Two Bouquets, Two Husbands , Only One Bride (1965)

D. Donald Howard
Colour


I got married yesterday!


There’s a fairly loud statement with which to begin a blog-post, but it’s true. I am now a married man.


The thing is though, that I’m writing this piece far in advance as I need a buffer to keep this blog chugging merrily along while I head off on honeymoon, so as I type this I’m not actually married at all. I’m writing in the past tense about things which haven’t actually happened yet. But all will be fine and by the time you read this I will be married and nursing my post-bash hangover with my gorgeous, young bride.


Anyway, this seems a perfect opportunity to look at some of the interesting wedding movies out there.


Why don’t we try this one on for size?


Kenneth Williams and Sid James both finding themselves married to Jayne Mansfield?


A preposterous idea, you say?


It happened on the big screen, my friend.


Kenneth Williams and Sid James were never a comedy double act, in fact they didn’t even really like each other that much (although that actually makes them sound a lot like most comedy double acts). But I can see how the American producers of this British production may have got the impression that they were a comedy double act. They offer a nice line in contrasts: James wiry, tough and wrinkled, against Williams’ smooth, slight figure; James’ crudeness against Williams’ fastidious prissiness; James’ dirty, salt of the earth cackle, against Williams head thrown back, nostrils flared, superior howl of laughter. This movie was an attempt to throw a budget behind them and make them a proper double act, and to really give it zing, faded glamour-puss Jayne Mansfield – the woman who practically coined the word ‘pneumatic’*  – was flown over from The States. Her name is obviously the big drawer on the poster, but it truly wasn’t really that big a deal, by this point she was well into the ‘will do anything for money’ phase of her career.


Mansfield is an American gold-digger who simultaneously marries Williams’ spoilt and effete aristocrat, and James’ scrap metal dealer made good. It’s then high farce of the doors slamming, compromising situations, rushed excuses and arms well and truly flailing kind, as she tries to keep them from finding out about each other. When they get suspicious that she’s just in this for their money, all it takes is the innocent wide eyes to Williams, and a sultry pose to James and they’re wrapped back around her little finger again. (I’m sure you can picture it: Williams gurning with excitement and amazement at his bride; James giving his biggest lascivious grin). The real problems come though when she realises she’s fallen in love with both of them.


This could have been a great bawdy 60s farce, but really it’s just not that funny. It relies on the chemistry of the leads to paper over the fact that there aren’t that many good lines, and then doesn’t put the leads together often enough to make it work. Anyone who has seen a later Carry On film will know how good James and Williams are at scraping thin samples of life off even the most stale and putrid material, so it’s galling that most of what we would loosely describe at the best lines go to Mansfield. Really, you don’t want Jayne Mansfield to be your main comic force, her talents rise and fall much more in decoration.


Maybe Williams/James could have become international stars in the Martin/Lewis mould, but it seems odd to think of them in Bel-Air, sipping cocktails and winning honorary Oscars. Theirs is a lot more pleasant, down at heal glamour. This film went nowhere (earning less and being substantially poorer in quality than the same year’s ‘Carry on Cowboy’). They may have been disappointed, but I’m glad things went this way, as they were always a better fit for a nice pair of slippers and a pint of stout at the BBC and Thames TV.



* It was either her or Aldous Huxley, I always get those two mixed up.

The Man from Over the Pond (1958)

D, Charles Crichton
Colour

Let’s be honest, there are a lot of John Wayne films. Flicking around the TV over the last bank holiday weekend, I glimpsed him constructing a bridge, running a circus and indulging in a saloon fight alongside Stewart Granger. (Saloon fights, much like death on Ingmar Bergman films, are thematically important in John Wayne’s oeuvre). All those films I skipped past, but if ‘The Man from Over the Pond’ shows up on BBC2 on a wet Sunday afternoon, please do give it the time of day.

 

John Wayne plays a former conman trying to make a new start for himself in Victorian England. Without a doubt it’s lack of reputation has to do with its similarity to the much better ‘The Quiet Man’ (and possibly because the other John Wayne in England film people recall is the substantially more violent ‘Brannigan’), but for anyone British – or who has immersed themselves in British culture – then this is a giddily surreal film. A sweet and charming English comedy with a honking great American star in the middle

 

There’s John Wayne bickering friendly with his landlady, Thora Hird; there’s him being stood a drink in the pub by Peter Sellers, before stopping to chat with a tiny Arthur Askey; here he’s playing poker with Sid James, Kenneth Connor and (briefly) Bernard Bresslaw; before romancing singer with a bad reputation, Diana Dors, who’s best friend is Joan Sims; he enjoys a  running joke with exasperated tobacconist Tony Hancock; is measured for a suit by the over the top camp pairing of Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtry; and  – in perhaps one of the most remarkable images ever committed to celluloid – he is dragged onto stage to sing and dance next to a ukulele playing George Formby.

 

It’s like a whistle-stop tour of 1950’s light entertainment, with John Wayne as your guide.

 

And that’s what I truly love about this film, all these people are not altering their act to fit into a John Wayne movie, they are doing what they do and John Wayne seems to be having a ball watching them do it. Indeed there’s a grin on his face (a slightly befuddled one, but a definite beam) when he finds himself with the over the top, swishingly unabashed, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtry. A scene which may hold the record for the most single, double and triple entendres ever crammed into four minutes. While elsewhere there’s a real chemistry between him and Thora Hird, a warmth and bright eyed affection which maybe suggests they played together as children or flirted as teens. I’m not joking, the sparks almost seems sexual at points and one can’t help thinking that if Thora had been just that little bit better looking they could have made one of those great, sizzling on-screen partnerships. She could have replaced Janet Leigh as the love interest in ‘Jet Pilot’, or Sophia Loren in ‘Legend of the Lost’; alternatively Wayne could have wound down his career playing Wesley in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.

What’s truly remarkable about ‘The Man From Over the Pond is that it’s taken me six paragraphs to mention that Alec Guinness is in it, playing the mark who Wayne eventually forms a friendship with. But then compared to everything else, the pairing of Alec Guinness and John Wayne is made to feel a bit run of the mill. The rest of the film is so colourful and incongruous, a bizarrely and magnificently enjoyable romp – especially in the scene where George Formby forces Wayne to speak “like a cockney does”. A watching Dick Van Dyke would have scoffed that if the chance ever arrived, he’d do a far better job.