The Good Fairy

Rating:
Summary: CAPTIVATING MARGARET SULLAVAN.
Review: Alan Hale plays the owner of the largest movie theatre in Budapest. He persuades the head of the city's orphanage to allow one the her girls to become an usherette. Hale selects the naive, gregarious Luisa (Sullavan) - who has just crashed to the floor from a chandelier after acting out the story of THE GOOD FAIRY for the younger girls. Hale warns Luisa of the evils of men and the importance of good deeds.....A thoroughly charming excursion into a Hollywood long gone, this little movie still pleases and endears those who like whimsy. Helen Hayes starred in the Broadway version of the play. Sullavan and director William Wyler were in all actuality married when this was filmed: they bickered and clashed throughout production. Originally, the scene with Hale and Sullavan mentioned above was to imply Hale teaching Sullavan the "facts of life". Naturally, 1934 censors deemed this as gravely objectionable, so his advice to Luisa was concerned about her general unworldliness - rather than being sexually green.

Rating:
Summary: Entrancing romantic comedy
Review: Margaret Sullavan plays a naive orphan who gets a job as an usherette in a massively grand cinema of the sort that modern cinema-goers can only dream about. She is befriended by waiter Reginald Owen, who gets her aninvitation to a party at a posh hotel. Here she meets a would-be seducer, a wealthy meat-exporter, Frank Morgan. She pretends to be married in order to cool Morgan off, and he promises to make her husband rich. Anxious to perform good deeds, she selects a lawyer's name at random from the phone book, and Morgan offers him a contract. Sullavan can't resist visiting the lawyer, Herbert Marshall (suave and charming as always) and naturally falls for him. The film gets funnier and funnier as her life becomes more complicated and entangled with the three bemused men, Reginald Owen, determined to keep her virtuous, Frank Morgan, trying for exactly the opposite, and Herbert Marshall, who of course is falling in love with her. The climax, where all four of them are engaged in a hopeless conversation of crossed purposes, reduced me to tears of laughter. This is a sublimely funny film, with occasional moments of dramatic tension (like will Sullavan succeed in making Marshall shave off his beard? I could scarcely stand the suspence). The best line in the film is when Moregan tells Marshall "well, I could use one honest lawyer, but don't overdo it". This film is just sublime.

Rating:
Summary: Entrancing romantic comedy
Review: Margaret Sullavan plays a naive orphan who gets a job as an usherette in a massively grand cinema of the sort that modern cinema-goers can only dream about. She is befriended by waiter Reginald Owen, who gets her aninvitation to a party at a posh hotel. Here she meets a would-be seducer, a wealthy meat-exporter, Frank Morgan. She pretends to be married in order to cool Morgan off, and he promises to make her husband rich. Anxious to perform good deeds, she selects a lawyer's name at random from the phone book, and Morgan offers him a contract. Sullavan can't resist visiting the lawyer, Herbert Marshall (suave and charming as always) and naturally falls for him. The film gets funnier and funnier as her life becomes more complicated and entangled with the three bemused men, Reginald Owen, determined to keep her virtuous, Frank Morgan, trying for exactly the opposite, and Herbert Marshall, who of course is falling in love with her. The climax, where all four of them are engaged in a hopeless conversation of crossed purposes, reduced me to tears of laughter. This is a sublimely funny film, with occasional moments of dramatic tension (like will Sullavan succeed in making Marshall shave off his beard? I could scarcely stand the suspence). The best line in the film is when Moregan tells Marshall "well, I could use one honest lawyer, but don't overdo it". This film is just sublime.

Rating:
Summary: Utterly charming little known gem
Review: Marvelous comedy starring the great Margaret Sullavan, who is excellent as a naive girl who goes out of the orphanage where she has lived all of her life (in Budapest), to work as an usherette in a lavish cinema owned by Mr. Schlapkohl (Alan Hale), eventually becoming "the good fairy" to an arrogant and very moralistic lawyer, expertly played by Herbert Marshall, in an un-typical role.

Frank Morgan is excellent too as the millionaire who's after Sullavan and, unknowingly, gives her the chance to be a "good fairy". Also, there's an hilarious performance by the great character actor Reginald Owen, as the waiter of a luxurious hotel, who befriends Sullavan and tries to save her from Morgan's clutches.

