Easy Living - 120 Screwball Years of Jean Arthur Blogathon
Screwball comedy, the comedienne extraordinaire Jean Arthur and dashing Ray Milland? Was Easy Living made especially for me?
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This is my entry for the 120 "Screwball" Years of Jean Harlow blogathon, hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema. Make sure you click through to read all the great entries!
I chose a new-to-me Jean Arthur flick for this blogathon, and, honestly, once I saw that Ray Milland was also in the cast of this film, I knew I'd choose Easy Living. Here's the premise from TCM: "When a working girl tries to return a lost fur coat, she gets caught up in a wealthy family's battles."
Let's dive in.
Easy Living is a stacked movie. Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Starring Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold and Ray Milland. A cabal of character actors including Luis Alberni, Mary Nash, Franklin Pangborn and William Demarest. Screenplay by Preston Sturges.
Junior's just about had enough of J.B.'s attitude, so he vows that his father will never have to worry about him again: he's moving out and he's not going to be beholden to the family money anymore!
After a protracted chase, with many antics as they try to dodge around the household staff, J.B. finds her up there and yanks the coat from her arms. She asks what he's going to do, and he says he'll show her. Then he tosses it from the roof and they watch it freefall down into the hustle and bustle of the New York City streets.
If the coat had landed on the pavement then naturally we'd have no movie. It falls, instead, on Jean Arthur as she's riding a double decker bus to work.
J.B. comes downstairs to see what happened, and meets Mary Smith. She's outraged that he broke her hat, and when she tries to return the coat, he tells her to keep it (he also tells her it's faux fur).
It's from Mr. Louis, whose real name is Louis Louis, proprietor of the Louis Hotel. He needs to meet with her, urgent exclamation point!
Mr. Louis takes her to the 14th floor, Suites 1401-14. It's honestly the most stunning hotel suite I've ever seen. I wouldn't mind living there!
The gym room, complete with mechanical horse.
Which is, probably, you know, a good thing, considering Mrs. Ball (Jenny) just dropped $58,000 on a Kalinsky fur coat and has a whole closet of them already. J.B., naturally, goes into such a rage upon finding this out that he tells her he has to return it. He grabs the coat from the closet, but Jenny gets it back and runs up to the roof with it. To use as a parachute, perhaps?
I mean...who spends $58,000 on a fur coat? Is that a real thing? Are super rich people out here spending that kind of dough on fur coats? I balk when I have to buy myself a new blazer and it's over $50; I can't imagine spending that kind of money. Fun fact: adjusted for inflation, that coat would cost just over $1 million today. Let them eat cake!
"What's the big idea?" she asks the man behind her.
He offers to buy her a new hat to replace the destroyed feather cap she'd been wearing, and in the ride over to the shop, we learn more about Mary Smith. She works at a boy's magazine, Boy's Constant Companion, which J.B. says can't be that big of a publication, he's not a reader and he's never heard of it. He's so charming...
Anyways. They get to the shop and Mary gets an expensive new hat to replace the old one. J.B. says he doesn't have cash on him, to the shock of Van Buren (played by Franklin Pangborn) and instead asks that the invoice be billed to his work, and hands him his information.
Van Buren naturally assumes that Mary is J.B.'s mistress and he keeps that information to himself.
Just kidding. He gets on the horn and starts spreading the gossip that Mary Smith is J.B. Ball's mistress, and details what they bought from him.
Meanwhile, Mary shows up late at the offices of Boy's Constant Companion with her new fur coat and the busybody office administrator immediately sticks her nose into it. She has Mary brought into the boss's office where they give her the third degree for the fur coat. She tries to explain that it's a Kalinsky (which she think means it's faux fur) but the administrator argues that it's actually a mink coat.
Mary's boss doesn't want any scandal associated with the magazine, because the implication is that Mary must be a kept woman with a coat like that, so he fires her. Did labour boards exist back in those days? Imagine getting fired for that reason today!
And at J.B.'s office, he's meeting with Mr. Louis (played by Luis Alberni), a hotelier who has a loan due. He's trying everything he can to keep his hotel in business, but nothing works.
Until Van Buren spots him on the sidewalk and rushes over to tell him all about Mary and J.B. that morning.
That night, at Mary's apartment, she's starving, strapped for cash, behind on rent and unemployed. She watches a family eating a nice meal across the way, and then searches high and low for even a dime. There's nothing in her pocketbook...
