Cupido Faz das Suas

John Loves Mary was a popular post World War II Broadway hit that ran for 423 performances written by Norman Krasna. Movies and plays about returning servicemen from World War II were glutting the market at this time. Everything from The Best Years Of Our Lives to Buck Privates Come Home to run the gamut from the serious to the funny.

On Broadway the cast included William Prince, Nina Foch, Tom Ewell, and Lyle Bettger in the roles that Ronald Reagan, Patricia Neal, Jack Carson, and Wayne Morris repeated on screen. The one that really doesn't compute is Lyle Bettger who played such a lovely variety of psychos on the screen. I just can't see him doing comedy or it must have been quite different his interpretation of the blowhard ex-officer that Wayne Morris was. Actually all the stage cast members did have some substantial screen careers.

Reagan is the John in the film who is coming home to his fiancé Mary played by Patricia Neal in her screen debut. He did real well for himself she being the daughter of US Senator Edward Arnold and Katharine Alexander with a lovely Park Avenue apartment. But it turns out that there's a slight hitch in the wedding plans.

What a guy won't do for a friend, especially one who saved his life during the war. Jack Carson who got his discharge earlier from Uncle Sam is pining over the British girl he left behind. Well Reagan knowing the problem that folks were having coming to America with immigration hurdles, marries Virginia Field and gets over as the bride of a GI. The idea being that they'd take a quick trip to Reno and then Jack Carson can marry her.

All that's needed is a ruse to get Reagan out to Nevada without Neal. And that's what the rest of John Loves Mary is about. It all resolves itself in an interesting way showing none of these people taking those sacred vows of marriage all that seriously.

John Loves Mary is a pleasant if dated comedy. But it's ironic as all heck that with people having real immigration problems and looking to the USA as a beacon of freedom, I think the joke would fall flat with them. Ditto with gay people who are now trying to get the right to marry seeing these people shifting partners like shooters switching off dice in a crap game.

Anyway I'm sure Norman Krasna who wrote this and Warner Brothers who brought it to the screen weren't thinking that deeply here.