The Girl Downstairs is yet another film where MGM gave Franchot Tone another opportunity to wear a tuxedo. Tone was well typecast as a debonair
playboy by this time. His leading lady was Franciska Gaal borrowed from
Paramount when Luise Rainer refused to play the part.
Said part was that of a poor peasant girl from the Hungarian countryside come Budapest to work in Walter Connolly's house to earn enough money to buy a replacement cow for the family farm.
Connolly doesn't think wastrel Tone is fit for his daughter Rita Johnson. But as a ruse Tone pretends he's courting Gaal. And Gaal thinks he's a storybook prince.
This kind of romantic frou-frou was popular in Europe and in some cases well in America. Gaal in her three American films always played the innocent as she does here. Tone had the playboy parts that MGM kept casting him in down in his sleep.
Highlight of the film for me is garage owner Billy Gilbert palming off a wreck of an old taxicab on Gaal. She throws her cow money away on it so that Tone whom she thinks is a chauffeur can work on his own. It's funny yet wistfully sad.
Good if old fashioned movie.
Said part was that of a poor peasant girl from the Hungarian countryside come Budapest to work in Walter Connolly's house to earn enough money to buy a replacement cow for the family farm.
Connolly doesn't think wastrel Tone is fit for his daughter Rita Johnson. But as a ruse Tone pretends he's courting Gaal. And Gaal thinks he's a storybook prince.
This kind of romantic frou-frou was popular in Europe and in some cases well in America. Gaal in her three American films always played the innocent as she does here. Tone had the playboy parts that MGM kept casting him in down in his sleep.
Highlight of the film for me is garage owner Billy Gilbert palming off a wreck of an old taxicab on Gaal. She throws her cow money away on it so that Tone whom she thinks is a chauffeur can work on his own. It's funny yet wistfully sad.
Good if old fashioned movie.