The Good Fairy **** (1935, Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, Frank Morgan) – Classic Movie Review 7948

Director William Wyler’s 1935 screwball romantic comedy The Good Fairy stars Margaret Sullavan as kindly but helpless young Budapest movie theatre worker Luisa ‘Lu’ Ginglebuscher, an orphaned usherette who attracts a quartet of admirers, in screen-writer Preston Sturges’s delightful, strongly cast, deliciously played comedy based on the play by Ferenc Molnar.

Frank Morgan plays Konrad Nelson, a meat-packing millionaire who pledges to make her husband rich, so she picks the first name she finds in the phone book – that of lawyer Max Sporum (Herbert Marshall). Reginald Owen (as Detlaff the waiter) and Cesar Romero (as Joe) play Sullavan’s other admirers.

Sturges changed the beginning and much of the message of the play, but kept its charm and spirit. It is a career highspot for Sullavan.

Ann Miller has a bit part as a schoolgirl in the orphanage and Jane Withers is an extra, a child in the orphanage sequence. Also in the cast are Alan Hale Sr, Beulah Bondi, Eric Blore, Luis Alberni, Al Bridge, George Davis, Hugh O’Connell, June Clayworth, Matt McHugh, Torben Meyer and Frank Moran.

The Good Fairy is directed by William Wyler, runs 96 minutes, is made and released by Universal, is written by Preston Sturges and Jane Hinton
(English translation of play), based on the play by Ferenc Molnar, is shot in black and white by Norbert Brodine, is produced by Carl Laemmle Jr, William Wyler and Henry Henigson (associate producer), is scored by Heinz Roemheld (music and musical director) and David Klatzkin (composer stock music), and is designed by Charles D Hall.

Sullavan and Wyler got married during production.

Forgotten star Margaret Sullavan (1909–1960) made only 16 films between 1933 and 1943, notably including The Good Fairy (1935), The Next Time We Love (1936), Three Comrades (1938), The Shopworn Angel (1938), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Back Street (1941), with one final movie in 1950, No Sad Songs for Me.

Her 1931 Christmas Day marriage to Henry Fonda lasted only 15 months. He recalled: ‘It was just hot and cold all the time. And fights… we would be in desperate fights about anything.’ Her subsequent marriage to William Wyler (25 November 1934 – 13 March 1936) was equally short and tempestuous.

Helen Hayes played the title role in the 1931 Broadway production.

It is remade as Deanna Durbin’s I’ll Be Yours (1947).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7948

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