Design For Living - 1933 Film

1933 Film

The play was adapted into a pre-Hays code comedy film in 1933, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with a screenplay by Ben Hecht, starring Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins and Edward Everett Horton. Coward said of the film adaptation, "I'm told that there are three of my original lines left in the film - such original ones as 'Pass the mustard'." The film's plot was as follows:

In Paris, Americans, playwright Tom Chambers and artist George Curtis, both fall in love with Gilda, an American commercial artist. She cannot make up her mind which man she loves, so the three decide to live together platonically. At first, the three are friends, but as time goes by, the two men become more competitive. Gilda decides to end the dispute by marrying her employer, Max Plunkett, but finds the marriage dull and stifling. After Tom and George crash a party at the Plunkett mansion, Gilda returns to the two men, and Max agrees to a divorce.