Mirabel wins a $5, 000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.Mirabel wins a $5, 000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.Mirabel wins a $5, 000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 1 nomination total
Iris Adrian
- Gettel's Wife
- (uncredited)
Mary Akin
- Linen Maid
- (uncredited)
Maidena Armstrong
- Fat Woman
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWilliam Wyler had to alter some of his shots when it became apparent that Frances Dee was pregnant (with Jody McCrea).
Featured review
Minor Lubitsch, I mean, Wyler
Try to tell me Wyler wasn't inspired by Ernst Lubitsch. Go on, say it. If this had starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald instead of Francis Lederer and Frances Dee, it'd easily pass for one of Lubitsch's films of the Pre-Code era. It's the story of a suave, European womanizer who falls in love with a largely unassuming American woman with touches of farcical mistaken identity on top. That it doesn't entertain quite as much as The Good Fairy is unfortunate, but The Good Fairy was just great. The Gay Deception is a lighter, less emotionally satisfying confection, but still a small delight of a film that resembles Lubitsch's So This is Paris.
Mirabel Miller (Dee) is a worker bee at a small firm in Greenville, NY with dreams of saving up her money for a fashionable hat, a symbol of living large and having a good time (it was the Depression, so this is obviously wish-fulfillment for the audience pretty much from the get go). She wins a lottery of $5,000 and decides that she's going to go to New York City to spend it all and enjoy herself, even if only for a month. So, she shows up at the Walsdorf Plaza with management thinking that she's some kind of melon magnate's daughter. One of the employees of the hotel is a bellboy named Sandro (Lederer). He's unconcerned with the rules of punctuality and happily backtalks to his superior regularly. He shows up in rooms being made up and just asks to watch the process of making the bed. He's an odd duck, and the talk of the hotel staff.
When Mirabel shows up to the Plaza, Sandro is one of the bellboys assigned to help take her things up to her room, and he continues his pattern of insubordination by sticking around, gently ribbing her when he watches her bouncing on her bed, and criticizing the style of her expensive $20 hat, all in front of a superior who cheerfully fires him in the elevator down.
Sandro's secret, though, is that he's actually Prince Alessandro of the country Alessandro. The Consul-General Semanek (Lennox Pawle) is convinced that the Prince is on a trans-Atlantic ship at that moment, due to dock in a couple of days, and he's in with some nefarious gangster characters for...some reason. I guess it got explained in one line of dialogue, but it's really just an excuse for Semanek to feel panic at Alessandro's not being on the ship. His life is somehow tied up in it. It's enough for the situation, but it's still thin. Alessandro snuck over early, though, because he has some inclination to get into the hotel business, and he had decided to use the Walsdorf Plaza as an example to learn the business. Sure, why not?
The meat of it, though, is the burgeoning relationship between Alessandra, continuing his façade as a working man by getting new jobs at the hotel every time he gets fired (he gets fired a few times to increasingly comic results), and Mirabel who is both attracted to and annoyed by this foreign guy who keeps trying to order for her (like telling her to order a martini when he's a waiter, she insists on something sweet, he brings her a martini despite her protestations, she enjoys the drink, and he smiles because he won). When he gets fired for the final time, he takes her out to dinner at a small Italian restaurant where he gets seen by the two toughs running Semanek, and Semanek sends some people down there to pick him up, to try and mask his identity, forcing Alessandro to abandon Mirabel at the restaurant.
The finale of the film is around a large society dinner at the hotel, run by a snooty lady that revels at the opportunity to invite Mirabel but also insult her because she's obviously not of her class. Alessandro sees through it, and he offers himself in his true identity up as her guest. She resists because he hurt her, and she also doesn't believe him. What makes this whole thing entertaining is a ticking clock element (Semanek and the two toughs are coming to investigate the rumor of Alessandro in New York before the boat) along with the fact that Alessandro snuck in, stealing bits of clothing from other guests in the laundry, to make his entrance.
