Kiss The Bride Goodbye

BFI Most Wanted: the hunt for Britain's missing films

Directed by Paul L. Stein, 1944

Joan is in love with Jack, a soldier in Burma but her ambitious mother urges her engagement to her elderly employer. Jack returns on the eve of her wedding and is fobbed off by the mother, but true love finds a way.

Jack (Jimmy Hanley) just before he kisses his bride (Patricia Medina) goodbye.

Credits

Director Production Company Screenplay Photography	Paul L. Stein Butcher's Film Service Jack Whittingham Geoffrey Faithfull
Cast: Patricia Medina (Joan Dodd); Jimmy Hanley (Jack Fowler); Marie Löhr (Emma Blood); Frederick Leister (Captain Blood); Jean Simmons (Molly Dodd)
90 mins, 8,095 ft, sound, black & white

Why are we so keen to find it?

For the chance to see the great 'Rose of England' Jean Simmons in one of her earliest roles, a year before she played Estella in Great Expectations (1946). Indeed, in contemporary reviews she is singled out for her 'bright juvenile portrayal', and in existing stills from the film one can see her looking her usual luminously beautiful self in her role as Patricia Medina's sister.

Jimmy Hanley, a big star in the 1940s, is the male lead. This was apparently his first film after being invalided from the Army as the result of wounds sustained in an early commando raid. With an inoffensive, youthful charm perhaps baring comparison to Mickey Rooney, he was an actor of some sensitivity: see, for instance, his portrayal as boxer Tommy Mutch torn in There Ain't No Justice (1939). Prolific cinematographer Geoffrey Faithfull worked on the film and the reviews routinely compliment the photography and lighting.

What's it about?

Not, as it might sound, a noir tale of intrigue, but a farcical romantic comedy, written by Jack Whittingham, a contemporary film critic and playwright. Today's Cinema describes it thus:

"The story of a factory girl who fascinates her elderly employer to such an extent that he proposes marriage to her, unfortunately for the employer, the girl's former soldier-boy lover returns unexpectedly from Burma, they board a train to visit the girl's uncle and aunt, and thereafter we have spicy sex complications, in which mother and dad fear the worst, until the tangle is straightened out. There is an interlude of "music for the workers" in the opening sequences, but the main development centres on the romantic piquancies of the runaway couple. The uncle and aunt are under the impression that the soldier-boy and their niece are married. They are ushered into the bridal chamber, with hearty quips, to face an embarrassing situation. The following morning the alleged demands to be legally married to the lover of her choice."

Last seen?

There was a reissue in July 1946, when the film was "cut slightly". In August 1953 the film was aired on television in the United States.

What else do we know about it?

Austrian director Paul L. Stein, who directed and produced the film, had worked in Berlin and then Hollywood with stars including Pola Negri, Jeanette MacDonald and Constance Bennett before he started working regularly for British studios in the 1930s. At British International Pictures he directed several big-budget, star-studded international productions. Like his émigré contemporaries, he was often entrusted with the popular operetta films, including Mimi (1935), Heart's Desire (1935) and the delightful Blossom Time (1934). At BIP he worked with Bebe Daniels, Richard Tauber and Douglas Fairbanks Junior. He became a British citizen in 1938 and died in London in May 1951. As film scholar Christian Cargnelli has observed, in one of the few analysis of his career, there were no obituaries or appreciations of Stein and yet he clearly contributed a great deal to British cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. Kiss the Bride Goodbye may not have been a masterpiece, but it certainly looks to have been entertaining fare, consistent with the rest of his output.

Does anything survive?

There are prints of most of Stein's British films; however all we have of Kiss the Bride Goodbye are some press stills, held in the BFI's Stills, Posters and Designs collections.

Reviews

Reviews were mixed. Some enjoyed the film for what it clearly was, a light-hearted frivolous comedy; others found the plot 'naive', even 'ridiculous'. Some objected to the somewhat risqué (for then) situations. The Cinematograph Exhibitors Association's Film Report observed: "The situations at times come very near the edge and there are many suggestive lines, but the dialogue is bright on the whole and there are many laughs and few dull moments." Several reviewers praised the actors: "this hoary joke is only bearable because Patricia Medina and Jimmy Hanley act the lovers well and sympathetically." Judging by Stein's other films, this one was probably well-made and entertaining, though perhaps less art than "jovial entertainment for the masses," as one reviewer expressed it - and there's nothing wrong with that!

Kelly Robinson, Filmographic Editor (Festivals and Awards), BFI National Library

You can find more about British films of the late 1940s, including entries on surviving films and video clips for users in UK schools, colleges, universities and public libraries, at BFI Screenonline. You can also view similar titles at the BFI Mediatheques.