It doesn't have the same name recognition, but Wesley Ruggles' 1935 screwball comedy adheres to a template that Howard Hawks would hone to perfection in His Girl Friday five years later.
The principal players include feisty working girl Jeannette (Claudette Colbert), headstrong managerial type Cyrus (Fred MacMurray), and clueless second banana Jack (Robert Young)—just replace the newspaper milieu with magazine offices.
Granted, The Bride Comes Home is a frothier affair in which the staffers don't cover any big stories. If anything, Claude Binyon's screenplay provides scant information about the magazine's content, other than that it's aimed at men.
The Great Depression is in full swing and Jeannette's father, Alfred (William Collier Sr.), has had to let the help go due to a sudden downturn in his finances. Her longtime admirer, Jack, meanwhile, has just come into a hefty trust fund. It's a testament to Jeannette's character that his money doesn’t interest her.
When he launches a magazine, he installs his best pal, Cyrus, as editor, and Jeannette as assistant editor. Jack knows she's down on her luck, but Cyrus assumes she's a flighty socialite just looking to entertain herself until something better comes along, an effect reinforced by her sheer, frilly outfits ("Just a hunk of whipped cream," he quips). In best screwball fashion, they clash from the start. Cyrus doesn't believe she has the smarts for the job, so he gives her busy work, except she does everything he asks and more.
In a bid to get closer to the action, Jack moves into Cyrus's messy bachelor pad, thus ensuring that Jeannette will run into the two everywhere, and the more she does, the more her resistance crumbles—though the bickering continues. Alfred doesn't see a problem, since he believes that some relationships thrive on friction. He and her late mother bickered all the time to the extent that she once threw a chair at him. It's unlikely that chair-throwing would pass muster in 2021, but he gets his point across.
Just as she and Cyrus start to make wedding plans, though, everything falls apart. It doesn't help when she straightens up his apartment, including the piles of notes he references for articles. His anger drives her into the arms of a kind, uncritical Jack. Ruggles saves the wackiest set pieces for the fast-paced conclusion featuring a grumpy justice of the peace (Edgar Kennedy) and Cyrus and Alfred on a motorcycle, racing to stop the wedding. It's hardly a spoiler to say that they succeed.
Colbert and MacMurray previously starred in Ruggles' well-received The Gilded Lily, so a reunion seemed a safe bet, and the actors generate crackling chemistry that would power five more films, including 1947's The Egg and I. As a director, he doesn't have Hawks' magic touch, and the actors occasionally go bigger than necessary, but they're all up to the task, and Here Comes the Bride goes down as easy as an egg cream at the drugstore lunch counter. Recommended.