Tonight's Movie: June Bride (1948)
The Brinker family of Indiana is chosen by Home Life magazine for an early version of EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER in 1948's JUNE BRIDE. Bette Davis, as Home Life's editor, and Robert Montgomery, playing Home Life's writer -- and Davis's former love -- descend on the Brinker home with their staff. As the home is remodeled for a wedding photo shoot featuring the Brinkers' daughter, romantic complications abound.Montgomery's mugging comedy style is occasionally over the top, but balances well with Bette Davis being, well, Bette Davis. The movie costars Fay Bainter and Mary Wickes as Davis's loyal employees, while Betty Lynn and Barbara Bates play the Brinker daughters. Trivia buffs may recall that Bainter won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress playing opposite Davis in JEZEBEL a decade earlier.
Trivia fans may also enjoy the first scene in the movie, in which Robert Montgomery -- the real-life father of BEWITCHED star Elizabeth Montgomery -- meets up with Sandra Gould, who years later memorably appeared on BEWITCHED as snoopy neighbor Gladys Kravitz.
Debbie Reynolds is credited with her screen debut, in a bit part as one of the bride's friends at the wedding finale, but I didn't recognize her in the brief seconds the girls were on the screen.
I found this movie quite entertaining, with a snappy script that included some good bits of dialogue. The movie was filmed in black and white and runs 96 minutes. It was directed by Bretaigne Windust, who otherwise had a short, fairly unremarkable career.
JUNE BRIDE is available on video. It's also part of the Turner Classic Movies library. (June 2015 Update: JUNE BRIDE is now available on DVD from the Warner Archive. My July 2015 review of the DVD is here.)
You can watch the trailer here.
posted by Laura @ 8:45 PM
4 Comments:
Yes! Something that is available on VHS. Time to start hitting the library search engines :)
I always liked Mary Wickes and that piece of trivia was interesting about the Bewitched neighbor.
Hope you can track this down! Enjoy!
Laura :)
Both the County library and Long Beach city library have copies of this on video. I have requested it to be sent to my local library. I do have a concern though. The last tape I watched from the library (the one with Ginger Rogers and the baby) was apparently dirty. It played just fine and looked good. But afterwards when I put in my regular tape of a recorded TV show it played all scambled. Ended up putting a head cleaner in and then it was fine. That is a problem with loaner tapes from the library. I much prefer DVD's.
That's very interesting about the effects of rental & library tapes being problematic.
We've found rental DVDs can be a problem, too -- not because of the impact on the DVD player, but sometimes, I imagine because of the heavy usage, the discs don't always play well; sometimes they work OK if we clean them but a couple other times we've had to trade them in for a better copy.
Hope you find this one is fun too. It's one of those movies that isn't a classic, but is a fun hour and a half with a lot of fun actors -- I got to wondering how many more movies are "out there" still ahead of me to enjoy for the first time. :)
Best wishes, Laura
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