THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. is a tail-end entry to the golden era of screwball comedies and pretty weak one at that.
Bette Davis is miscast as flighty oil heiress Joan Winfield. Given to impulsive marriages to unsuitable men, she finds herself shanghaied by James Cagney when she attempts to elope to Las Vegas to tie the knot with vacuous, egotistical bandleader Jack Carson.
Not only is she unconvincing in this madcap role but at 33 years old she is clearly a decade too old to play a 23 year old child of the nightclub scene.
Had she essayed the part in 1937 or 38 she might have got away with it but by the time of the film's release in 1941 Davis had built a solid reputation for herself as a strong, often wilful, screen presence, given to dominating her men and suffering for her rebelliousness. To cast her as a flibbertigibbert who lived in fear of telling her overbearing father about her latest nuptials, and allowed herself to be repeatedly humiliated by Cagney's character, made very little sense.
THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. is an ill-advised effort by Warner Brothers to extend her range, ignoring the received wisdom of the studio system that stars became stars by playing a type which clicked with the public. Once they found that type, if they wanted to maintain their grip on the top of the slippery pole of success, they played variations on it over and over again.
Cagney, by contrast, plays Cagney. He's cocky, impulsive, pugilistic and brimming with confidence but really not very interesting. Both he and Davis are poorly served by a script that simply fails to sparkle. That's particularly disappointing considering it's written by Philip and Julius Epstein who, just one year later, would be responsible for the screenplays for "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "Casablanca."
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