Monday, Mar. 29, 1954

New Picture

Always a Bride (Universal-International). The British are having a run of luck with comedies. In recent weeks they have released in the U.S. Genevieve and The Final Test, two of the liveliest little exports since the English sparrow. Now comes a third, not really quite in a class with the other two, but lots of fun for those who do not mind squinting to see the point.

As the game begins, a rich old fellow (Ronald Squire) arrives with a charming young girl (Peggy Cummins) at a grand hotel in Monte Carlo and calls for the bridal suite. That night, to the disgust of the other guests, he gets drunk, and the next morning, to their scandal, they discover that he has not only abandoned the poor young thing on her wedding night but has stolen her pocketbook, too. The maiden is not long in distress. The other guests, led by a kindly old dowager (Marie

Lohr), stake the child to a fresh start, and she departs with tears of gratitude.

A few days later, the old man, the young girl and the dowager meet in Nice to split the swag and plan their next job: selling the hotel they are staying in. From here out. the progress of the three gentle grafters from riches to rags is an amusing little elegy on the good old days before the big villains put all the nice little crooks out of business. Actor Squire, a master of the mumble-and-ndget school of British comedy, makes a roguish old rogue, and James Hayter, as the man who buys the hotel, does a preposterously funny caricature of a kind of rushing Beaverbrook run dry.

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