The Good Fairy

Margaret Sullavan as a dazzling usherette in The Good Fairy (1935)

Preston Sturges-scripted films often feature the comic confusions that result when unexpected good fortune suddenly descends on the protagonist:

• In Easy Living (1937), that descent is literal: a fur coat flung out of the window of his penthouse apartment by exasperated banker J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) lands on the head of secretary Mary Smith (Jean Arthur) on the street below. He insists that she keep the coat, which leads to the widespread assumption that she is Ball's mistress. Unemployment, a stock market plunge, and a night in a luxury hotel suite with the banker's handsome son quickly follow.
• In Remember the Night (1940), seasonally sentimental New York district attorney John Sargent (Fred MacMurray) offers to take shoplifting defendant Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) home to Indiana for Christmas. An arrest for trespassing, arson, a flight from justice, and a blossoming but impossible love will result.
• In The Palm Beach Story (1942), Tom and Gerry Jeffers (Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert) are behind on the rent and unable to interest investors in Tom's new inventions (for good reason). Enter the Texas Wienie King (Robert Dudley), who gives Gerry the money to bid Tom farewell with a good conscience and head to Palm Beach in search of a rich new husband. By the time the soft-hearted Wienie King gives Tom the money to follow her, Gerry has already hooked multimillionaire mark J.D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee). Gerry introduces the inconvenient Tom to her new Florida friends as her brother. Meanwhile, J.D.'s man-eating sister Maude (Mary Astor) takes a keen interest in Gerry's tall, handsome supposed sibling. Romantic misunderstandings reign.

These films demonstrate that generous impulses can have unintended consequences, and playing the good fairy can sometimes backfire. Which is the theme of The Good Fairy (1935), an early version of Sturges' much-revisited plot.

Raised in an orphanage, the naïve and good-hearted Luisa Ginglebusher (Margaret Sullavan) loves to regale the younger girls there with fairy tales.

Her fantasies are interrupted when the manager of the Dreampalast movie theater, Maurice Schlapkohl (Alan Hale), comes to the orphanage looking to hire an usherette, and Lu is chosen. [1]

The head of the orphanage, Dr. Schultz (Beulah Bondi), is concerned about the usherettes' uniforms, providing an opportunity for some of Sturges' trademark risqué dialogue:

Schlapkohl: They wear gorgeous uniforms. I designed them myself. A big hussar's hat, a little cloak, and pants—
Dr. Schultz (alarmed): Pants?
Schlapkohl: —with stripes. Very effective.
Dr. Schultz: I dare say. Ah, the pants, I mean, they're not too tight?
Schlapkohl: That depends entirely on the girl—the pants are all the same size.

Alan Hale (Schlapkohl), Margaret Sullavan (Lu), and Beulah Bondi (Dr. Schultz) at the moment of choice

Given that The Good Fairy went into production the fall of 1934, just a few months after the new Production Code Administration was established in July, it's surprising how suggestive the dialogue and situations remain. Sturges' script had come back from Joseph Breen's office covered in red ink. In the first draft, Dr. Schultz warns Lu as she leaves for her first day as an usherette, "A young girl must be careful in her relations with men." Breen flagged the line for elimination because "relations" could mean sexual relations. In the final film version the line becomes "A young girl cannot be too careful in her dealings with the male gender." "Dealings," of course, suggests that there might be monetary or other sorts of exchanges involved in women's interactions with men. It went right past Breen. As cut dialogue from another scene in Sturges' first draft had it, "How much would a girl have to give for a fur coat?" "Her all."

Leaving the theater after her first night of work (and having changed out of her uniform) Lu is accosted by a wolfish stage-door Johnny (Cesar Romero). To escape his clutches she claims that she's married, and grabs the arm of an exiting customer, Detlaf (Reginald Owen).

Margaret Sullavan (Lu) and Reginald Owen (Detlaf)

At first Detlaf has no idea who she is, or why she's calling him "darling":

Detlaf: What are you talking about? Who are you?
Lu: Don't you remember? I'm the girl that pointed out the way with the electric wand.
Detlaf: Oh yes, sure. I didn't recognize you without your pants.

Over sandwiches and beer Detlaf tells her about his job as a waiter, and offers her a ticket to a ball at the fancy hotel restaurant where he works.  

In a dazzling borrowed dress the next night Lu attends the ball, and catches the eye of multimillionaire businessman Konrad (Frank Morgan). Konrad, old enough to be Lu's father, invites her to supper in a private dining room (immediately adjacent, no doubt, to a bedroom). But Detlaf's repeated appearances continually thwart Konrad's attempted seduction. In a final attempt to keep Konrad at bay, Lu finally plays the "I'm married" card. To her surprise this doesn't deter Konrad: he offers to hire her husband. Konrad assumes that Lu realizes that her acquiescence will be a condition of her husband's employment, but Lu is so unworldly that she doesn't understand Konrad's implied contract.

Frank Morgan (Konrad) and Margaret Sullavan (Lu)

It's hard to say how old Lu is supposed to be. In the Ferenc Molnar play on which The Good Fairy is (very) loosely based, Lu is 25 (Sullavan's actual age during shooting) and not nearly as naïve. But Sullavan is given pigtails (at least in the early scenes) and directed by William Wyler to act much younger than her true age. If Lu is supposed to be 17 or 18, it makes Konrad's proposition even more eyebrow-raising.

To play the role of her husband Lu picks a name at random out of the phone book: Dr. Max Sporum (Herbert Marshall), an honest, and so impoverished, lawyer. When Konrad sweeps in, offers him a job and orders his ancient desk and chair to be replaced by sleek modern furniture, Sporum thinks he's finally being rewarded for his integrity. Disillusionment will soon follow.

Margaret Sullavan (Lu) and Herbert Marshall (Dr. Sporum)

Apart from the wide-eyed performance of Sullavan, the main appeal of The Good Fairy is the chance to see familiar actors in an unfamiliar context. Morgan's Konrad seems like a dry run for his Wizard of Oz four years later: he has some of the same mannerisms and even utters some of the same lines, such as "Well, well, well..." It adds to the creepiness of Konrad's attempted sexual coercion, as though the Wizard was lusting after Dorothy. Sullavan would be reunited with Morgan in Shop Around the Corner (1940); that film was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who had also directed Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932). Beulah Bondi would return in the Sturges-written Remember the Night, and Eric Blore, who plays the sozzled Dr. Metz, the Minister of Art & Culture, is familiar as a member of the stock company of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. [2]

With its operetta-light plot, The Good Fairy—charming as it is—doesn't quite rise to the level of any of those other films. It is, though, a testament to the beauty of Sullavan, whose dazzling smile and big blue eyes (reading as light gray, of course, in black and white) are photographed by Wyler in loving, emotion-filled closeups. Sullavan brings depth to Lu, who, delighted as she is by the wonders of the big city,

also discovers that all is not happiness and light.

Those loving, emotion-filled closeups turned out to be literal: in the middle of filming Sullavan and Wyler (seven years her senior) flew to Arizona to be married, and were back on set the next day. The marriage was Wyler's first and Sullavan's second (her first husband had been Henry Fonda), and lasted only two years. But The Good Fairy remains Wyler's valentine to the captivating actress.

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1. Incidentally, names Ginglebusher and Schlapkohl are not in the original Ferenc Molnar play on which The Good Fairy is based. They are Sturges', um, inspiration.
2. Sturges, of course, would go on to write and direct The Lady Eve (1940), and Wyler would later direct The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Roman Holiday (1953).