Ferenc Molnar's The Good Fairy ran for 151 performances on Broadway in the 1932 season and a young Helen Hayes played the title role of Luisa Ginglebuscher. That name itself I'm sure produced a few chuckles from the audience.
The Good Fairy is the kind of work where casting of the lead is all. If you don't have an actress skilled enough to bring off an almost impossible role of an orphan waif who may have stayed too long at an orphanage and brings her naivete out with her, just forget about doing the play or the film. In the case of this film Margaret Sullavan in her third film proved to be just right for the part. You get this wrong and you'll get hooted off the stage.
Not that Sullavan didn't have help with William Wyler directing her who was legendary in his painstaking methods of doing dozens of takes so a player could get it exactly as he wanted. Molnar's play was adapted for the screen by Preston Sturges whose directorial career was about four years in the future. During the film Wyler became Sullavan's second husband.
Wyler even got Herbert Marshall to bend a little. Usually Marshall was cast in serious dramatic roles, characters with the weight of the world on their shoulders like in Foreign Correspondent or The Little Foxes. Here Marshall lightens up and proves a good comedic foil. Frank Morgan plays an aging roue, millionaire owner of a meat import business and he's settling into character as the eternal bumbler.
The Good Fairy is a star vehicle and it's got one great star in Margaret Sullavan to put it across.
The Good Fairy is the kind of work where casting of the lead is all. If you don't have an actress skilled enough to bring off an almost impossible role of an orphan waif who may have stayed too long at an orphanage and brings her naivete out with her, just forget about doing the play or the film. In the case of this film Margaret Sullavan in her third film proved to be just right for the part. You get this wrong and you'll get hooted off the stage.
Not that Sullavan didn't have help with William Wyler directing her who was legendary in his painstaking methods of doing dozens of takes so a player could get it exactly as he wanted. Molnar's play was adapted for the screen by Preston Sturges whose directorial career was about four years in the future. During the film Wyler became Sullavan's second husband.
Wyler even got Herbert Marshall to bend a little. Usually Marshall was cast in serious dramatic roles, characters with the weight of the world on their shoulders like in Foreign Correspondent or The Little Foxes. Here Marshall lightens up and proves a good comedic foil. Frank Morgan plays an aging roue, millionaire owner of a meat import business and he's settling into character as the eternal bumbler.
The Good Fairy is a star vehicle and it's got one great star in Margaret Sullavan to put it across.