1h 38min | Comedy, Romance, War | 19 January 1944
Director: Preston Sturges
Stars: Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, William Demarest
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037077/
I'm a big fan of Preston Sturges (who also wrote this), but not of this film. It's the Hutton/Bracken effect. If this were Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, I'd probably love it.
So PS is spoofing the Dione Quints, 1-upping them, and complicating the story vastly, perhaps only to torture the censors and challenge himself to get things past them.
BH deceives her father, goes to a dance for departing GIs using EB as her beard (he gets to sit in a movie house instead of going to the dance). While jitterbugging too wildly, she conks her head on a disco ball, and is dizzy (not drunk) the rest of the evening (while still driving her cohort from venue to venue.) One GI keeps suggesting they should all get married.
But the next morning she is without a license, doesn't remember which GI she married, nor the names of the suspects. Her father (WD) assumes she was out the whole night with EB, and doesn't know she was married.
Advance time a few weeks, and she learns she's "expecting". Now she's desperate to BE married, and manipulated EB into being the groom. He's enthused about the idea, even when he knows she's preggers. But he slips at the wedding, and signs his own name instead of Ratzkeywatzkey, and WD gets the J.P. to tear up the certificate.
So EB decides to find the real Ratzkeywatzkey, and steals money from his employer, leaving behind his bonds of equivalent value. He has a long list of criminal charges against him, including taking a minor across state lines (when he tried to marry BH), and impersonating a soldier (he wore a WW1 uniform so the J.P. could verify the groom was a GI, since they're trying to reenact the original wedding.)
When he comes back, having failed to find Ratzkeywatzkey, he's immediately spotted by the banker, and arrested. WD, the town sheriff, tries to help him escape, but EB is too dense and loyal to catch on. But BH and her sister get it, and they assist an escape.
Of course, he's found and detained again. But when BH tries to testify for him, finally willing to reveal her pregnancy and its original source, she goes into labor. When the births finish at 6 boys, the governor is called, and he arranges to retroactively straighten out all the legalities.
Using newspaper headlines and a montage of clips without dialog, we see the war pushed off the front page by the births, with the premiere of Canada enrages (Dione Quints were Canadian), Mussolini resigning, and Hitler demanding a recount. EB, who's been in jail, doesn't know she's given birth, so we get more physical comedy at the end when they show him the result.
As I'm writing this, I can see Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea doing it, much less manically, and it being much better. Oh well.
Paramount, dir. Sturges; 6-
