Meet the Stewarts (1942) User Reviews

Wacky domestic comedy is early vehicle for William Holden...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 26 April 2007]

Living within a budget just about sums up the entire plot line of this feeble little domestic comedy, MEET THE STEWARTS, which serves to show WILLIAM HOLDEN and FRANCES DEE as a squabbling young couple who dive into marriage without enough money to finance her extravagant ways.

Dee is pretty but plays a rather flighty housewife, sweet but a bit unreasonable in some of her temperamental outbursts. Holden has the sort of "Smilin' Jim" roles he came to detest in time, but does an acceptable job that reveals an early flair for comedy.

There's strong support from a cast that includes ANNE REVERE, GRANT WITHERS and ANNE GILLIS, but a very unfunny role for MARGARET HAMILTON as an inept maid.

Summing up: Never rises above being more than a formula programmer that gives Holden and Dee a chance to make an early impression.

Cute movie hat would have been a pilot a decade later

[Handlinghandel · 5/10 · 5 August 2007]

This came out in 1942. In the early fifties, it could (title and all) have been the first episode of a television show. (That includes William Holden's calling wife Frances Dee "kitten." That's just like in "Father Knows Best," though there it's the title character's daughter's name.) It's a pleasant movie. Holden and Dee are a believable enough couple. It is a familiar story but the plot takes some different routes: She comes from a rich family. He is working class. She wants to try. She indeed does try. (Margaret Hamilton is thrown in, as an inept housekeeper.) The highlight is Anne Revere. What astonishing presence that woman had! She plays Holden's sister, a school principal. She's cold, strong, judgmental, and (of course) in the end kind.

remake of The Bride Walks Out

[ksf-2 · 5/10 · 26 April 2007]

Pretty much a remake of the Bride Walks Out from 1936, right down to the same gags with the money, the furniture, the maid. Mike (William Holden - Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina) marries Candace (Frances Dee - Little Women, Of Human Bondage), and all their problems boil down to surviving on just the husband's income. The bright spots in this movie come from the supporting characters - running gags from the taxi driver (Don Beddoe) and the maid (Margaret Hamilton - the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of OZ!) One difference from the Bride Walks Out is that here, the families of the couple are involved, but in the first version, all the interaction was with their neighbors. Meet the Stewarts is a little more mature; a little darker - grownups talking about real life issues; in The Bride Walks Out, they seemed like fun, young kids who never really took themselves too seriously.

Inspiration for Bewitched?

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 26 April 2007]

If Bill Holden had to choose a typical part that he was trying to avoid being cast as before Sunset Boulevard, chances are he would pick his role in Meet the Stewarts as exhibit A.

Holden used to call these his 'smiling jim' roles, the decent young married or newlywed that his dual studio masters, Paramount and Columbia would insist on casting him in.

The film is based on a series of short stories by Elizabeth Dunn based on the trials of a young married couple, Candy and Mike Stewart. What we have in this film is an episode of a half hour TV situation comedy stretched out to fill up a B feature film.

In fact Meet the Stewarts might very well have been the inspiration for Bewitched. Mike Stewart is a sober industrious young man who happens to fall in love with an air headed débutante, Candy. Remember the way Darren Stevens insisted that Samantha live on his salary without using any nose twitching magic? Holden is the same way about Dee, insisting that they live without any assistance from his in-laws.

Meet the Stewarts is not a horribly bad film, but you can see how desperate William Holden was to get away from these kind of parts.

The story of a spoiled brat and her new, foolish husband.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 19 December 2013]

As I sat and watched "Meet the Stewarts", I couldn't help but feel annoyed. So much of the story revolves around a spoiled rich girl who is simply annoying--at least that's how my wife and I felt as we watched.

The film begins with a love-struck young man, Michael (William Holden) approaching Candace's father (Grant Mitchell) to ask his permission to marry her. However, the father is NOT happy to give his blessing and vows to cut off his daughter (Frances Dee) from her very extravagant lifestyle if she marries Michael. Well, she marries anyway--knowing full well that she'll have to economize and live like a normal person. However, throughout the film, this spoiled housewife continually overspends and simply ignores their financial situation. As for Michael, he's an idiot, as although he lectures her about economizing, every time she cries he simply gives in to her. This sort of thing is supposed to be funny. I found it grating and a bit insulting since the US had just come out of the Depression. Also grating was that Candace could do NOTHING right when it came to housework--nothing. Again, it was supposed to be funny but wore thin after a while.

If you haven't guessed, I didn't like this film at all. It's a waste of several talented actors--particularly Holden who, oddly, has the screen presence of a zucchini. Making a film about a rich lady giving it all up to marry a working class guy could have worked--but making the wife THIS vacuous, selfish and ineffectual strained credibility well beyond the breaking point. Candace is unlikable to the point where I wanted to see Michael belt her!! No, I am NOT endorsing spousal abuse--though the film DOES late in the picture! Finally, I agree with several of the other reviewers who felt this plot was more like a TV episode stretched to movie length. Overall, an annoying film with little to commend it.

Perfectly Delightful.....

