Jane Wyman & Wayne Morris

The first three movies where Jane Wyman and Wayne Morris are members of the same cast place them in entirely unconnected bit roles. Not until Brother Rat do they join a cast that affords them large portions of screen time and some semblance of interaction. It is also in this movie that Ronald Reagan’s character enjoys for the first time Ms. Wyman’s attention and affection, both on and off the screen. Mr. Morris’ character does play opposite Ms. Wyman’s as a romantic lead in their next two collaborations. These two movies, The Kid from Kokomo and Gambling on the High Seas, showed up in theaters a year apart, respectively, and do portray Jane Wyman and Wayne Morris as a cute couple, but they also came to theaters just a few months before and then a few months after Ms. Wyman became Mrs. Ronald Reagan. That event, along with the fact that Brother Rat and its two sequels (i.e. Brother Rat and Baby and An Angel from Texas) put Mr. Reagan in place as Ms. Wyman’s sweetheart, apparently confirmed for movie audiences in the 1940s that Mr. Morris and Ms. Wyman were even cuter when their romantic interests proved to be in someone else. Jane Wyman does continue to appear in projects with Wayne Morris throughout the decade, but never again as his romantic opposite. Here is a list of the their collaborations:

Here Comes Carter (1936)
Polo Joe (1936)
Smart Blonde (1937)
Brother Rat (1938)
The Kid from Kokomo (1939)
Gambling on the High Seas (1940)
Brother Rat and a Baby (1940)
Flight Angels (1940)
An Angel from Texas (1940)
Bad Men of Missouri (1941)
A Kiss in the Dark (1949)