Janie Gets Married

Joan Leslie is appealing as the tile character. Robert Hutton is likable is her fiancé and then husband. Complications develop when a buddy from the service turns up. The buddy happens to have been a WAAC. She is played by that beautiful, wily second-level star Dorothy Malone.

Janie's parents are the always appealing Edward Arnold and Ann Harding. I am no fan of Harding in her peak days: She was a pale, hand-wring women's-picture heroine in the 1930s. Her return in the forties was most auspicious. She and Arnold worked together in one of his excellent movies about the guide dog-using blind detective.

I'm not familiar with the actress who plays Hutton's mother, but she is good. No less than the great Robert Benchley plays his father.

Margaret Hamilton is also very funny as an inept yet dictatorial cleaning woman. And the versatile Donald Meek puts in an appearance as an out-of-towner who's interested in buying Janie's father's newspaper.

The plot veers toward silliness, with such grave issues as whose parents' draperies to hang in the couple's new apartment. But it's a nice study of young married life and a better cast could scarcely have been found.

First things first, "Janie Gets Married" is something of a madcap comedy, but it has a important point. Janie Conway's (Joan Hutton) parents prepare their daughter to marry returning WW II soldier, Dick Lawrence (Robert Hutton). Janie's old boyfriend, a vacationing soldier called "Scooper" (Dick Erdman), comes back and threatens to complicate things. Janie sets up her marriage so that at the end of each month, the couple can elect to take up the option to stay married or to dissolve the thing. It's playful.

Dick is given a job at Janie's father's newspaper despite his having no journalistic training or experience. His old army girlfriend, Sgt. Spud Lee (Dorothy Malone) arrives and she and Dick being working on a project. Janie becomes suspicious. Her parents and his parents each want to run their lives in their own way, and the pressure builds.

It finally explodes when Janie is throwing a dinner party for the man who wants to purchase her father's newspaper. Dick is drinking with his old army buddies in the house, as well, and there is the future husband of one of Janie's friends sleeping in another bedroom, and… the scene is wild for a few minutes.

I'm not going to give any spoilers. Robert Benchley is great as John Van Brunt, kind of the father figure to Dick, who seems to be the only person in this movie who understands everything, albeit in his laid-back way.

The important point, the underlying theme, was that the veterans returning from World War II might have been young and inexperienced in day-to-day Stateside commerce, but they were grown men who had to do things which required an adult mind and heart. Coddling them was foolish and unnecessary.

Throughout this movie, young Dick Lawrence, Jane's husband, seemed the naïve, young putz. When all is said and done, we understand what he really is.

Poster Mkilmer gets it.

This movie by the way underrated Vincent Sherman is a sequel to the 1944 Michael Curtiz picture, Janie, which was about a high-spirited bobby-soxer and the havoc she inadvertently causes for her family and her town. I thought the Curtiz was at best fitfully amusing but contrived, sit-comy and slight. The Sherman is something else entirely. As the title indicates, the eponymous character is now wed (to a returning G.I. she fell for in the first film) It's rather grim for a comedy, and much of the thrust of the film is a portrayal of marriage as a stultifying and unrewarding condition, hardly what one would expect in a 1940s comedy about newlyweds. There are intimations of adultery, and Janie and her husband even have a contract, which is to be renewable each month at each spouse's option if he and she want to remain married. One can certainly see the pair 20 years down the line having become the couple in Sherman's 1947 masterpiece, Nora Prentiss.

Despite the dark undertones, the film is also quite funny. And as a story of G.I.s returning from World War 2, it's more effective and empathetic than Wyler's pompous The Best Years Of Our Lives, and spares us the self-seriousness (it also has the same deep focus cinematography that was celebrated in the Wyler film).

American soldier Dick Lawrence (Robert Hutton) returns home to his small town and marries sweetheart Janie Conway (Joan Leslie). He starts working at his father-in-law's newspaper and she's struggling behind the scene. His war buddy makes a surprise visit. Only, his war buddy turns out to be gal pal Sgt. Spud Lee (Dorothy Malone).

It's an old fashion comedy with all the old fashion family values and dynamics. It's fun. It is all about the chaos rolling around Janie. I wish that Dick isn't as clueless and more considerate to Janie. It wouldn't be as funny or old fashion as it is. Apparently, this is a sequel to Janie (1944) although I haven't seen that. This is similar to a TV sitcom in modern terms.

This is a sweet, fun movie with some depth added to place above the many other films in the genre. I don't know why we have a different actress playing Janie but Joan Leslie is a pleasure to watch. The movie does an excellent job of showing the overwhelming challenge of veterans returning only to be faced with the challenge of fitting in with the very families, friends, and communities they fought to protect. Many found it nearly impossible to put their experiences behind them and be the same boys they were when they went away. In response to the review by Poster MKilmer, to compare it to William Wyler's Best Years of Our Lives is akin to comparing Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Ben Hur! Enjoy all three of the movies. Each has entertainment value and redeeming messages. If you want to understand what returning GIs faced at the end of WWII, Wyler's film is the quintessential movie.