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Once Upon A Honeymoon (RKO Radio). In this all-out attempt to break back into big-time production after a lean season, RKO's headmen took no chances. They brought able Author-Director-Producer Leo McCarey (Love Affair, Make Way for Tomorrow) out of two years of fruitless bondage to erratic Producer Howard Hughes. Ginger Rogers, who can pick & choose her vehicles, thought the story was too good to pass up. Gary Grant was paid a reputed $175,000 to play opposite her. Such a lustrous combination ought to have worked well, but it does not work as well as it ought.
Miss Rogers plays a Brooklyn ex-strip-teaser who unwittingly marries one of Hitler's smartest finger-men, an Austrian baron (Walter Slezak). Gary Grant is an Irish-American reporter who brings Miss Rogers to her senses, helps her to do a grand tour of wartime Europe. The pair are in on the kill of every European country from Austria to France. They dabble in espionage with Albert Dekker, and discover, at long last, that they are intended for each other.
The picture is, in fact, Hollywood's most strenuous effort, to date, to mix a box-office Mickey Finn out of these disparate ingredients: topical tragedy, pulmotored patriotism, slick-paper romance, and anything-for-a-laugh comedy. There are moments when Director McCarey has the sleight of hand it takes. Albert Bassermann makes a small prize package of a fierce, old Polish general. Pudgy Walter Slezak, as the dastardly baron, is as slickly untrustworthy as a bomb in aspic. But Principals Rogers and Grant exude a general impression that they know something has gone very wrong, and that nothing much can be done about it.