...but there is some rattling in her piggy bank!
When she breaks it open, the change flies everywhere, so Mary's got to get on her hands and knees to search for her money. Conveniently, that also happens to be the moment a note is slipped under her door.
Here's Mr. Louis's plan: he's going to install Mary at the best suite in the Louis Hotel as a way to stave off foreclosure. After all, only a monster would foreclose on the place his mistress is living! Mary, however, is oblivious to his true motives. She just thinks it's luck!
There are three reception rooms, plus a closet that contains a ladder (for hanging pictures, Mr. Louis says).
This is the main salon room.
A fourth reception room and through that, the kitchen. This suite is so large, Mr. Louis forgets where the kitchen is!
The first bedroom, and in front of it (towards us, separated by glass doors), another reception room.
The dressing room.
The bathroom.
Anyways, they start to negotiate how much it'll cost Mary to stay there (she's still in the dark, remember). She informs him that she used to pay $7.00 a month and got one egg for breakfast.
After arguing back and forth for a bit, with Mr. Louis saying that he only wants her to put in a good word for him with J.B., he tells her that she can stay as his guest.
After he leaves, the still-starving Mary high-tails it for the kitchen.
But the gas box (as the fridge is called, it's a new-fangled machine that runs on gas, according to Mr. Louis, and he doesn't trust it) is empty.
So Mary goes to the automat.
A quick note about automats: I'm obsessed with them. I love the idea of them; I love the old photographs of automats, love seeing old menus, and love it when they appear in movies. I wish they still existed. I'd love to be able to go to one. I was definitely born in the wrong time.
Look at the signs in the background: drinks, pies, hot dishes. There are also cold dishes and a drink station just out of view. You insert money into a slot and the door opens, and then you pluck whatever dish you've chosen from behind the glass and you enjoy. Simple concept!
Mary watches this gentlemen consume plate after plate after plate, and then remarks to the bus boy...
He tells her it's par for the course there.
...causing all the windows to open and all the food to be exposed to hungry patrons.
Which everybody takes part in, except Mary. It causes such a melee that John gets fired from his job.
Back at the Ball mansion, J.B. tells his servant to pack him a bag, he's staying elsewhere tonight.
Remember him? This is John Ball, Jr. out earning an honest living. He thinks he recognizes Mary from somewhere (it's likely the coat giving him that impression), and after toying with him, she says they've never met.
Nonetheless, he's entranced. He tells her to head over to the hot dishes section and choose whatever she wants. He'll open the door from the inside, where they prep and place all the dishes, so she can get a nice hot meal.
She takes him up on the offer (starving, remember?), but unfortunately for John, he gets caught.
They start fighting, smashing all the dishes on all the nearby counters, and then John's foot gets tangled in the levers...
They walk back to the Louis Hotel, commiserating the entire time.
In the Imperial Suite, Mary and John are trying to figure out how to turn on the water in the elaborate bathtub.
John finds it, soaking them in the process.
Van Buren shows up with more clothing and accessories for Mary to wear.
And downstairs, Mr. Louis is trying to convince gossip columnist Wallace Whistling about J.B. and Mary's affair. He doesn't buy it because he knows for a fact that J.B. would never buy any girl a sable coat.
But Wallace Whistling's going to be convinced in a matter of seconds, when J.B. arrives at the hotel for a room. He doesn't even remember Mr. Louis.
As Mr. Louis takes him over to the elevators, Mary comes out of the other. It's the first time anyone has seen them together since their shopping trip at Van Buren...
...and Wallace Whistling gets on the horn to add some late-breaking gossip to his column.
Back in the Imperial Suite, Mary and John are supping on the "best supper I've ever supped," according to him. See the embroidery on the back of his bathrobe? Stolen from Hotel Louis.
They fall asleep after a kiss goodnight.
In the morning, Wallace Whistling's column appears and rages through New York City as people put together the riddle.
Mary's phones are ringing off the hook, now that everybody knows who she is. She's still, unbelievably, totally unaware of what's going on.
John comes in with more presents for her.
And Jenny boards a train, heading away from the melee.
Mr. Louis tries to talk in code with J.B., but J.B. is also just as oblivious as to what's going on.
