Slightly Married
Director: Richard Thorpe
Year Released: 1932
Rating: 1.5
In court after being suspected of being a "lady of the night," Mary Smith (Evalyn Knapp) gets "saved" by an incredibly intoxicated Jimmy Martin (Walter Byron) when he tells the judge she was waiting for him (and not looking for a "john") and the two of them marry right away ... the only problem is, he already has a fiancée, and his parents don't want him anywhere near Mary. The premise, at the very least, is quirky - here's an experiment to test out (or not!): calculate how many drinks it would take for you to wed a total stranger - but unfortunately it has too many problems, even for a B-movie: the direction is flat, the timing is way off, there dialogue is terrible, the characters "fall in love" in roughly five minutes, etc. Naturally, this was made pre-Code, because I can imagine at least one "censor" clutching her pearls at the very idea of an unmarried woman taking care of a child with the help of an actual prostitute (it happens, you know).