Seven Brides for Seven Brothers(1954)

A short narrative can not capture the joyful exuberance of this free wheeling musical comedy that won the Oscar for best music.

The Pontipee brothers are 7 scruffy backwoods men living on the Oregon frontier.  Oldest brother Adam (Howard Keel) decides he is tired of their rough life and travels to town to find a wife.  When he tastes the food at the boarding house he immediately proposes to the cook, Millie (Jane Powell).  She accepts and they wed the same day.  When they arrive back at the homestead, Millie is surprised to discover the 6 brothers, that she is expected to cook and clean for.  She forces them to change their ways.  They have to bath, shave, wash their clothes, fix up the home, and most of all treat her with respect and consideration.

As months pass, the brothers decide they all want wives too.  Millie teaches them to court a girl, with lessons in dance and etiquette.  At the barn dance, each brother falls in love with a girl from town.  In late autumn, the brothers ride into town in the dark of night, and abduct their girls.  They are pursued by the townfolk, so the brothers start an avalanche that blocks the mountain pass.  The girls are trapped with them for the winter.  Millie is furious at what the brothers have done, and sends them to live in the barn, since they have acted like animals.  Adam won’t accept such treatment from his wife.  Adam and Millie fight, and he goes to live by himself on the mountain.

Over the course of the winter, the brothers and their girls all fall in love.  Millie reveals she is pregnant, and the baby is born just as the snow is melting to open the pass.  Adam returns.  When he thinks of how he would want his daughter treated, Adam comes to a new appreciation for Millie.  They make up. The girls fathers arrive with shotguns to rescue their daughters.  They are surprised to learn all the girls want to marry the brothers.  The movie ends with a 6 couple shotgun wedding.