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The Lubitsch Touch
Ernst Lubitsch and the You've Got Mail Connection
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) came to Hollywood from his native Berlin in 1922—at the request of Mary Pickford. It was in the German film capital that he began to develop what would later be known simply as “the Lubitsch Touch.” In the American film capital his success would be phenomenal.
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German Ernst Lubitsch produced and directed the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner, the original film upon which 1998's You've Got Mail is based.
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Ernst Lubitsch - On the Streets of Budapest
In 1940, just seven years before his death at age 55, Lubitsch lent his special filmic touch to The Shop Around the Corner. The classic film he directed and produced almost 60 years ago has since been recycled twice as a movie and once as a Broadway play. Lubitsch often set his US films in European locations, and the leather store where Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart) works is “just around the corner from Andrassy Street—on Balta Street in Budapest, Hungary.” (In reality, of course, the entire production was filmed on an MGM soundstage in California.) The Lubitsch original starred Stewart, Margaret Sullavan (as Klara Novak), Frank "Wizard of Oz" Morgan (as Mr. Matuschek), the Austrian actor Joseph Schildkraut (as Vadas), and the German actor Felix Bressart (as Pirovitch). The film's score was composed by the German Werner R. Heymann, who had earlier done the music for Lubitsch's 1939 critical hit with Greta Garbo—Ninotchka. (Production on Shop had begun even before the Nov. 9, 1939 release of Ninotchka in New York. Eventually, The Shop Around the Corner outdid Ninotchka at the box office, grossing $1.3 million.)
Imagine an entire movie being filmed in just 27 days for a total cost of $474,000. That is precisely what Ernst Lubitsch did with The Shop Around the Corner. Lubitsch's second wife, Vivian, had suggested the title “The Little Shop Around the Corner,” but her husband dropped the “little” when he and Samson Raphaelson began work on the script (based on the play “Parfumerie” by Nikolaus Laszlo). And what a script! It masterfully takes the simple premise of two people in a love-hate relationship (love by mail, hate in person) and weaves it into a warm and humorous love story. After some initial discomfort in trying to accept the all-American Jimmy Stewart as a Hungarian, the viewer is soon absorbed in Lubitsch's tale. Eventually we even ignore the disparate accents of the movie's characters, all of whom are supposed to be Hungarians working in a Budapest shop filled with purses, suitcases, and other leather goods. The soft German and Austrian inflections of the film's foreign actors, though pleasant to the ear, seem just a bit out of sync with the American English of Stewart, Sullavan, Morgan, and others. (Sometimes during the 1940s it seemed that Lubitsch by himself was trying to solve Hollywood's entire Nazi refugee employment problem.) But despite such minor faults, the Lubitsch original is rated highly by most film critics. The Shop Around the Corner is certainly as viewable today as it was in the late 1940s.
Hollywood's Accents - The Austrians and Germans in Shop
The Austrian-born actor Joseph (Josef) Schildkraut (1895-1964) had a long and distinguished career on the stage and in films in both Europe and the US. His father, Rudolph (1862-1930) was also a well-known stage and screen actor. Joseph came to America in 1920 and soon was a star—both on Broadway and in Hollywood. In 1940, the year he made Shop, Schildkraut worked in three other Hollywood productions (Phantom Raiders, Rangers of Fortune, Meet the Wildcat). In 1959, after a decade of not appearing in any films, Schildkraut played Otto Frank in the highly regarded Diary of Anne Frank. He then made two more films before his death in 1964. MORE > Joseph Schildkraut
Felix Bressart (1890-1949) had a long stage and film career behind him in Germany when he was forced to flee his Nazi-dominated homeland in 1933. Hollywood offered him a series of character roles. His other film work includes: Ninotchka (1930), Edison the Man (1940), Comrade X (1940), To Be or Not To Be (1942), Take One False Step (1949). MORE > Felix Bressart
Werner R. Heymann (1896-1950) composed the musical score for The Shop Around the Corner. Before that he had scored the classic Greta Garbo vehicle, Ninotchka, also directed by Lubitsch. Other films before he returned to Germany in the 1950s: Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), To Be or Not To Be (1942), Kiss and Tell (1945), Tell It to the Judge (1949). MORE > Werner R. Heymann
Some other Lubitsch pictures:
Rosita (1923, with Mary Pickford), Design for Living (1933), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), Ninotchka (1939) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). See a complete Lubitsch filmography at IMDb.
Next, more Lubitsch movies and the 1998 remake of Shop Around the Corner...
N E X T > More Lubitsch
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