The Marrying Kind: what does that mean? As one who once married young and for love, I really don't know. I suspect, generally and not counting shotgun weddings, it refers to a personality more earnest than others, perhaps naive and silly, and certainly terribly optimistic. (Whoever said a "second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience" got it backwards. It's the first marriage that's pure hope.)
Director George Cukor decided to make a movie in search of the answer. New York City, which in 1952 included all the boroughs, not just Yelp Island. Young working-class newlyweds caught up in the deliriums of post-World War II America. Judy Holliday and a fine new actor, ex-prizefighter Aldo Ray. In-laws, broken dreams, money troubles; and the death of a child. The Marrying Kind find themselves pulled apart by The Practical Kind -- all those ready to provide every unmagical reason in the world not to stay together.
The movie says, "No -- love is not blind. In fact, love is the only state in which we truly see someone. To lose love is to lose vision, to lose understanding." For then the loved one becomes just like everyone else. . .
It is a very dear film. And how lovely to see a New York City that does not take itself too seriously, a place where people have real jobs (and real accents!).
