Four's a Crowd. 1938. USA. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Screenplay by Casey Robinson, Sig Herzig, Wallace Sullivan. With Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Rosalind Russell, Patric Knowles, Walter Connolly. 35mm. 93 min.
Warner Brothers wandered into MGM territory with this four-handed screwball comedy, and even borrowed Rosalind Russell for the occasion. She’s a wisecracking reporter (a bit of casting that seems to have impressed Howard Hawks) who plots to save her dying paper by bringing back the high-flying former editor-in-chief, played with an anxious edge by Errol Flynn, whom the feckless new owner (Patric Knowles) has just fired. Somehow, the scheme involves a cranky billionaire (Walter Connolly) and his spoiled daughter (Olivia de Havilland). A distant inspiration, perhaps, for Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love, with a similar mechanical whirr.