The plot of WITHOUT RESERVATIONS is about how popular novelist Claudette Colbert is traveling to Hollywood to assist in the screenplay of her best selling novel. The producer is Thurston Hall. But his ideas are typically grandiose - get well known Hollywood stars for the film (the names of Cary Grant and Lana Turner are being bandied about*). Colbert feels the hero of her novel (a Marine) is someone that should be a new face - and so she is traveling across the country by train looking for such a face. She meets two air force fliers heading to California to San Diego. They are John Wayne and Don DeFore. Wayne and DeFore and Colbert soon form a threesome in going across country, and the film follows their adventures in Chicago, getting tossed off the train in in a small town on the plains, acquiring an antique automobile which takes them to New Mexico, getting involved with a family of Mexican immigrants (which ends with them being chased away by the family head with a rifle), and finally reaching Albequerque. In the meantime Hall is going crazy as the delayed arrival of his star novelist is playing havoc with his well planned publicity campaign.
(*Oddly enough, this particular casting pairing was never to appear in real life in any film of the careers of Turner and Grant. Turner never developed a semi-independent view of film selection that others in her lifetime (including Grant, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor, and even Hedy Lamarr) did. Turner seemed more willing to accept projects her studio handed to her.)
To add to the problems is that Colbert has found Wayne read her novel and did not care for it, and so she has disguised her identity from her. How long can she keep up this masquerade - and can she get Wayne to Hollywood to surprise him with a film test for the role. Also can she maintain his interest in her, which is difficult because Wayne's conservative nature (which is eloquently expressed by Wayne in critiquing Colber's book) is easily transferred to Colbert when she talks to him. She can become quite insistent on her point of view.
It is not as odd a film as it seems. Wayne could co comedy (John Ford frequently found small bits of business in his films for Wayne to kid around with). But here he is in the middle of a character comedy that manages to keep his own persona and political views up front. And it is not a strain when he talks of them. Also other bits of his personality come out. He is vamped by a Mexican woman who takes a fancy to him, and he returns the interest. Wayne, of course, liked Mexican people in general, and Mexican women in particular.
His chemistry with Colbert is not as good as her chemistry with say Don Ameche or Ray Milland, but it is strong enough to work. In particular when she quietly uses various stratagems to help him and DeFore out (like when she reveal her true identity to liquor store proprietor Erskine Sanford, in order to get several bottles of scotch when it is being rationed per bottle per customer). She is able to see that her views of her characters in the novel and the fate of mankind might not be as correct as she originally rigidly maintained.
There are other nice bits in the film. Don DeFore had a good supporting part as Dink, Wayne's pal who is less intolerant about being lied to than Wayne is. By the way, this is one of the few times DeFore actually gets a chance to sing a little in a movie. Frank Puglia and his family make an interesting early example of a Mexican American family who seem fairly realistic for a change (at least until Puglia believes he's been tricked). This film, ably directed by Mervyn LeRoy, is the only film that Colbert shared screen time with Cary Grant (just about half a minute dancing). It was also the last film in Wayne's career where he had second place in the billing.
On the whole then it is a reasonably good comedy of the limitations of abstract literary arguments between the sexes about the future (which is what Colbert finally learns by the time the movie ends). Life is more than what we write in books - fortunately the lesson is not a costly one. And frequently it is presented in a funny manner here.
(*Oddly enough, this particular casting pairing was never to appear in real life in any film of the careers of Turner and Grant. Turner never developed a semi-independent view of film selection that others in her lifetime (including Grant, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor, and even Hedy Lamarr) did. Turner seemed more willing to accept projects her studio handed to her.)
To add to the problems is that Colbert has found Wayne read her novel and did not care for it, and so she has disguised her identity from her. How long can she keep up this masquerade - and can she get Wayne to Hollywood to surprise him with a film test for the role. Also can she maintain his interest in her, which is difficult because Wayne's conservative nature (which is eloquently expressed by Wayne in critiquing Colber's book) is easily transferred to Colbert when she talks to him. She can become quite insistent on her point of view.
It is not as odd a film as it seems. Wayne could co comedy (John Ford frequently found small bits of business in his films for Wayne to kid around with). But here he is in the middle of a character comedy that manages to keep his own persona and political views up front. And it is not a strain when he talks of them. Also other bits of his personality come out. He is vamped by a Mexican woman who takes a fancy to him, and he returns the interest. Wayne, of course, liked Mexican people in general, and Mexican women in particular.
His chemistry with Colbert is not as good as her chemistry with say Don Ameche or Ray Milland, but it is strong enough to work. In particular when she quietly uses various stratagems to help him and DeFore out (like when she reveal her true identity to liquor store proprietor Erskine Sanford, in order to get several bottles of scotch when it is being rationed per bottle per customer). She is able to see that her views of her characters in the novel and the fate of mankind might not be as correct as she originally rigidly maintained.
There are other nice bits in the film. Don DeFore had a good supporting part as Dink, Wayne's pal who is less intolerant about being lied to than Wayne is. By the way, this is one of the few times DeFore actually gets a chance to sing a little in a movie. Frank Puglia and his family make an interesting early example of a Mexican American family who seem fairly realistic for a change (at least until Puglia believes he's been tricked). This film, ably directed by Mervyn LeRoy, is the only film that Colbert shared screen time with Cary Grant (just about half a minute dancing). It was also the last film in Wayne's career where he had second place in the billing.
On the whole then it is a reasonably good comedy of the limitations of abstract literary arguments between the sexes about the future (which is what Colbert finally learns by the time the movie ends). Life is more than what we write in books - fortunately the lesson is not a costly one. And frequently it is presented in a funny manner here.