NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM (1952) B/W 82m dir: Douglas Sirk

w/Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Spring Byington, Don DeFore, Lee Aaker, Jack Kelly, Lillian Bronson, Fess Parker, Paul McVey, Stephen Chase, Frank Sully, David Janssen

From Jon Halliday's book, Sirk on Sirk : "A G.I., Alvah Morell [Curtis], who has eloped to Las Vegas to marry his girlfriend, Lee Kingshead [Laurie], returns from Korea to find she has not told her family of the wedding. The house is crammed with relatives, including Laurie's fearsome mother [Byington, of course] who is determined to marry her off to a rich cement tycoon, who is anyway trying to run a railway through the house. 'I think I had to do it as a tryout for Tony Curtis ... I can remember nothing about this picture at all' (Sirk)."

Nevertheless, this is a fascinating film for Sirk-o-philes. Its rather frenzied storyline shines a critical light on family relations in the 1950s. Alvah and Lee can't consummate their marriage for a variety of reasons (which, of course, gives the title of the film new meaning). The relatives are terrible indeed, with Byington (in a dithery gem of a performance) as their unashamed matriarch. But it's the children, so often reactionary elements in Sirk's later melodramas, who are the true torturers in this family "comedy." If you remember little Lee Aaker from the Rin Tin Tin TV series, you've got quite a shock in store when you see what he's up to here. A definite argument in favor of sterilization.

The following contains information you may not want to know before viewing the film for the first time:

From the Senses of Cinema website (www.sensesofcinema.com), "The Bleakness of the Happy Ending: Sirk's Uncomfortable Comedies" by Tom Ryan:

"Remarkably forthright and even Capra-like in its critique of capitalism’s encroachment on traditional values, No Room for the Groom is both a tale about the trials facing returned servicemen and a canny variation on the romantic comedy of remarriage. Adapted by Joseph Hoffman (Week-End with Father) from novelist and former army intelligence officer Darwin L. Teilhet’s 1945 book, My True Love, it begins with soldier-on-leave Alvah (Tony Curtis) and his sweetheart, Lee (Piper Laurie), arriving in Las Vegas at a wedding parlour that promises 'Dignified Weddings' but delivers anything but. From the beginning --- a shot of the couple behind a bus window, barely visible inside its glittering reflections of the City of Sin --- they're at odds with their surroundings.

"Subsequent events conspire to keep them apart. Alvah contracts chicken pox on their honeymoon night, before being shipped off to Korea for ten months. When he returns, he finds his home, a vineyard near smalltown Suttersville, has been taken over by an occupation force made up of Lee’s relatives. Their general is her mother, Mama Kingshead (Spring Byington), who doesn’t approve of Alvah and has embarked on a campaign to have Lee marry her boss, cement magnate Herman Strouple (Don DeFore). Mama is accurately described by [Bruce] Babington and [Peter William] Evans as 'a monster of comic hypocrisy' for the way in which she feigns ill-health in order to manipulate those around her to give her what she wants.

"Making the situation even worse, Lee’s reluctance to tell her that she’s already married to Alvah means that he’s cast as an unwelcome outsider in his own home. He’s compelled to share a bedroom with Donovan (Lee Aaker), a child who’s so hyperactive that it would come as no surprise to learn that he had been possessed by the devil. Every time Alvah and Lee try to find a private moment, let alone consummate their marriage, they’re interrupted. And even after the truth is revealed, nothing changes as Mama tries to persuade her daughter to have the marriage annulled. No Room for the Groom might be a comedy, but it’s undeniably tinged with horror.

"When Alvah urges Lee to take a day off work to be with him, Mama sees it as an affront to the war effort and his duty to his country. 'I’m beginning to think you should be investigated by a Congressional committee,' she accuses. Delivered by such an unsympathetic character, it’s a line which, in 1952 at the height of the hearings being held by HUAC (the House Committee on Un-American Activities), was clearly designed to provoke. And it appears to have been successful: according to [Michael] Stern, the FBI questioned Sirk 'about morality in No Room for the Groom.

"With unfolding events acquiring a manic edge and the indoor action frequently being shot from a low angle (as in Week-End with Father), Alvah and Lee appear to be trapped and powerless to do anything to sort out the problems facing them. It becomes worse, especially for Alvah, when Strouple proposes a scheme to build a train line through his vineyard in order to speed up the transport side of his business. Lee not only supports her boss’s offer of remuneration to Alvah, but even believes that it’s a generous one.

"Alvah’s refusal is couched in terms that classify his stand as a defence of traditional values and an American dream that is in danger. 'I love this town the way it used to be,' he declares, a portrait of George Washington on the wall behind him, going on to describe the kind of mindset that has changed it. 'Moral values, principles, sentiment,' he says, 'Chuck ’em all out for a quick buck.' His passionate attack on 'dollar and cent values' and on how 'people have forgotten what it’s like to be human beings' not only leads to Mama’s 'I knew he should be investigated,' but is also very prescient.

"In his commentary on the film in The Berkshire Review for the Arts, Alan Miller proposes that it 'depicts wartime patriotism as it is imperceptibly demobilized into unreflective support for the most top-down, paternalistic version of capitalist progress,' going on to describe the mob of relatives who occupy Alvah’s home as 'Tea Party invaders.'

"For Stern, in his book about Sirk, the film’s critique of capitalism and the pursuit of progress at all costs is 'shrill,' and he notes his disappointment that 'the film’s characters and situations have little of the ambiguity or vulnerable charms that characterize even the worst of Sirk’s people in the other comedies.' And, while Stern’s criticism need not be the only measure of the film’s worth, it is clear that a debate about America’s future lies at its heart, the characterisations certainly leaving little room for doubt about where Sirk’s sympathies lie.

"Yet there is also much more that needs to be said about No Room for the Groom. It's a boldly paranoid comedy set in a time of paranoia, when any social criticism was deemed an act of disloyalty. Its style might be broad inasmuch as it operates as farce --- as a 'savage farce,' as Stern correctly introduces it --- but its methods are as subtle and quietly subversive as in the other comedies. Just as it seems as if Alvah and Lee are 'unconsciously infected by the surroundings' right from the start, so too can all the characters be seen in this way. Just as Alvah and Lee are barely visible behind the reflected lights of Las Vegas in the opening shot, they’re all enveloped by their milieu. 'I don’t blame you,' Alvah tells his domestic oppressors. 'If there’s anything to blame, it’s the times.' And the times are embodied as concisely by the flashing Strouples Cement sign that looks down on the people of Suttersville as they are by the neon hell of Las Vegas.

"Like Sirk’s other 'uncomfortable comedies,' No Room for the Groom conjures up a happy ending that is unlikely to convince anyone that all is well. After realising that her boss has been using her to trick Alvah into allowing the vandalising of his property, Lee seeks a reconciliation with her husband, who’s abandoned all hope. Reworking an earlier scene in the film in which he had carefully arranged the apartment he’d borrowed from his wartime buddy (Jack Kelly), she makes her own adjustments to the apartment to woo him back. She sets the scene for a conventional happy ending, but the Strouples Cement sign can still be seen through the window and no truce has been made with Lee’s vindictive mother. The only thing that’s changed is Lee’s viewpoint.

"Like Sirk’s other comedies, No Room for the Groom is, in its own way, dissembling the happy-ever-after American dream that has the characters looking inward rather than turning their gaze on the rules by which the world around them operates."