I’ll bet someody out there knows this movie without looking.*
A woman writes a newspaper column about having a gracious home, and keeps up the pretense, in print, that it’s HER home. However, she’s single and lives in an apartment.
The pretense falls apart when some higher-up decides he must spend Christmas at the columnist’s gracious home. . . she endeavors to fake it . . . hilarity ensues and all that.
Unfortunately I cannot remember any of the stars. I thought it was Rosalind Russell but apparently not–but it was somebody like her. (This did not prove at all helpful in my search.)
*Note that I have been looking, and I still don’t know.
After checking the plot summary of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” I saw that I was thinking of the wrong charade. But I seem to remember the movie you describe with maybe Loretta Young, Greer Garson or somebody other than Rosalind Russell. No further help at this point, nor could my wife help. She remembers something like your outline, too.
[hijack]Along the same lines, a poverty-stricken apple lady (Bette Davis) who has been writing to her daughter, pretending to be rich, and then the daughter is coming to visit… With an amazing cast, including Peter Falk, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton, etc is POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES, director Frank Capra. Very very funny, and very heartwarmingly corny – Capra gone excessive.
Capra’s one of the few directors to remake one of his own movies. Pocketful of Miracles was a retread of an even better Capra movie, 1933’s Lady for a Day. May Robson was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the lead. And though Bette Davis is my alltime favorite actress, I have to give the edge to Robson in this particular part.
If you haven’t seen Lady for a Day, CK, I urge you.
Hold on, lemme check something . . .
Ha! You’re in luck! It’s on TCM next week, February 26! Says here 8.30am, but TCM has a new online schedule interface, and I can’t tell what time zone that is. Probly Eastern, but check.