John Mills is a young bachelor, almost ready to give up on women. They know he's due to inherit a trombone factory, and just want him for his money. Then he suddenly becomes infatuated with a girl in the street (Vera), whom he follows into a Rolls-Royce showroom, not realising that she's a penniless fantasy-shopper who likes to act as though she's on a spending spree. Her friend Molly (played by Glennis Lorimer, used for years as the face of Gainsborough Pictures) chides her for her silly habit, and gets her a job working alongside her in the trombone factory.
In the showroom, Mills secretly arranges to buy the latest model and then pretends that it has been gifted to Vera as the lucky 10,000th visitor. But he overdoes the gesture, using his influence as the boss's son to organise a hefty pay-rise for Vera, which the other girls resentfully view as an exchange of favours. (She is the only one who doesn't know Mills' identity.) So everything goes wrong before anything comes right.
You could pin the date 1935 on this film without being told. The showroom manager shows John Mills how to drive a car in just a few brief gestures. (Driving-tests started later that year.) There are unconscious touches of Fred Astaire, with scenes of luxury life as deliberate escapism from the economic depression. Also of Wodehouse, who spent this year in Hollywood, exerting a surprisingly strong influence on screenwriting. Vera is played by a newly-arrived German-Jewish refugee Grete Mosheim, who must have felt at home with the songs by fellow-exile Mischa Spoliansky that pepper the story harmlessly enough. Even the use of back-projection, to provide unrealistic scenes of happy touring in the Rolls, is firmly of its time.
A light snack with no pretensions of being anything more. And good of its kind.
In the showroom, Mills secretly arranges to buy the latest model and then pretends that it has been gifted to Vera as the lucky 10,000th visitor. But he overdoes the gesture, using his influence as the boss's son to organise a hefty pay-rise for Vera, which the other girls resentfully view as an exchange of favours. (She is the only one who doesn't know Mills' identity.) So everything goes wrong before anything comes right.
You could pin the date 1935 on this film without being told. The showroom manager shows John Mills how to drive a car in just a few brief gestures. (Driving-tests started later that year.) There are unconscious touches of Fred Astaire, with scenes of luxury life as deliberate escapism from the economic depression. Also of Wodehouse, who spent this year in Hollywood, exerting a surprisingly strong influence on screenwriting. Vera is played by a newly-arrived German-Jewish refugee Grete Mosheim, who must have felt at home with the songs by fellow-exile Mischa Spoliansky that pepper the story harmlessly enough. Even the use of back-projection, to provide unrealistic scenes of happy touring in the Rolls, is firmly of its time.
A light snack with no pretensions of being anything more. And good of its kind.