History Main / MailOrderBride

* Aussie soap opera ''Series/{{Neighbours}}'' featured one character ordering a Russian mail-order bride. She was deported when she tried to bribe the Immigration people.

* In the German improvisational comedy show ''{{Series/Schillerstrasse}}'' Cordula get's the direction to believe Maddin's new girlfriend is a mail-order bride from Russia.

* ''Series/{{Wings}}'' had Roy order a Russian mail-order bride. The bride showed up and it was clear that she really didn't like him. But, she had no choice but to marry him. At the last minute, Roy had a change of heart and lets her go to marry a man she fell for.

A common setting for this is in TheWestern, but can easily evolve in any situation where there is a surplus of men in one place and a surplus of poor women in another place. The UsefulNotes/WorldWarII version of this trope would be the "Army War Brides" movie. In that time period, many soldiers returned to their home country with a foreign bride. The bride's country of origin is stereotypically somewhere in Eastern Europe (particularly Russia, Ukraine, Romania, or, in older works, Latvia and Bulgaria), Southeast Asia (usually Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, or Cambodia), or Central America.

A common setting for this is in TheWestern, but can easily evolve in any situation where there is a surplus of men in one place and a surplus of poor women in another place. The UsefulNotes/WorldWarII version of this trope would be the "Army War Brides" movie. In that time period, many soldiers returned to their home country with a foreign bride.

* ''Sarah, Plain and Tall'', a children's book published in 1985, later made into a movie and stage play, is about a mail-order bride in the late 19th century, who has been ordered by a widowed farmer who really needs somebody to look after his children.

* In Ann Turner's ''Third Girl from the Left'' Sarah answers a classified ad requesting a wife for a cattle rancher in Montana because she's tired of her Maine hometown. Unfortunately, the rancher is a bit older, and life in Montana a bit harsher, than she was led to believe.

* Played to heartwarming effect in ''Film/SweetLand'', where a young Minnesota farmer gets a German mail-order bride around WWI. Needless to say, [[AcceptableTargets Germans were not exactly popular]] at the time, but the farmer and his wife fall in love, and he defends her against the angry townspeople.

If the trope is dealt with in a drama, it will be in a series like ''Franchise/LawAndOrder''. The mail-order bride plot causes a crime or scam that results in either an elaborate GoldDigger or ConArtist scheme if she's the perp (though usually a side of SympatheticCriminal may be at play as she's escaping her home country's poverty). If he's the perp (or if it's ''[[Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit SVU]]''), it's a combo plate of forced prostitution, DomesticAbuse, MaritalRapeLicense, forced labor, and/or murder. The man's played as a loser, misogynist, and creep who resorted to exploiting the desperation of women in third-world poverty and treating her as a combination of domestic labor and SexSlave. Add plot complications caused by the bride's uncertain legal status. [[note]] Some TruthInTelevision, the case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Reeves Jack Reeves]], who murdered two mail-order brides, being a notorious one. [[/note]]

* ''WesternAnimation/JohnnyBravo'' had a second season episode about this, "To Helga and Back". Johnny ordered a girl from a dating service who turned out to be a very large German tomboy. He did eventually fall for her after many {{Zany Scheme}}s to repulse her but lost her when he started acting like his usual, narcissistic self.

* The documentary ''Love Me'' covers the experiences of six (five of them middle-aged) men who attempt to get a mail-order bride from Ukraine; two of them do end up HappilyMarried by the end of the documentary, while three end up getting scammed, and one ultimately decides that [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere this is not for him]].
* Another documentary, ''Diary of a Mail Order Bride'', deals with three men (two from the U.K. one from the U.S.) trying to get a Russian bride. One does get married to her, another is jilted by his Russian girlfriend, and the third leaves empty-handed (after being both scammed and rejected).

* An episode of ''Series/TheLoneRanger'' zigzags this: a Chinese laundryman and his mail-order fiancee are very happy with each other, but a group of townspeople use increasingly nasty methods to try to break them up or even kill one or both of them: they are perfectly happy using the laundryman's services, but they don't want any children increasing the town population of Chinese(-American) people.

* In the first episode of ''Here Come the Brides'' the Bolt brothers have a ''hundred'' brides from Massachusetts brought to Seattle to keep their logging crew from quitting.