It's all light and airy and amusing as it plays out. There's just enough character built into it around Mirabel and Alessandro so that their romance feels believable. The minor characters are broadly drawn and fun to watch, especially Pawle as Semanek in his most fearful moments when his hair gets crazed. Lederer is charming as Alessandro, fun to watch as he floats through almost every scene and situation. Dee is fine as Mirabel, pretty much the straight man of the comedic series of setups.
The characters are perhaps too thin for any real emotional connection, and the comic situations are occasionally too contrived to really hit either. However, as a whole, the film is a light treat of comedy from William Wyler in the early days of the Hays Code.
Mirabel Miller (Dee) is a worker bee at a small firm in Greenville, NY with dreams of saving up her money for a fashionable hat, a symbol of living large and having a good time (it was the Depression, so this is obviously wish-fulfillment for the audience pretty much from the get go). She wins a lottery of $5,000 and decides that she's going to go to New York City to spend it all and enjoy herself, even if only for a month. So, she shows up at the Walsdorf Plaza with management thinking that she's some kind of melon magnate's daughter. One of the employees of the hotel is a bellboy named Sandro (Lederer). He's unconcerned with the rules of punctuality and happily backtalks to his superior regularly. He shows up in rooms being made up and just asks to watch the process of making the bed. He's an odd duck, and the talk of the hotel staff.
When Mirabel shows up to the Plaza, Sandro is one of the bellboys assigned to help take her things up to her room, and he continues his pattern of insubordination by sticking around, gently ribbing her when he watches her bouncing on her bed, and criticizing the style of her expensive $20 hat, all in front of a superior who cheerfully fires him in the elevator down.
Sandro's secret, though, is that he's actually Prince Alessandro of the country Alessandro. The Consul-General Semanek (Lennox Pawle) is convinced that the Prince is on a trans-Atlantic ship at that moment, due to dock in a couple of days, and he's in with some nefarious gangster characters for...some reason. I guess it got explained in one line of dialogue, but it's really just an excuse for Semanek to feel panic at Alessandro's not being on the ship. His life is somehow tied up in it. It's enough for the situation, but it's still thin. Alessandro snuck over early, though, because he has some inclination to get into the hotel business, and he had decided to use the Walsdorf Plaza as an example to learn the business. Sure, why not?
The meat of it, though, is the burgeoning relationship between Alessandra, continuing his façade as a working man by getting new jobs at the hotel every time he gets fired (he gets fired a few times to increasingly comic results), and Mirabel who is both attracted to and annoyed by this foreign guy who keeps trying to order for her (like telling her to order a martini when he's a waiter, she insists on something sweet, he brings her a martini despite her protestations, she enjoys the drink, and he smiles because he won). When he gets fired for the final time, he takes her out to dinner at a small Italian restaurant where he gets seen by the two toughs running Semanek, and Semanek sends some people down there to pick him up, to try and mask his identity, forcing Alessandro to abandon Mirabel at the restaurant.
The finale of the film is around a large society dinner at the hotel, run by a snooty lady that revels at the opportunity to invite Mirabel but also insult her because she's obviously not of her class. Alessandro sees through it, and he offers himself in his true identity up as her guest. She resists because he hurt her, and she also doesn't believe him. What makes this whole thing entertaining is a ticking clock element (Semanek and the two toughs are coming to investigate the rumor of Alessandro in New York before the boat) along with the fact that Alessandro snuck in, stealing bits of clothing from other guests in the laundry, to make his entrance.
It's all light and airy and amusing as it plays out. There's just enough character built into it around Mirabel and Alessandro so that their romance feels believable. The minor characters are broadly drawn and fun to watch, especially Pawle as Semanek in his most fearful moments when his hair gets crazed. Lederer is charming as Alessandro, fun to watch as he floats through almost every scene and situation. Dee is fine as Mirabel, pretty much the straight man of the comedic series of setups.
The characters are perhaps too thin for any real emotional connection, and the comic situations are occasionally too contrived to really hit either. However, as a whole, the film is a light treat of comedy from William Wyler in the early days of the Hays Code.
helpful•01
- davidmvining
- Jun 30, 2023
Details
- Runtime1 hour 17 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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