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Try to tell me Wyler wasn't inspired by Ernst Lubitsch. Go on, say it. If this had starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald instead of Francis Lederer and Frances Dee, it'd easily pass for one of Lubitsch's films of the Pre-Code era. It's the story of a suave, European womanizer who falls in love with a largely unassuming American woman with touches of farcical mistaken identity on top. That it doesn't entertain quite as much as The Good Fairy is unfortunate, but The Good Fairy was just great. The Gay Deception is a lighter, less emotionally satisfying confection, but still a small delight of a film that resembles Lubitsch's So This is Paris.

Mirabel Miller (Dee) is a worker bee at a small firm in Greenville, NY with dreams of saving up her money for a fashionable hat, a symbol of living large and having a good time (it was the Depression, so this is obviously wish-fulfillment for the audience pretty much from the get go). She wins a lottery of $5,000 and decides that she's going to go to New York City to spend it all and enjoy herself, even if only for a month. So, she shows up at the Walsdorf Plaza with management thinking that she's some kind of melon magnate's daughter. One of the employees of the hotel is a bellboy named Sandro (Lederer). He's unconcerned with the rules of punctuality and happily backtalks to his superior regularly. He shows up in rooms being made up and just asks to watch the process of making the bed. He's an odd duck, and the talk of the hotel staff.

When Mirabel shows up to the Plaza, Sandro is one of the bellboys assigned to help take her things up to her room, and he continues his pattern of insubordination by sticking around, gently ribbing her when he watches her bouncing on her bed, and criticizing the style of her expensive $20 hat, all in front of a superior who cheerfully fires him in the elevator down.

Sandro's secret, though, is that he's actually Prince Alessandro of the country Alessandro. The Consul-General Semanek (Lennox Pawle) is convinced that the Prince is on a trans-Atlantic ship at that moment, due to dock in a couple of days, and he's in with some nefarious gangster characters for...some reason. I guess it got explained in one line of dialogue, but it's really just an excuse for Semanek to feel panic at Alessandro's not being on the ship. His life is somehow tied up in it. It's enough for the situation, but it's still thin. Alessandro snuck over early, though, because he has some inclination to get into the hotel business, and he had decided to use the Walsdorf Plaza as an example to learn the business. Sure, why not?

The meat of it, though, is the burgeoning relationship between Alessandra, continuing his façade as a working man by getting new jobs at the hotel every time he gets fired (he gets fired a few times to increasingly comic results), and Mirabel who is both attracted to and annoyed by this foreign guy who keeps trying to order for her (like telling her to order a martini when he's a waiter, she insists on something sweet, he brings her a martini despite her protestations, she enjoys the drink, and he smiles because he won). When he gets fired for the final time, he takes her out to dinner at a small Italian restaurant where he gets seen by the two toughs running Semanek, and Semanek sends some people down there to pick him up, to try and mask his identity, forcing Alessandro to abandon Mirabel at the restaurant.

The finale of the film is around a large society dinner at the hotel, run by a snooty lady that revels at the opportunity to invite Mirabel but also insult her because she's obviously not of her class. Alessandro sees through it, and he offers himself in his true identity up as her guest. She resists because he hurt her, and she also doesn't believe him. What makes this whole thing entertaining is a ticking clock element (Semanek and the two toughs are coming to investigate the rumor of Alessandro in New York before the boat) along with the fact that Alessandro snuck in, stealing bits of clothing from other guests in the laundry, to make his entrance.

It's all light and airy and amusing as it plays out. There's just enough character built into it around Mirabel and Alessandro so that their romance feels believable. The minor characters are broadly drawn and fun to watch, especially Pawle as Semanek in his most fearful moments when his hair gets crazed. Lederer is charming as Alessandro, fun to watch as he floats through almost every scene and situation. Dee is fine as Mirabel, pretty much the straight man of the comedic series of setups.

The characters are perhaps too thin for any real emotional connection, and the comic situations are occasionally too contrived to really hit either. However, as a whole, the film is a light treat of comedy from William Wyler in the early days of the Hays Code.

This is the first of a 3-movie tribute (though I own a number of his other efforts that remain unwatched) which I will be undertaking on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of distinguished (if not a personal favorite) director Wyler's passing. Despite an unfortunate title – which, at this juncture, makes it sound like a biopic of Rock Hudson (or even John Travolta)! – this is an unassuming but nice addition to the spate of sophisticated/crazy romantic comedies to emerge during Hollywood's Golden Age (thematically, it recalls James Whale's equally delightful BY CANDLELIGHT {1934}). Wyler would display this kind of light touch only sporadically throughout his career (for the record, my viewing of its not-too-dissimilar predecessor THE GOOD FAIRY from the same year is upcoming), mainly losing himself in significant solemnity thereafter: while this may have won him numerous accolades over the years, it certainly did not endear him to critics who abided by the auteur theory!

