Saturday | October 7, 2006 9:00 pm

Ladies in Love

Screening on Film

Directed by Edward H. Griffith.
With Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young, Constance Bennett.
US, 1936, 35mm, black & white, 94 min.

In her last film for Fox, Gaynor appears alongside Constance Bennett and Loretta Young in a romantic drama about three girlfriends sharing a deluxe apartment while they search for husbands in modern-day Budapest. Gaynor got top billing to play the sensible gal enamored of a dignified doctor (Don Ameche). Tyrone Power makes the most of his small part as Young’s aristocratic love interest; his popularity in the picture convinced the studio to groom him for even greater stardom. The film’s storyline, based on the play Three Girls by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete, became a virtual template at the studio, inspiring later iterations of the formula such as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).