User reviews

The individual scenes and performances are hilarious, but if you sit back and look at the big picture it really doesn't make much sense. Author Kenneth Bixby (George Brent) has proposed to his secretary Anne (Ann Sheridan), and in the first scene she accepts. Apparently Ken has a roving eye for the ladies, and Anne knows this yet is ready to marry this guy. Now maybe that might make sense because love generally trumps common sense. What doesn't make sense is when Ken's now married old flame of eight years ago, Julie (Osa Massen), shows up acting like a groupie with Ken not even remembering her at first, yet he still agrees to have a romantic rendezvous with her. Ken is supposed to be such the ladie's man yet he acts like Julie is a hot potato he would just as soon get rid of - so why doesn't he? Ken behaves more like a kleptomaniac than a great lover - carting Julie around like a stolen watch where the thrill of the crime is much more exciting than the ill gotten loot to which he is largely indifferent. Likewise, secretary Anne seems to enjoy catching Ken in the act of lying about other women and doesn't seem disappointed in his behavior at all.

The individual scenes, witty dialogue, and performances make up for all of this to a degree. There is the great Charlie Ruggles as Julie's husband who is grateful that someone has come along - Ken - to finally rid him of her annoying presence without him having to pay alimony. Then there is Jane Wyman as Julie's cousin and William Orr as her overbearing fiancé who want to insert themselves into the Julie/Ken romance as the keepers of decency with their elaborate schemes to keep the two apart.

It's a good thing this is a comedy because there is nobody to sympathize with in this film. Julie would be a sympathetic figure if she just wasn't so manic and emotionally needy. Likewise I'd feel sorry for Anne if she didn't have the annoying habit of undoing Ken's one positive character trait - that of being a big tipper. Anytime Ken leaves a tip she takes it out of the waiter's hand and replaces it with something much smaller.

I'd recommend this one if you are just willing to take off your thinking cap, laugh, and enjoy.

Ann Sheridan and George Brent! Co-stars Charles Ruggles and Jane Wyman. Ken Bixby (Brent) ends up at a restaurant with his "date", and then his family and friends show up, so he must shuttle back and forth between the two tables, making for some slapstick humor. Ruggles is Wilson, here for comic effect. It's all like an episode of Three's Company. some funny bits... the confused waiter, the lady who names her children after writers, causing much confusion ! it's all silly, light, and fluffy. fast talking, lawyers, divorce, JUST before WW II. it all comes together right at the end. similar to Much Ado about Nothing! directed by Lloyd Bacon... he also directed the awesome Wonder Bar and 42nd Street. and made a couple great films with Lucy too!

The plot has been used before and since but the dialogue is extremely funny. George Brent does a good job but Charlie Ruggles steals every scene he is in but even so Ann Sheridan is gorgeous and I couldn't

stop looking at her. She was a beautiful woman.. I really enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to lovers of good clean comedy.

I've never understood the success of George Brent. He seems so uninteresting in most of the movies with him that I've seen. He is particularly uncharismatic in screwball comedy, which is what this movie is trying to be.

But there are lots of things that don't really work here. Ann Sheridan, who would give a spectacular performance the next year in The Man who Came to Dinner, never takes off here.

Is it the director? Lloyd Bacon made lots of good movies. Is it his fault this one just never catches fire? I don't have an answer.

This movie has some real talent in it, but it goes nowhere.

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I watched this movie again tonight, four years after I wrote the review above. I think I must have been in a bad mood then, because I enjoyed it much more now.

The real genius here is the script, which has some wonderful lines. Director Lloyd Bacon does keep things moving at a rapid pace. Ann Sheridan, as others have noted, is attractive, though no where nearly as stunning as in The Man Who Came to Dinner, which I watched again last night for the nth time - and loved from start to finish yet once again.

There are weak points here, clichés and filler. But at its best, it really is a zippy comedy.

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I watched it again tonight - not recognizing it until well into the movie, I'm embarrassed to report - and this time found it pleasant but unremarkable. I keep watching Ann Sheridan movies because she is so good in *The Man who came to Dinner*, but that really seems to have been a one-off gem for her. What a shame.

George Brent and his future wife Ann Sheridan star in "Honeymoon for Three," a 1941 film, featuring Osa Massen, Charles Ruggles, Jane Wyman, and William T. Orr (who became a very big producer for Warner Bros.).

Brent is Kenneth Bixby, a best-selling author of a new book, Miriam, who is traveling with his secretary Anne Rogers (Ann Sheridan), whom he wants to marry, on a book tour. While in Cleveland, he is accosted by his college sweetheart Julie (Massen), who wants him back and believes she is the Miriam of his book. She is currently married to Harvey Wilson (Ruggles).

An attorney, Arthur, and his fiancée Elizabeth, don't want a scandal in the Wilson family and want Bixby and Julie kept apart. Wilson, meanwhile, has been hearing about Bixby for years and wants to see him, so he shows up at Bixby's suite. Anne is furious, Julie wants a divorce, and Wilson wants Bixby to marry Julie so that he can be rid of her.

Mildly funny comedy and a routine one. Everyone is commenting on George Brent's comedy expertise. I actually didn't get that. He held his own, certainly, but this was more of a Cary Grant role. I frankly think Errol Flynn, though he wasn't known for it, was better at comedy than Brent. Also, it stretched credibility that Brent was in college ten years earlier with Massen.

Ann Sheridan is in her milieu here and adds a lot of spark to the film. She also looks wonderful and does a great rumba. Jane Wyman, alas, has a very small role.

