On the theme of:  TRAVELS, TRAVAILS & JIMMY STEWART

The Shop Around the Corner

1940, 99 minutes

Berlin-born Ernst Lubitsch started out as an actor in the 1913 film, The Ideal Wife. Within five years he was directing, and in 1922 he left Germany for Hollywood, where he honed his talent for urbane comedies such as The Merry Widow and Ninotchka with a style that became known as “The Lubitsch Touch.”

The Shop Around the Corner is one of his best. Set in a Budapest that could be somewhere between Schenectady and Cincinnati, Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullivan and Frank Morgan are cast as Hungarians working in a leather goods shop. Morgan is the taciturn owner, while Stewart and Sullivan are rival sales clerks who unwittingly find themselves exchanging love letters—a scenario that became the template for rom-coms ranging from In the Good Old Summertime to You’ve Got Mail. But Lubitsch did it first with sparkling dialogue and performances that have earned this movie a spot on the British Film Institute’s list of greatest films ever made.

Please Note--This film is RATED PG-13, with smoking, drinking, infidelity, attempted suicide, and the Wizard after he got back from Oz and went into retail.