The end of the war means the end of the working women dominating the work force. Struggling to make ends meet, several shop girls decide to team together with the crotchety older floor walker and a sweet but dotty retiring saleslady in renting a mansion and pretending to be a family in order to find eligible rich men. Lead by stuffy floor walker Adolph Menjou and a former movie actress (Billie Burke), the scheme gets into motion with little question once they manipulate Menjou to participate. The moment I saw Menjou grumbling, I was instantly reminded of "Are You Being Served?'s" Captain Peacock, of whom he is the American version of.
This starts very light-hearted and semi-comic, giving the typical Joan Blondell/Ann Sheridan wise- cracking tough girls to the soft looking but possibly hard as nails Gail Russell, Claire Trevor, Ann Dvorak and Jane Wyatt, with the sweet Burke and grumpy but lovable Adolph Menjou pretending to be their parents. What seems like an ideal fraud turns dramatic in the second half (after the usual comical complications about these unrelated people learning to adjust with living with each other) with some of the girls finding out that what they are after isn't really what is destined for them, some finding true love, the others finding heartbreak.
This is a difficult film to locate, and ends up being a mixed bag, but it's worth the wait just to see some silent footage featuring "Glinda" herself, Billie Burke, long before she became the queen of the dotty society matrons and the sequined good witch in "The Wizard of Oz". This was a re-teaming for Burke, Menjou and director/producer Andrew Stone whose previous film, "Hi Diddle Diddle", focused more on farce and less on drama. It is surprising that considering other films that focused on unrelated people living in a "commune" that this wasn't accused of having communist sympathies. That gives this one the opportunity for better character development, but often throughout, it feels like it's suffering from a split personality.
This starts very light-hearted and semi-comic, giving the typical Joan Blondell/Ann Sheridan wise- cracking tough girls to the soft looking but possibly hard as nails Gail Russell, Claire Trevor, Ann Dvorak and Jane Wyatt, with the sweet Burke and grumpy but lovable Adolph Menjou pretending to be their parents. What seems like an ideal fraud turns dramatic in the second half (after the usual comical complications about these unrelated people learning to adjust with living with each other) with some of the girls finding out that what they are after isn't really what is destined for them, some finding true love, the others finding heartbreak.
This is a difficult film to locate, and ends up being a mixed bag, but it's worth the wait just to see some silent footage featuring "Glinda" herself, Billie Burke, long before she became the queen of the dotty society matrons and the sequined good witch in "The Wizard of Oz". This was a re-teaming for Burke, Menjou and director/producer Andrew Stone whose previous film, "Hi Diddle Diddle", focused more on farce and less on drama. It is surprising that considering other films that focused on unrelated people living in a "commune" that this wasn't accused of having communist sympathies. That gives this one the opportunity for better character development, but often throughout, it feels like it's suffering from a split personality.