary Grant made, but if you're a fan of either actor, it's worth seeking out... and it alone is almost worth the price of the Screen Legends Collection.

'Wings in the Dark' deserves to be spotlighted

Wings in the Dark (1935)
Starring: Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, Hobart Cavanaugh, Roscoe Kearns, and Dean Jagger
Director: James Flood
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Ken Gordon, a pilot and avionics innovator (Grant) is on the verge of perfecting improved autopilot and guidance systems that will allow pilots to fly and land planes in even the worst visibility conditions when he is blinded in an accident. Stunt pilot Sheila Mason (Loy) and Gordon's assistant and mechanic Mac (Cavanaugh) help him carry on his work, with Mason secretly providing the funding he needs and Mac facilitating the ruse. When the extremely proud Gordon realizes what they've been doing, will his anger kill both his long friendship with Mac, as well as the growing love he and Mason share?

"Wings in the Dark" is a fast-paced film that has a talented cast performing in a story that delivers a perfect mix of romance, humor, and suspense. While the subject matter lends itself to over to excessive sappiness and melodrama, this film mostly stays clear of those morasses, only briefly straying into the melodramatic... but with Myrna Loy doing the over-emoting, it's hard to dislike it.

Meanwhile, there's nothing to dislike about the on-screen pairing of Cary Grant and Loy. While the script sets up the eventual romance between the two characters, it's the onscreen charisma between the actors playing them that really sells it. Grant and Loy play so well off each other that it's it feels perfectly believable that they'd both, in turn, take extreme risks to save one another during the film's tense climax, because from very early in the film, they feel like the perfect couple.

"Wings in the Dark" was the first of three times Grant and Loy were paired on screen, and it is the least well known of them; Grant's star was still climbing and Loy was completing her transition from her vamp-ish roles to playing "the perfect wife". Both stars, however, give excellent performances, and they are buoyed by a fine supporting cast, with Hobart Cavanaugh (as Gordon's taciturn right-hand man), and Roscoe Kearns (as Mason's headline hungry agent and publicist) being particularly effective and fun in their parts. As for Kearn's character of Nick Williams, he is the source of most of the bad things that happen to the main characters, directly and indirectly, but he is played with such charm that you'll think as warmly of him as you do of all the other characters in the film as it unfolds. All-in-all, this is a film that deserves more attention that it's gotten over the years.

"Wings in the Dark" is one of five, relatively obscure films from early in Cary Grant career included in the Screen Legends Collection: Cary Grant. It's the first one of them that I've watched, and if the others in the set are even half as good, it was a bargain.