* A similar episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' had the detectives learning that their VictimOfTheWeek was one of three sisters who came to America this way and that her husband had been abusive as well as being like the husband described above (he wasn't her killer, however). Her twin sister's husband was much nicer and the two are HappilyMarried. The twins' younger sister was rejected by her husband and forced into prostitution so the women who arranged the whole thing could get her money back.

A common setting for this is in TheWestern, but can easily evolve in any situation where there is a surplus of men at one place and a surplus of poor women at another place. The UsefulNotes/WorldWarII version of this trope would be the "Army War Brides" movie/movies. In that time period, many soldiers returned to their home country with a foreign bride.

* During one of his adventures, ComicBook/TexWiller had to escort a number of women across the country while they went to their potential husbands. Horribly {{Subverted}} at the end when it's revealed it was a scam to lure young women and force them into prostitution, and while this group escapes their fate due Tex gunning down the bandits the scam had been going on for quite some time.

* The astonishingly bad 1971 movie ''Film/{{Blindman}}''. A blind, but deadly, gunman, is hired to escort fifty mail order brides to their miner husbands. His business partners double cross him, selling the women to bandit Domingo. Blindman heads into Mexico in pursuit.
* In ''Film/DodgeballATrueUnderdogStory'', one character is shown to have an Asian mail order bride that hates him. Hubby is completely oblivious.

* In the 1949 movie, ''Film/IWasAMaleWarBride'', Cary Grant plays the part of a Frenchman who marries a female American soldier at the end of WWII, and encounters various problems as a male version of this trope.

* The 2003 comedy ''Film/MailOrderBride'' concerns a mafioso trying to catch a Russian mail order bride who scammed several of his fellow men before escaping back to her home country.
* An OlderThanTelevision example is featured in the 1912 silent movie ''Mail Order Wife''. The twist here is that said "mail order wife" already knew one of the main characters, both having been romantically involved years ago. After breaking off the relationship, the man joined forces with a partner to run a ranch and said partner writes to a mail-order house for a wife, which turns out to be the other man's ex. The old love awakens and the partner who was to marry her at first is forced to give her up to the other man.
* In the 2004 comedy ''Film/MailOrderWife'', a documentarian funds a doorman's East Asian mail order wife in exchange for the right to film the experience. It turns into a LoveTriangle when the wife also gets involved with the documentarian.
* In the 1954 movie, ''Film/TheNakedJungle'', Charleton Heston plays a wealthy cocoa plantation owner in Venezuela who sends for a mail-order bride, who is a widow from New Orleans. It is actually a marriage-by-proxy with his brother standing in for him during the legal ceremony. After she arrives and they meet, the two strong-willed individuals both at first regret the arrangement. However, a plague of army ants allows true love to triumph.

* ''Film/ThePictureBride'' (1994) features the related early 20th-century practice of "picture brides", a sort of matchmaking service where immigrants would be paired with brides from their native countries using only pictures and recommendations from their families. Here, the story follows the bride, who is at first dismayed that her husband is much older than on the photo and that she will have to work in the sugarcane fields, but tries to make the best of it.
* ''Film/PrairieFever'': The PreacherMan of Clearwater arranged for 17 mail order brides to be delivered, but three of them go mad from the 'prairie fever', and Preston Briggs is hired to deliver them to the railway station in Carson City so they can be quietly shipped back east.

* ''Literature/MuchAdoAboutGrubstake'': Bridget, the hotel maid and waitress, came to Grubstake from Ireland (where she was an unhappy servant girl) as a mail order bride for a successful prospector. His claim petered out before she came, and he skipped town without waiting for her. She's rather tranquil about the situation, as she likes her job and doesn't know if she would have loved her husband-to-be.

* ''Series/BlackSaddle'': In "Client: Dawes", Clay defends a mail order bride who is accused of murder when he new husband dies in a seeming accident. Maggie Dawes mentions her husband having picked her out of a catalogue.

