Free and Easy

Netflix recommended Easy Living (1937) after the Jean Arthur double-bill I saw a while ago, but I'd been wanting to see it anyway - it's a genuine classic, with a Preston Sturges script.

Edward Arnold, a rich tycoon, is tired of his family's free-spending ways. He takes his wife's new sable coat and throws it off the penthouse roof. It lands on the hat of Jean Arthur, a working girl in a double decker bus. She tries to return it to Arnold, and to demand a new hat, but he tells her to keep it and buys her a hat.

People get the wrong idea, of course, and start showering her with favors, thinking she is the millionaire's mistress. She is moved into an amazing hotel suite, offered jewelry on loan, and hounded for stock tips. The only person who treats her like a person is Ray Milland, a guy she met in the Auto-mat (a scene culminating in a classic food fight). Unbeknownst to her, he is Arnold's son, trying to prove to Dad that he can make a living without an allowance.

Curiously, the real chemistry is between Arnold and Arthur. But Ray Milland does nicely as a stand-in, and Franklin Pangborn, Luis Alberni and William Demerest are all along for the ride.