Barbara Stanwyck is the accused jewel thief with whom D. A. Fred MacMurrayfalls in love-and whose bail he secures so that she might be free to spend the Christmas holiday with him.James Harvey writes in Romantic Comedy: "(Stanwyck) is a paradigmatic woman star of the thirties:tough and independent and very smart. But she also suggests the ambivalence of these qualities, in ways andmoments that can be startling. It's no wonder that Sturges was drawn to her...The Sturges gift for a kind ofoffhand profundity has its ideal exponent in her, with her directness, and the feeling she gives of so manylevels of comment behind the directness: the smile behind the eyes. The Stanwyck temperament and styleare at the heart of that tension between experience and innocence which so much preoccupies Sturges, evenmore than it did most other filmmakers. She has the same value and interest for Capra, of course, in MeetJohn Doe (1941). In this film as well as in...Remember the Night, an overly "experienced" heroine is finallyregenerated by the innocence and unworldliness she encounters through the hero. But as always in Sturges'work, it's the differences from Capra that turn out to be most determining...The fact is that she is'smarter' (than the hero) just as she said she was; and while a Capra film might suppose that she could undothat, and even that she should, a Sturges film knows better..."