This is the type of movie they do not make anymore, flawless, charming, enchanting, with lovable characters, thanks to Preston Sturges' wonderful script and William Wyler's deft direction..... Morgan and Sullavan "visited" together Budapest once more, but this time as a store owner and salesgirl in that other masterpiece from 1940, Lubitsch's "The Shop Around the Corner", which also featured Jimmy Stewart.

Don't miss buying this one, because it's scarcely shown on television and has long been unavailable. The DVD is of very good quality.

Rating:
Summary: An early classic for three of Hollywood's greatest.
Review: This has long been director William Wyler's hardest-to-find classic, a truly nutty, thoroughly charming romantic comedy written by the incomparable Preston Sturges (and very loosely based on a Ferenc Molnar play). All the Sturges touches that would later be his hallmarks as a director are here - the jaded wit, the almost dance-like physical comedy, the hilarious supporting cast of characters (the priceless Eric Blore, Frank Morgan, Beulah Bondi and Alan Hale, among others)... "The Good Fairy" is as much his as Wyler's. Margaret Sullavan is captivating as always as the pure-of-heart (and slightly loopy) heroine - a characterization she would come to perfect in later roles. As for Wyler, this was the first in what would be a string of classics in an astonishing number of genres. But here they are - Preston Sturges, Margaret Sullavan and William Wyler - near the beginning of their careers, already in top form, in a forgotten classic FINALLY available again for public viewing. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: What's a foxine between friends?
Review: This is a rather wonderful movie. The phrase "very funny" recurs throughout in various contexts and it really describes the movie itself. I wake up in the middle of the night and start laughing as scenes from this movie play through my head.

I snap up anything having to do with Margaret Sullavan. According to Quirk's biography, she was advised to turn down this role. She'd made a reputation in Hollywood as a serious dramatic actress and the feeling among her handlers was that taking a frothy role like this would confuse the public as to what kind of personality she was. For her part, the most important thing was refining her skills as an actress and comedy was an area she felt needed work. Hence she insisted on taking the part, almost as an exercise. The results are gratifying in that Margaret Sullavan is really funny here, more so than in any other comedic performance by her that I've seen (the others are in "The Moon's Our Home" and "The Shop Around The Corner," the latter an excellent film).

As I acquaint myself with these old Margaret Sullavan movies I learn about other performers of the day who also possessed great talent. Here it's Herbert Marshall who is, indeed, very funny as he delivers lines like "new office equipment...to start with."

Addendum 10/4/03 - These remarks are for music fanatics only. I've realized that nearly every melody in the score of this film is derived from the same six-note descending scale that concludes the Wagner wedding march heard at the very end. To get an idea of what I mean, listen to the end of the march sung by the kids just as Margaret Sullavan in wedding garb fades out. This is followed immediately by a reprise of the opening theme of the film, and as you can hear, the first six notes of that theme are exactly the same as the final six notes of the wedding march.

Most if not all of the other melodies also begin with this same sequence of descending notes, sometimes transposed or otherwise varied. Just listen to each of them starting with the melodramatic melody heard during the mock movie ("Go!"), moving on to the ballroom music at the ritzy hotel where the same descending scale forms the backbone of the melody, then later the scene where Margaret Sullavan models the foxine and a playful melody is heard that begins with the descending sequence, but here beginning on the fifth degree of the scale.

Film composers have always been overtrained for their work, and I realize now that this must be the kind of game they indulge in to try to stay challenged.

Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest (and least known) Thirties comedies
Review: Very few people know of this delightful gem from 1935, starring the sublime Margaret Sullavan in one of her very best parts. She plays Luisa, a completely unworldly orphan hired from her orphanage to work in a movie theatre as an usherette by Alan Hale. Hale is the first of a series of "good fairies" who come to Luisa and try to transform her life: the other is Herbert Marshall (as a grouchy waiter), Frank Morgan (as an amorous millionaire) and Reginald Owen (as a poor lawyer)--but all the while it's Luisa who thinks she's acting the role of Good Fairy to them. The script (Preston Sturges's re-write of a Molnar play) here is so superb (and constantly surprising) that you would have thought it was exactly tailored to the various actors' talents: none of them have ever been funnier. But even when none of them are onscreen (in the hilarious movie-within-amovie sequence) it's still funny. Sullavan took this role (she acted only infrequently onscreen, much preferring the stage) to improve her comedy skills, but she's absolutely peerless: her delight over her "genuine foxine" tippet near the movie's end, and her subsequent bickering over its beauty with Morgan, are indescribably charming.