Ferenc Molnar's The Good Fairy ran for 151 performances on Broadway in the 1932 season and a young Helen Hayes played the title role of Luisa Ginglebuscher. That name itself I'm sure produced a few chuckles from the audience.The Good Fairy is the kind of work where casting of the lead is all. If you don't have an actress skilled enough to bring off an almost impossible role of an orphan waif who may have stayed too long at an orphanage and brings her naivete out with her, just forget about doing the play or the film. In the case of this film Margaret Sullavan in her third film proved to be just right for the part. You get this wrong and you'll get hooted off the stage.Not that Sullavan didn't have help with William Wyler directing her who was legendary in his painstaking methods of doing dozens of takes so a player could get it exactly as he wanted. Molnar's play was adapted for the screen by Preston Sturges whose directorial career was about four years in the future. During the film Wyler became Sullavan's second husband.Wyler even got Herbert Marshall to bend a little. Usually Marshall was cast in serious dramatic roles, characters with the weight of the world on their shoulders like in Foreign Correspondent or The Little Foxes. Here Marshall lightens up and proves a good comedic foil. Frank Morgan plays an aging roue, millionaire owner of a meat import business and he's settling into character as the eternal bumbler.The Good Fairy is a star vehicle and it's got one great star in Margaret Sullavan to put it across.

In her short life, the ethereally radiant Margaret Sullavan (1909-1960) did not last the night, but the lovely light she briefly gave is preserved for posterity in charming mementoes such as this. Deeply touching in drama, Sullavan's best remembered comedy role was in Ernst Lubitsch's evergreen 'The Shop Around the Corner' (1940), which was the second romantic comedy she made set in Budapest. 'The Good Fairy' was the first.Scripted by Preston Sturges from a play by Ferenc Molnár produced on Broadway in 1931, 'The Good Fairy' would have been a very different film indeed but for the introduction of the strict new Production Code of June 1934 just three months before shooting commenced. Sturges had to keep one step ahead of the film throughout production as he extensively rewrote the script, which has the Hays Office's fingerprints all over it; as well as a generally disjointed feeling - such as the early disappearance of Alan Hale from the narrative, never to return; and the late appearance of Herbert Marshall, never to leave - and a LOT of talk. The droll film-within-the-film which reduces Ms Sullavan to tears which was added to the script by Sturges is among a number of hints earlier on in the film that we were going to something sharper and more sophisticated than the bowdlerised romcom that we actually get. (The same plot played as drama might have made better use of Ms Sullavan's talents and made a more interesting film).Sullavan plays Luisa Ginglebusher, a charming, accident-prone orphan who is vastly more innocent and unworldly than the sweetly manipulative little vixen played on Broadway by Helen Hayes. Rather bizarrely plucked from the orphanage to become a cinema usherette - for which Luisa is kitted out in a magnificent uniform that looks more like one of Marlene Dietrich's cast-offs from 'The Scarlet Empress' - as Miss Ginglebusher ventures out into the big wicked city, one initially fears for the safety of this seeming cross between Prince Myshkin and a more garrulous version of Chauncey Gardner. But salvation is at hand in the form of Detlaff, a brusquely kind-hearted waiter played by Reginald Owen; who looks younger than I'm used to seeing him and gives the most engaging performance I've ever seen him give (he befriends her while cautiously removing her knife when she reveals to him during dinner that she was released from an asylum that morning, but quietly returns it when it turns out that the asylum was for orphans); and takes it upon himself to protect her from the wolves that prowl the city (an extremely wolfish-looking Cesar Romero puts in a brief appearance as one such).The film, unfortunately, soon tires of giving us a heroine who's just a simple working girl (we never actually see where she lives, for example), and is irrevocably derailed by the introduction of Frank Morgan as Konrad - one of those vague, benevolent millionaires encountered so often in Hollywood movies - who agrees to become Sullavan's sugar daddy without ever suggesting he might eventually be expecting some sugar in return. Ironically, considering he is today principally remembered for later playing the title role in 'The Wizard of Oz', Morgan actually describes himself at one point as "a wizard" and offers to demonstrate his magic powers to Luisa by pulling out his cheque book to enhance the life of the non-existent husband she has just made up to ward of his advances. I agree with 'kyrat', who said in an earlier IMDb review nearly fifteen years ago that it would have been more satisfying to have bestowed Konrad's windfall upon her own good fairy Detlaff rather than just pick a name out of the 'phone book; and the romance that develops between Luisa and the thus gifted Dr. Sporum (Herbert Marshall in a goatee and wing collar) - whose greatest excitement at his sudden good fortune is that he can now afford a proper office pencil-sharpener - seems dictated by Hollywood convention rather than any actual chemistry between them. (Surprise! Surprise! the film ends in a wedding; and I would have liked to have had a better look at the very striking wet-look art deco bridal gown we fleetingly see Ms Sullavan walk down the aisle in just before the end credits).As the film progresses Luisa frankly comes across as a bit of a simpleton rather than just a pure simple soul; and the 25 year-old Sullavan is playing a girl nearly ten years younger than her real age surrounded by middle-aged men whose motives all remain impeccably but rather improbably pure (there's some supposedly innocent but I thought slightly creepy horseplay in Konrad's hotel room with him pretending that he's a mountain lion and Luisa's a lamb). But this is all A-list Hollywood hokum done to a turn by rising young director William Wyler (who ran off with Sullavan to get married in the middle of production) and all very pleasant if you don't take it too seriously; which I'm sure nobody involved in the production did.