* One episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'' features a body with all its bones removed. It turns out the woman was a Chinese mail order bride, but her American husband got a ''refund'' because she was sickly (and therefore, not what he ordered). Rather than lose their investment on her, the company then killed her and sold her bones to a local Chinese family to act as a "Ghost Bride" for their dead son (at least in universe, a Chinese man ''needs'' a wife in the afterlife, so if he dies without one, the family acquires a skeleton for that purpose). Angela somehow finds the conclusion romantic.
* Played with on ''Series/{{CSI}}''. One man ordered a Russian mail-order bride and then killed her when she wasn't really in love with him and was planning to leave him for a less-controlling man. By the time the [=CSI=]s find her body years later he's already remarried to another mail-order bride from China.

* ''Series/DrQuinnMedicineWoman'': Loren seeks out one of these, realizing that he's getting on in his age and not wanting to be alone for the rest of his life, but ultimately decides against it.

* An episode of ''Series/HaveGunWillTravel'' has Paladin escorting a mail order bride to her new husband out west.
* It is implied that Alan Partridge's girlfriend Sonja in the second series of ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' came to England on such an arrangement. She's a gregarious woman who clearly cares for Alan, which is a bit unfortunate for her since he views her with little more than contempt and is clearly only in it for the ego-boost of getting to sleep with someone 17 years younger than him.
* One episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' had a mail-order bride desperate for a real life, whereas her husband just wanted a maid he could fuck. The bride and her lover were two of the more {{sympathetic murderer}}s in the franchise history.

* The ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' episode "Ministry of Virtue" is set around a Christian charitable organisation, the Virtue Ministry, which gives female convicts in London's Holloway Women's Prison the option of being [[SentencedToDownUnder transported to Canada]] for "virtuous marriage" to the men who've paid their passage (based on the RealLife "Salvation Girls"). Murdoch is uncertain about the morality of this, but rationalises that they had a choice. Dr Ogden doesn't feel they had any choice at all, while Inspector Brakenreid opposes it for the opposite reason; the UK is sending criminals to run free in his city. The VictimOfTheWeek is one of the brides, and it eventually transpires [[spoiler: that in fact the organiser's "charges" killed her, and the supposed victim took her place]].

* Healy from ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'' married Katya as a mail order bride from the Ukraine.

* Subverted in an episode of ''Series/VeronicaMars''. A woman claiming to be a Russian immigrant looking for an ex-boyfriend she met through the Internet turns out to be [[spoiler:a member of Russian mafia searching for a witness.]]

* ''Series/{{Wings}}'' had Roy order a Russian mail-order bride. The bride showed up and it was clear that she really didn't like him. But, she had no choice but to marry him. At the last minute, Roy had a change of heart and let her go to marry a man she fell for.

* Steve and his friends order a Russian mail order bride in ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad.'' She [[StatusQuoIsGod disappears at the end of the episode, of course.]] Lampshaded in "Escape From Pearl Baily" when Toshi says "Didn't I have a wife once?"

* ''WesternAnimation/MonkeyDust'' had a recurring sketch much like the ''Series/LittleBritain'' example above, where a truly disgusting middle-aged man has a mail order bride who remains permanently adoring of him no matter what repulsive thing he says or does.

** One episode reveals that Selma once ordered a mail order husband. Upon opening the door, she discovered "he" was really a cardboard cutout of a man in a suit carrying flowers.

If the trope is dealt with in a drama, it will be in a series like ''Franchise/LawAndOrder''. The mail-order bride plot causes a crime or scam that results in either an elaborate GoldDigger or ConArtist scheme if she's the perp (though usually a side of SympatheticCriminal may be at play as she's escaping her home country's poverty). If he's the perp (or if it's ''[[Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit SVU]]''), it's a combo plate of forced prostitution, DomesticAbuse, MaritalRapeLicense, forced labor, and/or murder. The man played as a loser, misogynist, and creep who resorted to exploiting the desperation of women in third-world poverty and treating her as a combination of domestic labor and SexSlave. Add plot complications caused by the bride's uncertain legal status. [[note]] Some TruthInTelevision, the case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Reeves Jack Reeves]], who murdered two mail-order brides, being a notorious one. [[/note]]

It's also the fodder for an entire genre of romance novels, in which a young woman from east of the Mississippi becomes a mail-order bride for a man who has gone out West to seek his fortune. Naturally given the genre, after the usual round of drama they genuinely fall in love.[[labelnote:*]]This wasn't at all uncommon in the time period depicted, but needless to say, the usual genre conventions did ''not'' always apply in real life.[[/labelnote]]