Take a Letter, Darling

A.M. “Mac” MacGregor, head of an advertising agency, pays her male secretaries poorly, treats them badly and if, despite that, one of them falls in love with her, it’s grounds for dismissal. She makes an exception for Tom Verney, a penniless painter, even letting him kiss her. Tom is good with women, so Mac assigns him the task of charming the sister of tobacco magnate Jonathan Caldwell to capture his ad account. Tom commits so fully to the task that Mac becomes jealous. Meanwhile, the southern tobacco man, a notorious woman hater, eyes Mac as a fifth wife. Seeing Tom as a rival, a calculating Caldwell encourages the painter-cum-secretary to keep Mac’s jealousy on the boil, driving a wrathful Mac to accept the southerner’s marriage proposal … Rosalind Russell fights the battle of the sexes on two fronts in this elegant and bitchy screwball comedy. In an analogy with the American Civil War, the conflict between the New York businesswoman and the tycoon from Dixie takes on the tone of a culture war, including a tug-of-war between two different habitats – the weekend cottage versus the stately manor. In the end, it turns out happiness can be found in a mobile home.