Standing Room Only
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Sidney Lanfield
Paulette Goddard
Fred Macmurray
Edward Arnold
Roland Young
Hillary Brooke
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
At the Todd Toys manufacturing plant, assembly worker Jane Rogers is distracted every time the handsome general manager, Lee Stevens, comes into the room. After she makes three mistakes, her supervisor sends her to Lee to be reprimanded. While Jane is waiting in his outer office, Lee's spoiled fiancée Alice, daughter of president T. J. Todd, insists that her father commandeer Lee's attractive secretary so that Lee will not take her on a business trip to Washington, D.C. The secretary quits and Jane seizes the opportunity and applies for the job. Lee assumes that Jane is already a qualified secretary and hires her on the spot, too distracted to notice that she is memorizing his dictation because she does not know shorthand. Jane commits her first mistake when she leaves Lee's briefcase in a taxi while en route to the train station. After retrieving the briefcase, Jane takes a plane to Washington, D.C. and gets there before Lee. When Lee arrives at his crowded hotel, he is astonished to learn that Jane has canceled their reservations because the rooms were small. Because of the war, Washington is filled to capacity, and Jane and Lee are forced to spend a rainy night sleeping under a statue. When Lee awakens in the morning with a cold, he dispatches Jane to secure them a hotel room while he leaves for his appointment with Glen Ritchie at the government war production office. Lee hopes to sell Ritchie on the idea of giving Todd's bankrupt factory a government contract as a war service factory, otherwise, Todd risks losing the business. Upon arriving at the O.P.D. office, Lee is told that Ritchie never schedules appointments, and is forced to wait in a line with dozens of other men. When he finally gets in to see Ritchie, Ritchie leaves immediately for a meeting with someone else. That night, Jane takes Lee to the room she has rented in the home of Ira Cromwell and his wife, the Major. Jane got the room as a last resort, and Lee is dismayed to learn that they have been hired as a husband-and-wife team of servants. Ira allows Lee to take his first day of work off, and Lee returns to Ritchie's office to wait in line. After being turned away a third time, Lee becomes frustrated when his competitor, Farenhall, arrives and immediately sets to work seducing the secretary. That night, Lee reluctantly dons a butler's uniform to serve the dinner, but first asks Jane to take dictation. When he sees that she is faking, she admits that she was on the verge of being fired, and lied to him only because she is one of many women in the factory who are attracted to him. Lee and Jane seal their growing affection with a kiss. After another frustrating day waiting to see Ritchie, Lee returns home to serve dinner, and panics when he realizes that Ritchie is one of the Cromwells' guests. Jane urges him to take advantage of the opportunity, and when she discovers that she forgot to turn on the oven and the turkey is not cooked, Lee whips up a batch of his flapjacks to serve as dinner. Ritchie is delighted by the meal, which reminds him of his hunting trips, and insists on hiring Lee and Jane as his servants. The next morning, Lee and Jane quit the Cromwells' and go to the Ritchies' home, but when Jane burns Mrs. Ritchie's hair with the curling iron, she throws them out, and they are rehired by Ira, who enjoys flirting with Jane. By this time, Lee and Jane have fallen in love. Later, Todd and Alice arrive at the Cromwells' looking for Lee, having found the address by tracing his phone call, but as Lee and Jane have used the name Rogers, Ira claims not to know Lee. When Todd loses his reservations at a hotel, however, Ira invites him to spend the night. That night, Todd is shocked to see Lee working as Ira's butler, and Ira and the Major are shocked when they learn Lee's true identity, and that he and Jane are not married. Feeling that she has been humiliated, Alice insists that Todd fire Lee, and Jane leaves, upset because she has wrought Lee's ruination. Lee goes out to find Jane, but is waylaid by Ritchie, who begs him to work for his dinner party the next night. Lee rejects his offer, and Ritchie then convinces Jane, whom he finds walking on the street, to work as his maid by promising to get her a job as a secretary. Todd later consoles Lee and, after assuring him that he is not really fired, reveals that he only wanted to appease Alice, who he thinks is selfish and arrogant. The next day, Todd accompanies Lee to Ritchie's office, where they learn that Farenhall has finagled a dinner invitation to the Ritchies' from his secretary. Todd and Lee show up at the Ritchies' home to work as butlers, and Lee discovers that Jane truly loves him when she agrees to help him and Todd get the contract. After Todd purposely dumps soup on Ritchie during dinner, Lee corners him as he changes his suit and discovers that Ritchie had planned to give the contract to Todd Toys all along. Lee returns to the dining room, where the shocked guests witness the butler kissing the maid.
Director
Sidney Lanfield
Cast
Paulette Goddard
Fred Macmurray
Edward Arnold
Roland Young
Hillary Brooke
Porter Hall
Clarence Kolb
Anne Revere
Isabel Randolph
Marie Mcdonald
Veda Ann Borg
Josephine Whittell
Sig Arno
Robin Raymond
John Hamilton
Regina Wallace
Boyd Davis
Winifred Harris
Roy Gordon
Mary Newton
Herbert Heyes
Mira Mckinney
Eddie Dunn
Arthur Loft
Lorin Raker
Ralph Peters
Marilyn Harris
Yvonne De Carlo
Noel Neill
Elvira Curci
Lal Chand Mehra
Judith Gibson
Marcella Phillips
Gayne Whitman
Rita Gould
Grayce Hampton
Ethel May Halls
Georgia Backus
Harry Hays Morgan
Forbes Murray
Edwin Stanley
Mary Currier
Howard Mitchell
Frank Faylen
Crew
Lonnie D'orsa
B. G. Desylva
Robert Emmett Dolan
Hans Dreier
Edith Head
Earl Hedrick
Paul Jones
Charles Lang Jr.
Al Martin
Hedvig Mjorud
Ray Moyer
Ferol Redd
William Shea
Karl Tunberg
Darrell Ware
Wally Westmore
Philip Wisdom
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Hollywood Reporter reported the following information about the production: Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray were initially paired for the leads, followed by Paulette Goddard and Sonny Tufts. Susan Hayward was also cast, but quit due to the small size of her role. Moroni Olsen was forced to leave the cast because of schedule conflicts. Paramount re-shot a scene dealing with coffee rationing because coffee was taken off the ration list in September 1943. Paulette Goddard and Fred MacMurray reprised their roles in a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on October 30, 1944.
