The Model and the Marriage Broker

103 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBox office$1.5 million (US rentals)^[1]

The Model and the Marriage Broker is a 1951 American romantic comedy film starring Jeanne Crain, Scott Brady, and Thelma Ritter. Directed by George Cukor and produced by Charles Brackett,^[2] the picture effectively features Ritter in a rare lead role as the marriage broker.

The film received mixed but ultimately positive reviews, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Through her "Contacts and Contracts" company, Mae Swasey busily schemes to bring couples together. She is better at doing that than running a business, as her friend and businessman sharing the same warren of low-rent offices, Doberman, reminds the debt-ridden matchmaker periodically during their frequent games of pinochle during downtime in the workday. Even one of her seeming successes, Ina Kuschner's impending nuptials with handsome young radiographer Matt Hornbeck, does not go as hoped, as Ina's gargoyle of a mother stiffs Mae of the agreed-upon $500 commission even before the would-be groom bails short of the altar (and refuses to be talked into returning).

When Mae goes to see another client her purse is accidentally swapped for a lookalike by Kitty Bennett, an imperious but emotionally fragile fashion model. Searching for something to identify its owner, Mae reads a letter from Kitty's hot-and-heavy boyfriend which apologizes for not mentioning that he is married, but says he wants to keep on seeing her. When the two women get together to exchange purses, Kitty is annoyed upon learning of Mae’s indiscretion and rejects her advice to give the self-admitted "heel" up.

Kitty later comes to apologize for her unkind words, but is really looking for some relationship advice from Mae. When the boyfriend comes to pick Kitty up, on her own initiative Mae sends him packing. Then convinces Kitty to stay at her place to prevent the couple from reuniting that night. In the morning Mae pretends that Kitty may have swallowed an earring she has hidden in order to hook Kitty and Matt up.

They hit it off like lovebirds, but when Kitty learns about Mae's meddling in introducing them, compounded by her instinctive plan to maneuver a commitment-averse Matt into proposing, she ends their budding romance and dresses Mae down. Badly shaken, Mae leaves for an extended stay at a health spa to think things over.

Before she can depart, Mae is finally ambushed by middleaged frump Emmy Swasey, whom she has been trying to avoid for some time. Twenty years earlier the coquettish Emmy stole Mae's husband. Now that she is recently widowed, very well-off, and terribly lonely, Emmy is aware she’s not so cute as she used to be, and wants Mae to find her a replacement spouse. Mae turns her down, less over their past than because she's not sure anymore about how she makes a living, having been so rattled by Kitty's harsh putdown.

Not knowing Mae has left town, Kitty goes to make up with her at her office, only to run into an insistent, socially-awkward Mr. Johannson, one of Mae's clients, who needs help patching up his fledgling relationship. Kitty unthinkingly plays Cupid, both naturally and excellently. Doberman shows up looking for Mae, bumps into Kitty, and tells her how badly she hurt Mae. That Mae thought of her as the daughter she never had, and that Mae helps those who are shy, need a helpful push, and were not gifted with natural beauty and charm like her. Before she can leave Mae‘s office, Kitty meets Dan Chancellor, an attractive, vital, and insouciantly wealthy Canadian bachelor who has heard of Mae's service, and immediately schemes to unite the pair. It works without Mae ever knowing she was set-up.

Mae and Kitty reconcile, but Mae finds out her meeting with Dan wasn't serendipitous after all. She abruptly comes to realize that she will never be lonely as long as she has people to help, but will be terribly so if stuck on an isolated Canadian peninsula with a man who can't even learn to play pinochle.

Mae realizes Emmy would be a natural match for Dan, and sets those wheels in motion. With everything out in the open, Matt and Kitty reunite and are on a fast track for the altar. Back at her office to stay, Kitty and Doberman resume their pinochle, with an eye-opened Doberman surprising her by offering himself as a suitor. Another set of wedding bells appear ready to ring.

• Jeanne Crain as Kitty Bennett
• Scott Brady as Matt Hornbeck
• Thelma Ritter as Mae Swasey
• Zero Mostel as George Wixted
• Michael O'Shea as Doberman
• Helen Ford as Emmy Swasey
• Frank Fontaine as Hjalmer Johannson
• Dennie Moore as Bea Gingras
• John Alexander as Mr. Perry
• Jay C. Flippen as Dan Chancellor
• Nancy Kulp as Hazel Gingras
• Kathryn Card as Mrs. Kuschner
• Maudie Prickett as Delia Seaton
• Ken Christy as Mr. Kuschner
• Shirley Mills as Ina Kuschner

Walter Reisch, who worked on the film, asserted it:

... worked like a million dollars. Fox production head Darryl Zanuck loved the picture so much that I don't think he eliminated one frame. I don't remember one marginal note in a script of 140 pages. We came in on budget, and Cukor's work was lovely, sensitive. We had a big success, and the reason The Model and the Marriage Broker didn't score an even bigger success was because it came just at the start of the age of CinemaScope and color, and that story certainly did not lend itself to CinemaScope and color. It was very intimate... But when it was finished... Zanuck was so involved in CinemaScope and had put so much money and publicity into CinemaScope that he simply treated this picture as a stepchild. ^[3]

Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, wrote:

... the bluntness with which these poor people [the clients of the marriage broker] are both ridiculed and burlesqued is nothing short of brutal—or insensitive, to say the least. And thus the grotesque portrayals of such performers as Zero Mostel, Nancy Kulp, Frank Fontaine and John Alexander, while intended to be full of fun—and which do have their moments of savage humor—are heavy and heartless, on the whole. However, when Mr. Brackett; his co-authors, Walter Reisch and Richard Breen; his director, George Cukor, and his remarkably able cast get free of preliminaries and square away on a good old-fashioned tale of a nice lady playing cupid to a normal, healthy boy and girl, this essentially romantic picture not only brightens, it hums. ... as usual, it is Miss Ritter who runs away with the show, particularly when she is able to get free of the undertow. Her wisedup air, her cynicism disguising a heart of gold, her barrel-house voice, her sudden radiance have never been better employed.^[4]

In Mae Tinée's opinion for the Chicago Tribune:

Miss Ritter is a natural for a role such as this. ... Her lines never sound like dialog, they become her own, and never seem overdone. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the script, which strings its story out a bit too long, altho [sic] for the most part, it's very amusing.^[5]

The Boston Globe review noted the film "has a pretty heavy beginning and some slow moments. But after it gets over the hump, Miss Ritter, Brady and the lovely Miss Crain begin playing as though their respective hearts were in it."^[6]

• The Model and the Marriage Broker at the TCM Movie Database
• The Model and the Marriage Broker at IMDb
• The Model and the Marriage Broker at AllMovie
• The Model and the Marriage Broker at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films