Charles Brackett's first film after his breakup with Billy Wilder (he'd made some away from Wilder during their collaboration eg To Each His Own). He pulled in a bunch of collaborators from the Wilder days - Richard Breen and Walter Reisch as writers, Mitchell Leisen as director, John Lund as male lead. It does feel more Brackett than Wilder in that it's about class in America and concerns snooty society types.
It was made for Paramount but uses some 20th Century Fox talent - Gene Tierney and Thelma Ritter - and Brackett would soon go to Fox.
The plot has working class Ritter come to visit son John Lund, a rising exec, who has just married society gal Gene Tierney, whose mother Miriam Hopkins is a stuck up bitch. Both Ritter and Hopkins wind up living with the couple - only, the thing is, Ritter pretends to be just a cook. These sort of "parental deception" movie plots are always hard because you wind up hating the kid who goes along with it.
Tierney is very good, she suits this sort of part. Lund isn't bad - normally I don't like him but he just has to be a leading man here and he's handsome enough to score Tierney. Ritter is perfect as is Hopkins.
There are universal themes here - starting a marriage, different class backgrounds, worried about climbing the corporate ladder, worried about embarrassing family. Jan Sterling scores in a small role as Lund's secretary who has a crush on him. It's a well acted movie. Nice romanticism. Just has that central flaw I couldn't get over.
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