This sparkling romantic comedy, with a clever screenplay by Preston Sturges, is considered “uncharacteristic” Wyler, but in fact represents the director's early Thirties films for Universal, which marked him as a witty and effective story-teller. This period preceded his more literary period beginning in the mid-Thirties, when Wyler, at his height, directed some of Samuel Goldwyn's greatest films (Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, Dodsworth...). In The Good Fairy, Sturges adapted Ferenc Molnar's cynical stage comedy to his own ends, softening the cynicism and highlighting the madcap, adding a host of characters with unpronounceable names to the story of a young usherette in a movie theater who, when a would-be benefactor offers to make her husband a rich man, quickly finds a husband in the White Pages. An excellent cast includes Margaret Sullavan and Herbert Marshall. (JB)