The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The film stars Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, and it is partially set at Christmas.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Production Company: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Distributor: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut
US Box Office: $2,500,000 ($99,700,000 adjusted for inflation)
Film Format: Black & White
Genre: Comedy
Release Date: January 12, 1940
Plot Summary: Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) are both employees at Hugo Matuschek’s (Frank Morgan) shop in Budapest, Hungary. Alfred and Klara hate each other in real life, but have unknowingly fallen in love together as anonymous pen pals through their letters. The two start to fall in love in real life once Alfred learns that Klara is his pen pal.
Production: In 1938 director Ernst Lubitsch purchased the rights to the Hungarian play Parfumerie (1937) written by Miklos Laszlo. The play was centered around a small shop, and was about two feuding co-workers who unknowingly fell in love with each other through anonymous letter correspondence. The play interested Lubitsch because it reminded him of his childhood working in his father’s shop in Berlin. Lubitsch thought that making a film adaptation of Parfumerie would be a good tribute to his family’s long closed shop and to small city shops in general.
Lubitsch had originally planned to film The Shop Around the Corner independently with producer Myron Selznick as part of a “share-the-profits” deal and have it be distributed by Paramount, RKO, or United Artists. That plan fell through, so Lubitsch signed a contract with MGM in January of 1939. Lubitsch, who was going to direct and produce the film for MGM, hired Samson Raphaelson to write the script for The Shop Around the Corner. Lubitsch chose James Stewart for the part Alfred Kralik because he thought that Stewart would be believable as a shop employee, since seemed to be a very normal “everyman” actor (or as Lubitsch put it, “the antithesis of the old-time matinee idol”). Although MGM considered Janet Gaynor for the part of Klara, Lubitsch chose Margaret Sullavan instead. She had previously worked with Stewart on two films, and they had good chemistry together. Since Stewart and Sullavan were both busy at the time, Lubitsch postponed the starting date for filming on The Shop Around the Corner till both actors were available, and he directed Ninotchka (1939) for MGM.
Once the leads were available, Lubitsch started shooting. Shooting took only twenty-eight days, from early November to early December of 1939. As was common for a comedy at the time, The Shop Around the Corner was filmed entirely on studio sets. Margaret Sullavan famously had a quick temper and tended to be hard to work with. Stewart was friends with Sullavan, having known her for several years by this point, so he was used to her temper and mostly got along well with her (though even he got frustrated with her sometimes). Some of the other cast and crew members did not get along with her.
Fun Facts and Trivia: In the opening credits of The Shop Around the Corner Margaret Sullavan is credited before James Stewart. Today Stewart is much more well-known than Sullavan, but at the time she was a bigger star than him. Sullavan, Stewart, Frank Morgan, and William Edmunds (the Waiter) all appeared together in The Mortal Storm (1940), which was released the same year as The Shop Around the Corner. In 1940, The New York Herald Tribune claimed that all of the scenes in The Shop Around the Corner were shot in the order in which they take place in the film. While it is unknown if this claim is true, it is possible, as the film was entirely shot on MGM sets, so they would not need to account for bad weather or other difficulties associated with location shooting. Charles Smith (Rudy) had a bit part in In the Good Old Summer Time (1949), MGM’s musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner.
Reception: The Shop Around the Corner was released on January 12, 1940. The film performed well enough at the box office, but it was not a big hit, despite receiving strong reviews. Part of the reason for this was that it was released only about a month after Gone With the Wind, which was dominating the box office despite only being available in a roadshow release. Both films were romance based (though The Shop Around the Corner was a comedy, not a drama), which probably didn’t help the film stand out. On September 29, 1940 The Screen Guild Theater aired a radio adaptation of The Shop Around the Corner in which Sullavan and Stewart reprised their roles. In 1949, MGM released a musical remake of the film, In the Good Old Summer Time, starring Judy Garland and Van Johnson.
The Shop Around the Corner received a strong positive reaction from critics when it was first released. Mae Tinee of the Chicago Tribune gave the film a positive review and thought that it was delightful. Frank S Nugent of the New York Times also gave the film a positive review and complimented Lubitsch’s direction. In retrospect The Shop Around the Corner has also received very strong reviews and some critics have even regarded it as one of the best comedy films. TV Guide stated that The Shop Around the Corner “may be the best romantic comedy ever made.” Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader explained that one of the reasons why The Shop Around the Corner was so good was because of how Lubitsch’s direction focused on character point of view. He wrote that Lubitsch makes “brilliant deployment of point of view, allowing the audience to enter the perceptions of each character at exactly the right moment to develop maximum sympathy and suspense.”
The Shop Around the Corner has been featured on a few lists of the greatest films of all time. In 2000, the American Film Institute nominated the film for its list of the top 100 funniest American comedy films of all time. In 2002, the AFI ranked the film #28 on its list of the top 100 most romantic American movies. In 2005 Time Magazine included The Shop Around the Corner on its list of the top 100 greatest American films of all time. In 2015 it was ranked by the BBC as the 58th greatest American film.
Oscars: The Shop Around the Corner was not nominated for any Academy Awards, but that year James Stewart did win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Why You Should See It: The Shop Around the Corner is very funny, and it is one of my favorite comedy films. The film is very sweet-natured at its core and is absolutely hilarious. The script is very witty and Lubitsch does a great job focusing on character point-of-view and reactions to the dialogue, which adds to the film’s humor. James Stewart is very good in the film, he adds sympathy to the role of Kralik and he is very likeable. Margaret Sullavan also gives a good performance. In his supporting role, Frank Morgan is both tough and funny. Similar to It’s a Wonderful Life, The Shop Around the Corner was not originally meant to be a “Christmas movie,” but the film has some touching moments that epitomize the spirit of Christmas, and it has become a holiday classic.