And even more Ernst Lubistch completism with a dash of curiosity about Jimmy Stewart's early career. Samson Raphaelson derived his screenplay from the play by Miklós László.
Quite tame by Lubitsch's standards. Stewart is a clerk in a gift shop in Budapest with better taste than his boss or coworkers. Spunky Margaret Sullavan comes in, looking for a job, impresses with her mad skills in unloading a tacky music-box-ish cigarette receptacle on a susceptible woman and is hired on the spot. Both keep up a correspondence with a mysterious, sophisticated other. We do not get to see much of the letters. The boss, Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz (1939)), has some domestic difficulties. Things go predictably for the most part.
The identity shenanigans struck me as Shakespearean. The scenario wants us to believe the characters are somehow not materialistic despite their privation and work as salespeople. The women are all hysterical to varying degrees, and Sullavan's self-reflection pointed to the later psychologicals. Jimmy Stewart got to spin a yarn, much like in Rope (1948).
Frank S. Nugent at the time: genial and tender.