Ferenc Molnar's play "The Good Fairy" was a Broadway hit in 1931 (151 performances) with Helen Hayes as the ethereal heroine. To read one of the reviewer's description of the play was quite a shock to me - Lu was manipulative, ready to sleep with Konrad but in the end deciding to play a "good fairy" and pair each of the men with a suitable girl, even though she was left out in the cold. Obviously, when Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay, for Hollywood in the mid 1930s, he had to sanitize a lot of the quaint observations on marital infidelity, tacked on a new beginning and toned down the moral stance the play had adopted on the evils of do gooding. He did, however, retain the play's charm and Margaret Sullavan was absolutely bewitching (as usual) as the helpless girl who attracts the attention of three very different type of men.I don't know of any other actress who could put across that enchanting air of complete innocence and, for me, the film was best at the beginning when Sullavan as Luisa was telling the orphans a fairy story. She held them spellbound as she ascended the rickety ladder, rode a broomstick - then crash!!! (Jane Withers and Ann Miller can be glimpsed as orphans).She is soon out in the big world, working as an usherette in a beautiful picture palace. She meets Reginald Owen and shares an amusing scene where they both sit down to watch an enthralling movie. He "rescues" her from a stage door Johnnie (Cesar Romero) and invites her to a grand party. It turns out he is a waiter and takes a very parental view of her goings on. She meets Konrad (Frank Morgan), a wealthy meat packer who wants to shower her with riches, which she can't really handle so she pulls out the old standby "I'm married" which had worked for the stage door Johnnie (which was strange because the head of the orphanage (Beulah Bondi) had proclaimed she wouldn't know how to flirt, and she didn't but she was knowing enough to get out of a few sticky situations). I was as confused as the other reviewer as to why she didn't name the waiter, especially as Konrad offered to bestow on her "husband" lots of good fortune!! Instead she goes to a phone book, picks out a name and suddenly destitute lawyer(!!!), Dr. Sporum (Herbert Marshall) finds himself the recipient of a diplomatic post, which will bring him in 100,000 a year - enough to be able to buy his cherished dream - a pencil sharpener with a handle!!! And he doesn't know why!!!The movie lost a bit of it's magic for me after half an hour, I know it was a bit much to expect Luisa to have the glowing innocence that she originally had but she seemed to learn the ways of the world awfully fast. As well, with Reginald Owen, Frank Morgan and Herbert Marshall competing for screen time, there just wasn't enough of the bewitching Margaret Sullavan for me. And I suppose, being a typical Hollywood romantic fantasy, the heroine had to have a dashing hero and both Konrad and the waiter were a bit too fatherly for sweet Luisa.It is unfortunate that Margaret Sullavan didn't make more movies - she never gave a bad performance. She made an immediate impact from her first appearance (a sudsy soaper "Only Yesterday") and made usually cynical critics fall over themselves with praise. Otis Ferguson commented on Sullavan's performance in "The Good Fairy" - "Most of the time she is entirely lovely and if she isn't an actress, I wouldn't know who is"!!!

There is much of Jane Eyre in this. A minor version had been made the previous year and flopped. What if you pulled out all the social commentary that Bronte used to shape her story and just built something on the ability of an innocent to make a good story? Then you can spindle the social observations afterward. I suspect that is something like what happened here.The setup is simple. Orphan girl, newly a woman. Famed for storytelling in the orphanage. Selected to be an usher at a movie theater, she enters both the world of sexual advances and movies (analogously). Her strength and endearing manner give her the power to create a good story, which happens to be the one we see.Yet another rather profound narrative experiment from the period when films were trying to discover what they were.The girl is a brilliant redhead, though a viewer would not know except through fan magazines.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.