Upstairs in the Imperial Suite, Mary and John are reading the want ads to look for new jobs. "There must be something for someone who can't do anything," he says.
Their breakfast is interrupted by a stockbroker who wants to make Mary a lot of money. He asks her if Mr. Ball has a feeling about steel.
She thinks he means John Ball Jr., so she goes to ask him. He, jokingly, tells her it's going down.
Steel starts going down, based on a supposed tip from J.B. Ball. Across town, he's buying steel; and he's about to go bankrupt.
Mr. Hulgar calls Mary again, this time she's surrounded in the suite by hangers-on. He's just made her $18,000. She starts to cry, telling John that he'll get $9,000 of it and she'll take the other half.
It's chaos on the New York Stock Exchange..
...but Mary's in the process of buying her own zoo, so who cares! John doesn't, until he sees the front page.
Now it's public knowledge that Ball & Co. is about to collapse due to the steel prices.
Jenny shows up again, devastated that the company's about to lose all its money. She tells him that she'd scrub floors for him, and that she forgives him for everything, even the girl at the Hotel Louis. He says there was no girl, but she doesn't believe him. He says that out of decency for their other problems, she shouldn't try to pin an affair on him.
Just then, John shows up to help.
Mr. Louis calls Mary into his office now that he's on the brink of ruin, and tries to get her to admit to eveything. He brings up the sable she's wearing, but she says it's not a sable, it's a Kalinsky. She is still in the dark, and she asks Mr. Louis who the older gentleman is, the one who bought her the hat and gave her the coat.
He says that he doesn't believe her, that there's no way she doesn't know the name of J.B. Ball...
...she finally clues in. She asks if he really thinks she'd accept a sable coat from a man, and he smugly says, "Mmmhmm," and she slaps him. Several times.
Meanwhile, the Ball Family is trying to figure out their next step and how not to lose their fortune. J.B. says it's all due to steel, it's already gone down 40 points. John realizes that he told Mary that, as a joke, and says as much. You joke about that, he says, if someone asks you. Say it's going in the opposite direction.
And then they piece it together on their end, that John told Mary Smith about the tip, and that Mary Smith is the girl from the automat, the hotel, and the double decker bus.
What follows is a melee as the Balls and Mary all try to find each other, and she finally crashes in through the door of J.B.'s office so that the confrontation can come to a head.
John rounds on her, thinking that she's been toying with him; she's hurt by the suggestion. J.B. just wants everybody to shut up while they figure it out. Then John has the idea to call Mr. Hulgar back and tell him that stock in steel is going up again.
She does so and the Ball & Co. from financial ruin.
Out on the balcony, John's still giving Mary the third degree. She tries to impress upon him that she had no idea who J.B. was, and that she only took the coat because he'd insisted and she'd never owned anything so rich before.
Jenny comes out as well, still thinking that Mary's been having an affair with her husband. Mary tells her no, but that she doesn't blame her if she believes otherwise, it's a crazy story to believe in. She gives the coat back to Jenny and runs off.
Only then do John and Jenny believe that nothing untoward happened, and John quickly takes off after Mary. On the way out, he shouts for his father and his cronies to sell when it hits 100!
Mary rushes off with her dogs, but the police quickly round on her and the driver takes her right back to Ball & Co. She thinks she's being arrested, but John just wants to talk to her; and Mr. Louis already got back everything.
Mary and John reconcile, and he tells her that he's got a job. She's overjoyed. He tells her he found her a job as well: making his breakfast. They kiss and get ready to live happily ever after.
J.B. and Jenny are watching this unfold from the balcony, all happy and smiley... until J.B. notices that his wife has the sable coat back in her possession. "Didn't I tell you you couldn't have that coat?" he asks before tossing it off the balcony.
Where it lands on the head of another young woman.
Oh brother! Here we go again!
Mary and John watch the scene, then Mary ushers him away. "Johnny, this is where we came in!"
THE END!
___
What a fun movie. I think I need to add this to my favourites list. What about you? Did you like this movie? Let me know in the comments!
This film is wild in good old screwball fashion! I absolutely love it! I actually wrote a lot about it in my thesis on screwball comedy! I understand that you are a fan of Ray Milland. I love him too!!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that automats had a certain appeal. They seemed useful!
Thank you so much for taking part in my blogathon!
This looks so cute! I'm going to have to look it up.
ReplyDelete