An intermittently amusing comedy about mismatched mates, "The Bride Wore Boots" boasts a fine comedic performance by the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck; during her long career, she shifted easily between drama and comedy, westerns and soap operas, crime and heroics, and here she demonstrates her acute comedy timing. Based on a play by Harry Segall, the script has some mildly funny moments, but lots of silly and absurd ones as well, although Stanwyck emerges unscathed despite the nonsense around her.

Sally Warren, played by Barbara Stanwyck, is a wealthy Virginian with a deep love for horses, while her husband, Jeff, played by Bob Cummings, intensely dislikes horses and prefers to research and write about the Civil war. Jeff's elderly female readers, members of the Daughters of the Confederacy, present him with the stuffed horse of a Southern General, which is displayed next to Sally's Christmas present to him, an antique desk, falsely attributed to Jefferson Davis. Meanwhile, Jeff gives Sally an equally awkward gift, a racing horse named Albert, whose advanced age qualifies him for the glue factory. Despite their marital differences, the couple has produced two unruly children, Johnnie and Carol, whose antics include chasing a goat through the house; Carol is played by 8-year-old Natalie Wood, whose beauty is already apparent.

The husband and wife not only have their differences, but the actors playing them also take different approaches. Cummings's broad comedy style is hardly subtle; his nervous fussing and self-conscious laughs worked better during his subsequent television years. In this film, he is at odds with Stanwyck's skillful and underplayed delivery of the lines; her expressions and tone enhance the dialog, rather than use it to mug for the second balcony. To generate tension and jealousy between the couple, the chaotic script throws in a romantic triangle or rather quadrangle with mixed results. Diana Lynn plays a young Daughter of the Confederacy, whose pursuit of the much older Cummings is unconvincing and forced. However, the handsome Patric Knowles, as Virginia horseman Lance Gale, provides a convincing diversion for Sally and raises the question as to why she married a bookish historian with an aversion to horses in the first place. Robert Benchley and Peggy Wood are solid and entertaining support as Sally's Uncle and Mother.

If intended as screwball comedy, "The Bride Wore Boots" fails to deliver, although Stanwyck does her best with a sly comedic performance that in itself makes the film worthwhile. However, much silliness, incredible moments, and a miscast Cummings must be overlooked to focus on the marvelous actress.

I kept thinking about The Philadelphia Story while watching this; the masterful way George Cukor works out the story line with Grant, Hepburn and Stewart all competing for attention. Well, Irving Pichel is no Cukor, and while Stanwyck easily equals Hepburn in comedic skill, Cummings and Knowles don't match Grant and Stewart in ability. Stanwyck and Peggy Wood, playing her mother, supply all the fireworks in this one. Albert the horse does everything but talk, maybe he's the real star.

The film opens with Sally Warren (Stanwyck) and hubby Jeff (Cummings) out riding, and bickering over why they live in the country, instead of in the city where they had originally agreed to live. Then Lance, Sally 's old flame shows up, and honks the horn over and over, scaring the horses, causing Jeff to get tossed off yet again! (You'd think being a horse person, Lance would know better than to honk the horn over and over right near the horses...) This is a story of marriage, love, and the meaning of giving... it IS Christmas time, so Sally and Jeff get each other gifts that they think the other will like, but things take a strange turn along the way! Having Sally's old flame around only makes things worse. Robert Benchley is here for comic relief as Uncle Todd. And a young thing starts coming on to Jeff, which doesn't help either. Costumes by Edit Head, (of course) and directed by Irvinv Pichel, one of FIVE films he released that year! Good, clean fun, if you can take all the bickering. It looks like the only other project Cummings and Stanwyck worked on "together" was "Flesh and Fantasy", but they were in different chapters of that film, so not sure how much they actually worked together on that one.