Fast and Loose (1930 film)

Plot

The Lenox family of Long Island, headed by Bronson (Frank Morgan) and Carrie (Winifred Harris), is wealthy and respectful of tradition, but their children Bertie (Henry Wadsworth) and Marion (Miriam Hopkins) are more irreverent. When Bertie gets involved with a chorus girl, Alice O'Neil (Carole Lombard), and Marion falls in love with Henry Morgan (Charles Starrett), an auto mechanic, the family tries to intervene to prevent their children from marrying beneath themselves.

Cast

Cast notes:

Production

David Gray and Avery Hopwood's play, The Best People, opened on Broadway on 19 August 1924 and ran for 142 performances. (It was later revived in 1933 when it ran for a more modest 67 performances.) Hopwood was a prolific and successful playwright, many of whose plays were adapted into films – his 1919 play The Gold Diggers provided the template for the Warner Bros. series of movie musicals.

The Best People was made into a silent film in 1925, The Best People, before Paramount had it refashioned into a vehicle for Miriam Hopkins, an established Broadway star who had just signed with the studio after making the short subject The Home Girl for them in 1928. Fast and Loose was her second film appearance.

Fast and Loose was also Preston Sturges' second Hollywood assignment, after The Big Pond (and its French-language version La grande mare). Carole Lombard, on the other hand, had appeared in over 40 films by the time Fast and Loose was released, all as "Carol Lombard."