Anyway, the central casting here seems second-rate upon a preliminary glance but Frances Dee proves appealingly gauche along the way (as a small-town girl who, having won $5000 in a melon contest{!}, tries to pass herself off as a society woman while on a New York spending spree), whereas Francis Lederer is a revelation: best-known for playing sinister types (as in Jean Renoir's masterful THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID {1946} and the low-budget but inventive THE RETURN OF Dracula {1958}) or suave aristocratic seducers (notably Mitchell Leisen's sparkling MIDNIGHT {1939}), he retains the latter qualities here – in the role of the prince of a fictional Middle-European country posing as a hotel bell-boy! – but invests the character with quick-witted cunning and infectious charm.

The scene is thus set for a multitude of complications: Dee is misguidedly feted by the hotel staff, though still shunned by the true elite (exemplified by Benita Hume – Ronald Colman's wife – and Alan Mowbray) who can spot her modest origins a mile off; Lederer's savoir faire attitude belies his assumed rank (and even lands him in trouble with his 'superiors': forever losing his job, he then has his country's N.Y. embassy pull the necessary strings in order to get him reinstated!), while also initially putting the ingenuous heroine ill-at-ease. The eccentric, child-like ambassador himself (DAVID COPPERFIELD {1935}'s Lennox Pawle) has his hands full trying to keep Lederer's ruse a secret from a couple of investors of dubious morals (Lionel Stander and Akim Tamiroff) – so that, when taking Dee to a ball under his real guise and ostensibly exposed as a fraud, having had to assemble his officious wardrobe from bits and pieces belonging to various people at the hotel (including ubiquitous character actors Luis Alberni and Robert Greig), Pawle cannot vouch for the prince, and the latter is thus thrown in jail! An earnest Dee tries to intervene, believing Lederer had done this grand gesture for her sake…but, upon being revealed for what he really is, she feels used by him and flees in humiliation, intent on going back home. The inevitable last-scene reconciliation, then, is brought on by the simple (i.e. idealized) act of having the hero sneak into the leading lady's room dressed-up once again in a bell-boy's uniform!

Fun romp with dashing Francis Lederer and lovely Frances Dee.

This is the kind of screwball movie that Hollywood can never make again. We have become too jaded, too complicated, too sophisticated.

You know the ending way before it comes, but the ride is full of smiles and giggles and silly surprises that will make your insides gurgle with joy and harken you gently into a more innocent time.

William Wyler's direction is nearly flawless. He wasn't Bette Davis' favorite director for nothing. It seems that he could do most anything.

Also, watch for the wonderfully goofy Lennox Pawle, stately Alan Mowbray and instantly recognizable Akim Tamiroff in one of the many roles that made their faces well-known but not necessarily their identities household names.

Sit back and take it in. Smile. You deserve it.

When office worker "Mirabel" (Frances Dee) scoops $5,000 in the state lottery, she decides to ignore the bank manager's advice to invest and heads to New York for a luxury stay. She is suitably fêted by the hotel staff, but soon finds her trip to this metropolis where she knows nobody a bit lonely. The only friend she seems to make is the elevator boy (Francis Lederer). He notices that she's not having the best time and determines to make her feel better. Thing is, he has a bit of a secret to keep and though that could ultimately help their budding romance, he needs to keep it for now and that's where their problems start. It's all a little predictable, sure, but there is quite an engaging effort from Lederer (and he resists any temptation to burst into song) and there are a few swipes at the posh, pompous and supercilious amongst the so-called glittering society types who couldn't spot a prince from a porcupine. "The customer is always right!"? Who ever came up with that stupid policy?

What a wonderful old film. This old flick moves along at a intelligent pace with wit and timing throughout. For a movie over 70 years old, the dialog is smart with no over-acting to be found anywhere. The interplay between Francis Lederer and Frances Dee is humorous, mature and completely entertaining. The story is not complicated, but the pace and writing carry it along fine.

What Hollywood would do with a re-make of this God only knows, but it would be well worth a try. Until then, I highly recommend The Gay Deception. Seek this movie out and you will not be sorry.

14 out of 14. (See the movie and you'll understand)