Easy Living (1937) on Netflix
J.B. Ball, a wealthy banker fed up with his family's spending, throws his wife's new sable coat out the window. It lands on Mary Smith, a working girl riding to her job.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.5/104,791 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Plot summary
J.B. Ball is the third richest banker in America, and he has just learned that his wife Jenny paid a fortune for a sable fur coat. After a chase through their New York penthouse he hurls the coat off the roof. It falls onto Mary Smith, a working girl on a bus. She tries to hand it back; Ball tells her to keep it and buys her a new hat, and Van Buren, who owns the shop, takes her for Ball's mistress and spreads the word. Mary's employer fires her rather than risk the magazine's reputation. Penniless, she accepts a luxury suite from hotel owner Mr. Louis Louis, who hopes her presence will keep Ball from foreclosing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Easy Living (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While shooting Easy Living's bathtub scene, Ray Milland got stuck in the tub. The mishap was not in Preston Sturges's script, but director Mitchell Leisen kept the camera rolling and put the bit into the finished film.
- Twentieth-Century Fox fought Paramount over the source of Easy Living, claiming it came from the Hungarian play Der Komet by Attila Orbok, which Fox had already used for My Lips Betray and was planning for a Sonja Henie film, Thin Ice. Fox dropped the claim and the film opened as scheduled.
- The jewels and furs Jean Arthur wore in Easy Living were genuine, according to reports in her biography and elsewhere, and guards were posted during the filming.
- When a studio executive rejected Preston Sturges's script because 1936 was not the time for comedies, Sturges took it straight to director Mitchell Leisen, later admitting that going over his producer's head was not a sagacious move.
- Director Mitchell Leisen believed an actress must be satisfied with how she will look to devote all her attention to acting, so he personally oversaw all of Jean Arthur's wardrobe and hair tests and even styled her hair himself.
- Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin wrote the song "Easy Living" for the film, and it has since become a jazz standard made famous by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and many other jazz singers.
- Jean Arthur had a reputation for being difficult, but Mitchell Leisen had no trouble directing her on Easy Living, all the more surprising because she was then in a bitter dispute with Columbia Pictures' Harry Cohn and wanted out of her contract.
