Jean Arthur, poor girl, is given a gift by blustery Edward Arnold, rich man. The two are strangers who have met by accident and don't even bother to learn each others' names but certain people misunderstand. Why would "the bull of Wall Street" give a pretty blond a $58,000 mink coat unless they were playing doctor? The movie is sometimes very funny and sometimes plain silly but it moves with the momentum of a tsunami and it's hard to resist. It was written by Preston Sturges who was about to make a couple of comic masterpieces and they're adumbrated in some of these scenes. I don't know if you're familiar with the scene in "Sullivan's Travels" in which a huge recreational vehicle speeds over rutted rural roads but the slapstick there is echoed in the slapstick here, in a scene that takes place in an automat and had me laughing out loud.
There's nothing subtle about the comedy. Mistaken identities, rich and poor, slightly risqué, and everybody talks at full volume and rushes around in a frenzy. It may be Eugene Pallet elsewhere but it's Edward Arnold here, who looks like the manager of a German pork store in Yorkville who is about to pop a gut with anger and frustration.
Ray Milland has had better roles. He's no Cary Grant. But Jean Arthur and her tangential prettiness is perfect. Franklin Pangborn has always played an effete wimp, but here he's at his most flamboyantly gay. Luis Alberni as the Italian owner of a ritzy hotel isn't as amusing as the script seems to think he is, and he overacts like everyone else. Yet in its own unquiet way it's a successful screwball comedy. The director, Mitchell Leisen, does a craftsmanlike job but one can't help wondering what Howard Hawks would have done with material like this.
Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin don't get any screen credit for writing the title tune which is heard briefly as a jaunty instrumental with wide intervals. It was turned into a light and charming ballad and became a minor standard in vernacular culture. You can hear a snatch of it in "Chinatown."
There's nothing subtle about the comedy. Mistaken identities, rich and poor, slightly risqué, and everybody talks at full volume and rushes around in a frenzy. It may be Eugene Pallet elsewhere but it's Edward Arnold here, who looks like the manager of a German pork store in Yorkville who is about to pop a gut with anger and frustration.
Ray Milland has had better roles. He's no Cary Grant. But Jean Arthur and her tangential prettiness is perfect. Franklin Pangborn has always played an effete wimp, but here he's at his most flamboyantly gay. Luis Alberni as the Italian owner of a ritzy hotel isn't as amusing as the script seems to think he is, and he overacts like everyone else. Yet in its own unquiet way it's a successful screwball comedy. The director, Mitchell Leisen, does a craftsmanlike job but one can't help wondering what Howard Hawks would have done with material like this.
Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin don't get any screen credit for writing the title tune which is heard briefly as a jaunty instrumental with wide intervals. It was turned into a light and charming ballad and became a minor standard in vernacular culture. You can hear a snatch of it in "Chinatown."