January 7, 2015, 1:30 p.m. — Wedding Present (1936)
Wedding Present
1936. USA. Directed by Richard Wallace. Screenplay by Joseph Anthony, from a story by Paul Gallico. With Joan Bennett, Cary Grant, Conrad Nagel, George Bancroft. Bennett’s slow-motion transition from feckless blonde to sardonic brunette was accelerated by the two screwball comedies she made with Cary Grant (himself a personality just coming into focus) in the mid-1930s. This is the second, a strenuous romp about a pair of Chicago newspaper reporters and their on-again, off-again romance. The blend of Front Page shenanigans and the sexual tensions of romantic comedy strongly suggests Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday, and very well may have had an influence on it. (The link seems unmistakable when Conrad Nagel turns up as a prototype Ralph Bellamy, a square who offers Bennett all the dull security Grant’s character can’t.) Director Richard Wallace, however, is no Hawks. 35mm. 81 min.
