Easy Living

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Easy Living
Directed by	Mitchell Leisen
Produced by	Arthur Hornblow Jr.
Written by	Preston Sturges
Starring	Jean Arthur Edward Arnold Ray Milland Luis Alberni
Release date(s)	July 7, 1937
Running time	88 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Easy Living is a 1937 screwball comedy film, directed by Mitchell Leisen, written by Preston Sturges, and starring Jean Arthur.

Arthur plays a female clerk at a boys' pulp magazine publishing house (the fictitious Boys' Constant Companion) who can easily be fooled by installment payment scams, but through a sequence of wildly fortunate events interspersed by slapstick gets mistaken for the mistress of the third richest banker in America. Overtopping the norms of the genre, everything in her new life is fantastically stylish and expensive. And her presence in, absence from, or mistaken decisions concerning real estate and the stock market have satirical consequences to these institutions in the film. The film is noteworthy for several period references.

The film contains scenes which serve to record the workings of the obsolete American restaurant form called the Automat. This was a predecessor to the fast food restaurant with no waiters or cashiers, being a wall-to-wall vending machine whose slots were filled by cooks from behind. Being in the era before disposable styrofoam cups and plastic utensils, it had to hire people to wash the cups, dishes, and cutlery. It was also before closed-circuit television to spy on the workers — actually employing a periscope manned by another employee to do so.

One of the references in the film which has since been lost to the general public concerns the "Sixteen-Cylinder" automobile which a firm in the film offers to give her due to her notoriety. Only three firms offered such a car in this time period, and by the time of the film, only Cadillac did so. One of the body styles unique to this set of running gear was designed by Harley Earl. He called it the "Madame X," a phrase used to refer to mistresses from the late Victorian period to his time.