Wednesday 23 February 2022

Fifth Avenue Girl (1939 Gregory La Cava & co-scr)

As the two readers of this blog will know, La Cava also made the 1936 classic My Man Godfrey, with which this shares major similarities, not the least being they're set in the same Avenue. The plot is essentially the same - a dysfunctional rich family is repaired by the influence of an outsider, in this instance, tough working girl Ginger Rogers, who has befriended sad Walter Connelly, celebrating his birthday alone with the seals in the Park.

Rest of family: cheating mother Verree Teasdale, lazy son Tim Holt, and madcap daughter Kathryn Adams, who's in love with the communist chauffeur James Ellison (who gets many of the best lines). Franklin Pangborn, Louis Calhern and Jack Carson are in it a bit.

Photographed by Robert de Grasse, music by Russell Bennett. Morrie Ryskind wrote the story outline, screenplay by Allan Scott.

The director's She Married Her Boss (1935 Claudette Colbert) seems sadly available only in pirated edition.

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