Standing Room Only (1944 film)

Standing Room Only is a 1944 American comedy film starring Fred MacMurray and Paulette Goddard. It was directed by Sidney Lanfield.

Plot

Working on the assembly line at the Todd toy manufacturing company, Jane Rogers makes a mistake and is called before company general manager Lee Stevens, a man she has admired from afar. Lee's secretary is fired, at the request of his sweetheart Alice, daughter of factory owner T. J. Todd.

Jane talks her way into the job, pretending to have secretarial skills. Lee is leaving for Washington, D.C., in an effort to save the company from financial ruin. He intends to see government official Glen Ritchie there and propose the Todd factory be used in the war effort.

Jane does everything wrong. She cancels their hotel reservation and the whole town is booked solid. She and Lee end up sleeping outdoors. Ritchie isn't able to see Lee two days in a row, so Jane, under orders to get them any kind of room, makes a deal to stay with Ira Cromwell and his wife, but only by becoming their servants.

Lee is aghast at the idea but desperate to see Ritchie so forced to stay in town. The accident-prone Jane continues to cause problems, forgetting to cook the turkey for the Cromwells' dinner party. One night their guest turns out to be Ritchie, and to further complicate matters, Todd and daughter Alice turn up, too. Dinner is a fiasco, but Ritchie agrees to give the toy factory a government contract and by now Jane and Lee are in love.

Cast

• Paulette Goddard as Jane
• Fred MacMurray as Lee
• Roland Young as Cromwell
• Edward Arnold as Todd
• Hillary Brooke as Alice
• Clarence Kolb as Ritchie
• Marie McDonald as Opal
• Veda Ann Borg as Peggy

Radio adaptation

Standing Room Only was presented on Broadway Playhouse November 23, 1952. The 30-minute adaptation starred Goddard.^[1]

References

External links

• review of movie at New York Times
• Standing Room Only at IMDB
• Standing Room Only at TCMDB