Grade: D-
Synopsis: A young woman (Betsy Drake) becomes obsessed with marrying a pediatrician (Cary Grant).
Every Girl Should Be Married plays like a horror film.
A young woman exchanges a few words with a doctor at a magazine stand. They go their separate ways, but she begins to obsess over him. She does everything she can to establish a relationship with him, even showing up at his place of work. When he rebukes her, she begins to spy on him, scrounging through his trash for details of his life, pumping friends, associates, and ex-girlfriends for information. When none of this helps, she invents a fanciful relationship with her boss in order to make the doctor jealous, landing the boss in hot water when the news hits the papers. Finally, when none of this works she nearly destroys the doctor’s business in order to get his attention.
Sounds like once crazy woman, huh?
Now granted, Every Girl Should Be Married is without a doubt a product of it’s time and it’s attitude toward women and marriage has become antiquated over the last half-century, but even so, this is an awful movie.
Sure, Cary Grant is his usual charming self but that’s the movie’s only bright spot. His co-star, Betsy Drake, is awful. She has no charisma, and speaks as if she’s trying to affect or cover up some kind of accent. Further, in case you hadn’t guessed, the script by Stephen Avery paints Drake’s character as a borderline stalker.
A year after the film’s release, Grant and Drake were married in real life, something you would never have suspected watching this movie, since there is virtually no chemistry between them, which, in the end, is probably the biggest reason Every Girl Should Be Married just doesn’t work.
Bottom Line: Viewed in the right context, Every Girl Should Be Married is an entertaining camp-horror film; unfortunately, that wasn’t the filmmakers’ intention.
