What It's About:

Colonel Harrington and daughter Jean (Coburn and Stanwyck) are skilled card sharks who intend to ply their lucrative trade on board a chic ocean liner. Also on board is Charles Pike (Fonda), a shy, naive heir to a brewery fortune. He's the perfect mark, but Jean starts to fall for him. Once off the boat, Pike resumes his normal life, but his ordered world gets disrupted once more when he meets an English lady with a striking resemblance to Jean. Could it be?

Why I Love It:

Preston Sturges's crazy genius jumps right off the screen in this movie. A highly successful screenwriter before adding directing to his resume, he had an off-the wall sensibility that was way ahead of his time, and more than anything he'd done up to this point, this release proved it. Sturges's brilliantly anarchic script is brought to life here by a first-rate cast: Stanwyck is at the peak of her appeal as a husky-voiced con lady with a surprisingly vulnerable heart, and Coburn is incongruously cuddly as her father. Fonda also makes for a surprisingly effective straight man. This is one "Lady" you should stand up for.