Billy Wilder remains one of the best screenwriters in film history, with 12 Oscar-nominated screenplays on his resume. Although he had directed a film in Europe in the early 1930s, he worked exclusively as a screenwriter with Charles Brackett until the early 1940s. They wrote some of the funniest films ever made, particularly Erst Lubitsch's Ninotchka and Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire. While those two turned out great, others didn't. So, by 1942, he was itching to direct his own scripts.
Conveniently, he had the same agent as the great Ginger Rogers, who was looking for a great project to follow her Oscar-winning performance in Kitty Foyle. Wilder and Brackett wanted to make a commercial film, so the best idea was to work with one of the most bankable stars of the day. They picked the play Connie Goes Home, which Paramount owned the screen rights to. Wilder set up shop at Paramount, where he would be for the next decade, and the result was The Major and The Minor.
If you think Some Like It Hot was an outrageous comedy, you haven't seen anything until you've seen the insanity that ensues in The Major and The Minor. Rogers plays Susan Kathleen Applegate, a street-wise girl living in New York, who quits her job after a client (the always hilarious Robert Benchley) makes a pass at her. Since she has no money, she goes back home to Iowa. However, she can't even pay for a full-price adult train ticket, so she masquerades as a child to get the half-price ticket.
On the train, she meets Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland), who is on his way back to the training academy where he teaches. Her child disguise completely fools Kirby, who lets her stay in his cabin. The train ride stalls after the tracks are flooded, so Kirby insists that she stay at the academy. There, she gets in trouble, trying to derail Kirby's fiance's (Rita Johnson) attempts to keep him from serving in Washington. She also begins to fall in love with Kirby, but his fiance has other plans.
The hilarity comes from Milland's performance as a straight man. Rogers' skills as a comedienne are on full display, but thanks to Milland, it really comes off perfectly. It is a little creepy when he starts to fall for Rogers even before he finds out how old she is, but it's genius if you think that Kirby is actually in on Susan's gag and just playing along.
There's also a few great supporting turns, something that would become a hallmark of Wilder's later films. He always knew how to pick those supporting players who didn't stand in the way of the leads, but added unique flavor. For The Major and The Minor, we get the great Robert Benchley, who gets to deliver the film's famous line, “Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?” Rita Johnson also gives a deliciously evil performance as Rogers' nemesis.
Wilder also got some hilarious performances out of the young students who try to go out with Rogers. My favorite scene in the whole movie might be the part where Rogers tries to charm one of the boys to get access to the switchboard.
Wilder followed up The Major and The Minor with a mix of comedies and dramas. When he finally went to comedies full-time in the late 1950s with co-writer I.A.L. Diamond, his comedies were finally catching up with the precedent he set with The Major and The Minor. (That's not a slam to his serious work...after all, I consider Sunset Boulevard one of the Top 10 best films of all time.) It actually has much more in common with the better sex comedies of his later career (Some Like It Hot and Irma La Deuce, particularly) than the work that immediately followed. Unfortunately, the film isn't as well known as it should be, but if you need a good laugh, you can do no better than this.
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