Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters that embodied an everyman image.
Ray Milland was a Welsh-American actor and film director. He is often remembered for his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), which won him Best Actor at Cannes, a Golden Globe Award, and ultimately an Academy Award—the first such accolades for any Welsh actor.
The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Frank Morgan. The screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson based on the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László. Eschewing regional politics in the years leading up to World War II, the film is about two employees at a leathergoods shop in Budapest who can barely stand each other, not realizing they are falling in love as anonymous correspondents through their letters.
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress.
Three Comrades is a 1938 American drama film directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM. The screenplay is by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr., and was adapted from the novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of the friendship of three young German soldiers following World War I, during the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.
The Mortal Storm is a 1940 American drama film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Frank Borzage and stars Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. The film shows the impact on Germans after Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany and gains unlimited power. The supporting cast features Robert Young, Robert Stack, Frank Morgan, Dan Dailey, Ward Bond and Maria Ouspenskaya.
Tovarich is a 1937 American comedy film directed by Anatole Litvak, based on the 1935 play by Robert E. Sherwood, which in turn was based on the 1933 French play Tovaritch by Jacques Deval. It was produced by Litvak through Warner Bros., with Robert Lord as associate producer and Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner as executive producers. The screenplay was by Casey Robinson from the French play by Jacques Deval adapted into English by Robert E. Sherwood. The music score was by Max Steiner and the cinematography by Charles Lang.
The Moon's Our Home is a 1936 American comedy film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and Walter Brennan. It was adapted from a novel of the same name written by Faith Baldwin and first published in serial form in Cosmopolitan magazine.
The Shining Hour is a 1938 American romantic drama film directed by Frank Borzage, based on the 1934 play The Shining Hour by Keith Winter, and starring Joan Crawford and Margaret Sullavan. The supporting cast of the MGM film features Robert Young, Melvyn Douglas, Fay Bainter and Hattie McDaniel.
Back Street is a 1941 American drama film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullavan. It is a remake of the 1932 film of the same name, also from Universal. The film is adapted from the 1931 Fannie Hurst novel and the 1932 film version which it follows very closely, in some cases recalling the earlier film scene-for-scene. It is a sympathetic tale of an adulterous couple.
Appointment for Love is a 1941 American romantic comedy film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Charles Boyer, Margaret Sullavan and Rita Johnson. It was made and distributed by Universal Pictures. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound, Recording for the work of Bernard B. Brown.
The Shopworn Angel is a 1938 American drama film directed by H. C. Potter and starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Walter Pidgeon. The MGM release featured the second screen pairing of Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart following their successful teaming in the Universal Pictures production Next Time We Love two years earlier.
The Good Fairy is a 1935 romantic comedy film written by Preston Sturges, based on the 1930 play A jó tündér by Ferenc Molnár as translated and adapted by Jane Hinton, which was produced on Broadway in 1931. The film was directed by William Wyler and stars Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, Frank Morgan and Reginald Owen.
Love Before Breakfast is a 1936 American romantic comedy film starring Carole Lombard, Preston Foster, and Cesar Romero, based on Faith Baldwin's short story Spinster Dinner, published in International-Cosmopolitan in July 1934. The film was directed by Walter Lang from a screenplay by Herbert Fields assisted by numerous contract writers, including Preston Sturges.
Ursula Parrott, was a prolific modern novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer whose sensational first novel, Ex-Wife (1929), was a Jazz Age best seller. Adapted for film as The Divorcee, it starred Norma Shearer. Exploring divorce, abortion, infidelity, changing ideas about marriage, and the disastrous effects of the new morality on women, Ex-Wife created a scandal because of its frank depiction of young working women in a New York City drenched in cocktails and Scotch. From 1930 to 1936, Parrott sold the rights to eight novels and stories that were made into films.
Hotel Imperial is a 1939 American dramatic film directed by Robert Florey. It stars Isa Miranda and Ray Milland.
We Were Dancing is a 1942 MGM romantic comedy film directed by Robert Z. Leonard, written by Claudine West, Hans Rameau and George Froeschel, and starring Norma Shearer and Melvyn Douglas. It is based loosely on Noël Coward's 1935 play of the same name, together with ideas from Ways and Means, another play in Coward's Tonight at 8.30 play cycle, and Coward's Private Lives.
Harry Bowen was an American character actor of the silent and sound film eras. Born on October 4, 1888, in Brooklyn, New York, he broke into the film industry doing film shorts during the silent era. His work on shorts continued into talking pictures, and it was in 1929 that he made his first appearance in a full-length feature, with a small role in Red Hot Rhythm, directed by Leo McCarey. During his 20-year career, Bowen appeared in over 150 films, most of them film shorts, supporting comedians like Charley Chase, Edgar Kennedy and Laurel and Hardy. Other notable films in which he appeared include: the 1933 classic King Kong; Flying Down to Rio (1933), which was the first on-screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; John Ford's 1935 comedy, The Whole Town's Talking, starring Edward G. Robinson; and Next Time We Love (1936), starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, and Ray Milland. His final screen performance, according to AFI, was the 1939 film, The Day the Bookies Wept, starring Joe Penner and Betty Grable.
Stage Door is a 1936 stage play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman about a group of struggling actresses who room at the Footlights Club, a fictitious theatrical boardinghouse in New York City modeled after the real-life Rehearsal Club. The three-act comedy opened on Broadway on October 22, 1936, at the Music Box Theatre and ran for 169 performances. The play was adapted into the 1937 film of the same name, and was also adapted for television.