[Keedee · 9/10 · 26 April 2007]

From the first moment to the last, this was perfectly delightful!! Holden and Dee really make this one work as the handsome newlyweds that are trying desperately to stay within their meager budget. Watching them, one "almost" yearns for that awkward adjustment period that succeeds marriage. This pairing of stars really works too. They've got tons of chemistry that really helps one believe their story and has you rooting for them to make it work. There are tons of movies out there with this same premise but they often turn into yawners. This one was the exception for me. Their quirky antics kept it fresh and I found myself smiling throughout.

a manual of sexism

[ruth-hein · 3/10 · 9 December 2013]

Even for the early 1940s, this movie is seriously, and ludicrously, sexist. The bride, who has a dim grasp on money, comes from a privileged family; if she were a man, she'd be considered a dashing playboy, but as a woman, she is shown as just silly and bubble-headed, But when she begins to understand that they are living beyond their means, she gets a job--over the husband's serious objections: he feels entitled to come home to a well-kept house (which appears to be a three-room cottage) and a hot meal on the table. The trite situations between do nothing to modify this attitude. When the young wife wants to cook dinner for their family, she--of course--muffs it, rinsing the vegetables with soap, serving a roast too tough to carve, and smoking up the house from a badly lit fireplace (why that last is her fault, I don't quite understand, but somehow it seems to be, as is the embarrassment of learning that her father has revoked her country-club privileges. Somehow the young husband is never at fault, he is a pompous jerk but seen as a noble and upright young man. Adequate acting aside,the movie is painful to watch.

Typical 1940's Movie: Fighting Husband and Crying Wife

[bbrebozo · 5/10 · 15 August 2022]

The good news: William Holden and Frances Dee make a perfectly believable couple, and the Wicked Witch's brief turn as a maid was a pleasant surprise.

But the plot wasn't credible, with the wife constantly keeping secrets from her husband for no clear reason other than to hold the story together. And the bit at the end, where the moving man casually admits that he regularly beats his wife and she bails him out and apologizes to him later, was creepy even for the era. (And keep in mind that the script was written by a woman.)

And what was the deal with the strawberries at the end? Did I miss something?

I guess this is one of those movies that people watched in the pre-television era, when they were starved for entertainment and wanted to get out. Fortunately, we have more options now.

lovely

[Kirpianuscus · 27 January 2019]

An inspired portrait of the first steps in marriage. And a seductive young couple. It could be a moral lesson or a seductive comedy. But it use the humor in wise manner and propose a real interesting image of compromises, adaptation to reality, essence of family. And , sure, beautiful performances. A young William Holden and charming Frances Dee. Seductive work of Anne Revere and beautiful story. One of good examples why the old movies are, in deep sense, unique.

Behind every great man, there's a nagging woman....

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 8 June 2015]

Don't let rich but sweet Frances Dee's easy-going personality fool you; She's a controlling shrew in the making, as seen in the very first scene of this situation comedy like screwball comedy, basically blackmailing boyfriend William Holden into marrying her by trapping him in her tree-house without a ladder to get down. This literal gunshot marriage (with the bride-to-be with her finger on the trigger) has her papa (Grant Mitchell) against the marriage, believing him to be a fortune hunter, but Holden's insistence that they are going to live on a strict budget gets him to change his mind. Of course, living on a budget is easier said than done, and Dee's promises are not going to be honored once she realizes how tough having a budget is.

The marriage is tested instantly budget-wise with Holden and Dee disagreeing on which piece of furniture which took them $50 over budget should go back. Dee does try her best, having a lavish dinner party with both families meeting for the first time (and instantly clashing) and Dee pretending that she made the entire meal even though she got last minute assistance from professional chef Willie Fung. Determined to keep this from her husband, Dee literally hides Fung in the closet, and this leads to a funny but oddly racist scene where Holden discovers him and laughs at the thought that Dee could even have remotely been involved with the effeminate "China man". Later, Holden bristles when Dee hires a part-time housekeeper (Margaret Hamilton) who treats their house like a bull would a china shop. Hamilton's character is far from any of the many maids and housekeepers she's played before, closer in style to Mary Wickes' brand of comedy than her own persona. Her brief appearance is one of the film's highlights.

As for their families, there's Mitchell as the gruff father of the bride and Marjorie Gateson as her regal but gracious mother, Ann Gillis as her boy-crazy and drama queen sister and Danny Mummert as the outspoken youngest. It's funny how actors old enough to be grandparents end up with young children in all these old movies. Anne Revere is Holden's much older sister, a gruff, outspoken spinster school principal who is obviously against the marriage (and gets a few good barbs tossed her way by the very funny Mummert), while the always gentle Mary Gordon offers wisdom and her good-natured humor as Holden and Revere's much more understanding mother. The dinner party where they all come together is the epitome of an evening where everything that can go wrong does, but I must say about the cake that Dee attempts to make that it looks more like plaster of Paris than any unbaked cake mix I've ever seen, sort of an "I Love Lucy" style visual gag utilized a decade before that sitcom went on the air.

The passive/aggressive nature of Dee's character is a bit hard to take at times, and the fact that Holden could not see right through her is also hard to swallow even though he does tell her, "You have a streak of low cunning that absolutely alarms me". As a result of this, there really isn't much chemistry between the two leads although they do look attractive together. This is obviously the type of silly sitcom set-ups, padded out to the length of three episodes, amusing in spots but not always believable and certainly not with one strong plot point to keep it in focus. But with that cast and certain moments that do strike the funny bone, it is definitely seems a lot better than it really is.

classic hollywood comedy

[sventimiglia23582 · 10/10 · 10 October 2000]

they don't make 'em this good anymore!perfectly charming 40's comedy with holden in young but top form.supporting cast is excellent.this was one of holden's last films before going to war and ended up the lower half of a double bill...and shouldn't have.