Product Description

Studio: Kino International Release Date: 11/05/2002 Run time: 97 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76192 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-11-05
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.com
The Good Fairy is an amusing minor specimen of the sort of Continental whimsy Ernst Lubitsch raised to a fine art. William Wyler, though soon to acquire major-director status, displays little affinity for comedy, and, title notwithstanding, the often-magical Margaret Sullavan is notably less magical than in her other '30s efforts (she and Wyler had a great love-hate thing going during filming, and eloped on his motorcycle right afterward). The real stars are screenwriter Preston Sturges and the breed of exuberant character actors with whom he would make manically beautiful music upon turning director himself: Reginald Owen, Eric Blore, Torben Meyer, Luis Alberni, et al. Herbert Marshall sporadically brings a Lubitschean delicacy to his role as the struggling lawyer who doesn't know he's "married" to Sullavan's sweetly balmy movie usherette (it's a long story), and Frank Morgan, as a plutocrat who desperately wants to play the roué, is really the Wizard of Oz in training. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Utterly charming little known gem
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.

One of the funniest (and least known) Thirties comedies
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.

Entrancing romantic comedy
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.