A Most Atrocious Thing

Sylvia Maynard is a stenographer for a theatrical producer and tries to prove to her boss, that she can act by posing as a society woman at a lavish house party. Don Meredith, the struggling playwright who wrote the work in which Sylvia wishes to star, also masquerades as a famous writer at the party in order to prove that the central thesis of his play is valid: that one can pose in any role in high society and get away with it. Sylvia, introduced as the widow of Captain Milton Brown, falls in love with Don, but her joy turns to panic when her supposedly dead husband suddenly appears. The amused captain allows Sylvia to continue her impersonation for a time but advises her to leave the party. Don, heartbroken, also leaves, but after several adventures in which he helps Sylvia retrieve papers stolen during the party by a German spy, the two lovers are reunited in their true identities, and the play debuts successfully.

Johnny, the son of a rich man, is an idling, good-for-nothing loafer who leads a wild, hectic life, flunks out of college, and is disinherited and made to leave home by his father, who has given up on him in despair. Johnny opens a gas-station in Arizona, where "Waffles," a girl from Georgia, takes him in hand and employs her own methods of reformation with astonishing and fruitful results. More comedy than drama, if the meller-drammer acting is overlooked. It was released in the UK as "The Girl From Georgia" in 1934.

Housewife Hannah Held, nee Liebetanz, has been fidelity to her dentist Martin for 27 years, in good times and bad. But when she happens to find out that he is cheating on her with his young practice assistant Annika, the oven is out for her: "I'm getting a divorce!" Explains Hannah angrily. With this determined exclamation, however, she causes a scandal at the annual foundation festival of her great-aunt Kthe. Shortly before, the wealthy old lady had publicly handed over the imposing family villa to Hannah, including the management of the multi-million dollar love dance foundation. Now Hannah is in a quandary, because she knows only too well that the tradition-conscious great-aunt values stable marriages above all else: she will never entrust the expensive family inheritance to a divorcee. Torn between the just outrage about her husband's infidelity and the responsibility to the family, Hannah plays down her appearance at the party as a skipping act and moves into the villa with her future ex-husband. The separation of table and bed is, however, precisely regulated by contract - an invisible wall divides the venerable property into two halves and on the outside the two mimick the happily married couple. They succeed so well that even their two adult children Lola and Paul can no longer see through it. And soon Hannah and Martin themselves no longer know where love ends and lies begin. Little did they suspect that the clever and forward-looking heir-aunt has long since caught up with them.