Feeling lonely and ignored at home, wealthy executive Alfred Borden (William Connelly) hires a Mary Grey (Ginger Rogers), a young, unemployed woman he meets in Central Park, to pose (subtly) as his mistress. The film is not particularly comic (by the 'screwball' standards of 1930s) and the rich characters not as 'over the top' eccentric as in the somewhat similar 'My Man Godfrey' (1936, also directed by Gregory La Cava), but the script is clever and the characters entertaining (especially the morosely duplicitous Mr. Bordon). Ginger Rogers is excellent as the exasperated but sympathetic Mary (almost a Mary Poppins-like character) who indirectly leads the family to 'heal themselves'. The supporting a cast is fine, with James Ellison particularly amusing as a self-righteous, pseudo-Bolshevik chauffeur who refers to his cap as his 'mark of servitude'. Needless to say, romances blossom (or are rekindled). Made at the end of the depression, the film is a feel-good paean to the value of inherent goodness and street-smarts in an unequal society but without the sense of hypocrisy that I sometimes sniff in films condemning inequality that were made by very wealthy Hollywood producers and their highly-paid stars.
Review of Fifth Avenue Girl
