We’re Not Married! (TCF 1952, Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen)

Five married’ couples in various stages of stressed relationships discover that due to a clerical error, they weren’t legally wed after all. This comedy of episodes features Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen as a radio duo who are all sweetness while on-air, but tear into each other as soon as the mic switches off. Zsa-Zsa Gabor plays a greedy wife trying to divorce her rich husband. Marilyn Monroe appears in a small role in the film’s ‘Mrs. Mississippi’ pageant.’

We’re Not Married uses the same premise – the discovery that a marriage is not legal and the affect of this news upon a presumably happy union – as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s least typical films, the screwball comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) with Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard.

production details
USA | Twentieth Century Fox | 86 minutes | 1952

Director: Edmund Goulding
Producer: Nunnally Johnson
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Editor: Louis Loeffler
Music: Cyril J. Mockridge
Script: Nunnally Johnson, Dwight Taylor
Art Direction: Leland Fuller, Lyle R. Wheeler

cast
James Gleason as Duffy
Dabbs Greer as Beauty Contest Spectator (uncredited)
Marilyn Monroe as Annabel Jones Norris
Byron Foulger as Marriage License Bureau Clerk (uncredited)
Paul Douglas as Hector C. Woodruff
Lee Marvin as Pinky (uncredited)
David Wayne as Jeff Norris
Ginger Rogers as Ramona Gladwyn
Victor Moore as Justice of the Peace Melvin Bush
Fred Allen as Steven S. ‘Steve’ Gladwyn
Eve Arden as Katie Woodruff
Eddie Bracken as Wilson Boswell ‘Willie’ Fisher
Mitzi Gaynor as Patricia ‘Patsy’ Reynolds Fisher
Louis Calhern as Frederick C. ‘Freddie’ Melrose
Zsa Zsa Gábor as Eve Melrose
Paul Stewart as Attorney Stone
Jane Darwell as Mrs. Bush
Harry Antrim as Justice of the Peace (uncredited)
James Burke as Willie’s Sergeant (uncredited)
Alvin Greenman as Radio Station Sound Effects Man (uncredited)
Selmer Jackson as Chaplain Hall (uncredited)