There is a scene where Brent is having dinner with Massen on one side of the restaurant and Sheridan, Ruggles, Westlake, and Wyman on the other side, with the same waiter for both tables, who believes he is going crazy. That scene is good but could have been much better.

Pleasant.

I was drawn to watch this by the presence of Charlie Ruggles in the cast. Ruggles has always been, to me, a superb - and underrated - comic actor. It was interesting to see him here in his younger years, and he did not disappoint. But to me the big surprise was George Brent's marvelous comic skills. As others have noted, he is known mostly for straight romantic roles, in which he is rather wooden. His comedy skills are a revelation, and one wishes he had done more in that line. Also adding to the fun is the sparklingly witty script, a marvel of farcical whimsy. The plot is a mere wisp of comic thread, but the fun is in the great comic acting and the great script. Altogether a totally delightful seventy-five minutes.

An interesting cast tries to keep this comedy afloat and on course, but the story is riddled with inconsistencies and irrelevancies. The plot is preposterous.

Author Kenneth Bixby (George Brent) has just become engaged to his secretary Anne Rogers (Ann Sheridan), when a former flame shows up. He does not even remember her at first, but for some reason he seems determined to sneak off with the nutty woman, even after discovering she is married. Then the slighted husband shows up and a flock of attorneys starts hovering, looking for lucrative lawsuits.

Brent plays it for screwball, as do most of the cast. Sheridan, though, is pragmatic, sarcastic, and sophisticated. She holds the entire production together. This beauty's career was too short and underappreciated. Without Ann Sheridan, this film would have been a noisy, noxious mess. As it is, it deserves watching; just don't expect "The Philadelphia Story". Besides, this story takes place in Cleveland.

Successful author Kenneth Bixby (George Brent) is on a book tour with his wisecracking secretary Anne Rogers (Ann Sheridan). She insists that they get married sooner or sooner. He keeps getting notes and flowers from Miriam which is the title of his book. He is hounded by his many fans and acquaintances which leads to some sitcom ideas.

This starts out fine with a fun Ann Sheridan and a stiff George Brent. I can see some dagger dialogue from her being thrown at him. She's the best. He's less. Once all the other characters enter, she has less space to work. This is a bit of screwball fun. It's a passable comedy.

Slim comedy that boasts terrific comic performances by stars Sheridan and Brent as bickering secretary/boss who confront a hoard of adoring women fans who flock to see their favorite author (Brent). Good support from old reliables like Charlie Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Lee Patrick, and Jane Wyman in a small part. The stars are definitely better than their material here, but the film has a lot of funny lines and cute confrontations. Ann Sheridan--one of the most underrated actresses of her time--is especially gorgeous!

Perhaps with a brighter script they would have managed not to look so silly, but GEORGE BRENT and ANN SHERIDAN can't redeem HONEYMOON FOR THREE no matter how hard they try. The script puts them through impossible to believe situations, the main one being why Brent (with an eye for the gals) bats his eyes at anyone else when Ann Sheridan is around. Sheridan is at her absolute physical peak and manages to deliver some sassy lines with her usual pep and appeal.

But nothing really helps, not even though the script is by Julius J. Epstein who has done some wonderful work at Warner Bros. elsewhere. And even a good supporting cast tries gamely to make the thing work, with a few chuckles at most as reward for their hard work--people like CHARLIE RUGGLES, JANE WYMAN, OSA MASSEN, WALTER CATLETT and WILLIAM T. ORR.

Brent at least shows more animation than usual in a comedy role. He and Sheridan married a couple of years later, so there should have been more chemistry between them for this feeble screwball comedy that has Sheridan as his neglected secretary who has to cope with his roving eye on one too many occasions. A highlight of the film is a dinner scene in a restaurant, but, alas, the trouble with the film is that the sum is a lot less than a few stray scenes.

Summing up: Strains too hard but misses by a wide margin.

A slightly used version of a Broadway play Goodbye Again retitled Honeymoon For Three is served to us in this film. The original play by Allan Scott and George Haight had absolutely no one today's audience would remember in the premier roles but the Depression years had a good respectable run of 216 performances for 1932-33. Having bit parts though were those graduates of the Princeton Triangle Theater James Stewart and Myron McCormick. Later Warner Brothers did a film version starring Warren William and Joan Blondell.

All the major studios recirculated plots from previous film, but Warner Brothers slightly more than the others. George Brent and Ann Sheridan are the leads here, he a prominent author on a lecture tour and she his secretary and all around Girl Friday. And they're in love when an old flame from college Osa Massen shows up thinking she's the one on whom the main character is based.

Try as I might there's no way I believed that George Brent would have anything to do with anyone as loopy as Massen. And would you believe that on a rebound Massen marries Charlie Ruggles?

Possibly the first film adaption is better. But I'll have to see it to be the judge of that. In any event fans of the stars might like it, for others those stars have done worse.

Who would ever think that amiable, but rather wooden, George Brent could have a deft comedic touch? In this, as a put-upon author, he is terrific, engagingly silly, with great timing. Maybe it is the truly snappy dialogue by the Epstein brothers, who worked on so many great Warners films, including Casablanca. Or maybe it was playing opposite Ann Sheridan (a year or so after the movie was made the two were married for a year). As Brent's long-suffering secretary, Sheridan also shines, as she did in most of her films, and is absolutely gorgeous as well. The film is fast-paced farce, with a double-dinner restaurant scene that is positively manic. If you ever get a chance to see this movie, grab it. It will leave you smiling.