(1936, b/w) This is rich - international playgirl and heiress to a fortune Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) becomes the subject of another terribly false, twisted story published in the New York Evening Star just as the managing editor, Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy), is about to be married to his long-suffering fiancée Gladys Benton (Jean Harlow) and threatens to sue for $5 million in damages - and very funny.

Facing a libel suit over the "hot story" or a breach of promise, Haggerty puts off Gladys yet again. Mr Bane (Charley Grapewin), the newspaper's publisher, suspects the suit is actually motivated by revenge for 20 years of his paper's keeping Connie's father, J.B. Allenbury (Walter Connelly), out of the Senate and an ambassadorship. The solution is to find Bill Chandler (William Powell), the best libel reporter, whom Haggerty fired a few years earlier.

Director Jack Conway's romantic comedy (Academy Award nominee for Best Picture) - screenplay by Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, George Oppenheimer from Wallace Sullivan's original story - would later be remade as Easy to Wed.

Struggling as an author of travel books, Chandler connives Haggerty into paying him $50,000 to come up with a plan to save the paper: Chandler, with Haggerty's approval, marries Gladys (who, already a divorcee, objects to the temporary union: "I want to get married and stay married") with the intention of his getting caught with Miss Allenbury, precipitating a suit for "alienation of affection" against the wanton woman.

Angling for Connie for five days on a voyage from London to New York, Chandler manages only to hook her father with his phony fishing lure. Having to prolong the façade of their marriage, Gladys begins to appreciate Bill's gentlemanly guilelessness toward her ("You are a strange egg" being an improvement over declaring him to be an ape) and thoughtful attentions.

After a morning's instruction in casting (never before having held a fishing rod), Chandler joins the Allenburys on a trout-fishing expedition, though Connie has bet her father that their companion can't fish, being just another fortune hunter whom she can quickly unmask. "Well, I take it all back," she admits after Chandler catches the king of trout: "He's good!" Oh, but they don't witness the hilarious spectacle of his entering the stream with handbook in one hand and rod in the other as he falls and flounders in the drink.

While Gladys has him with her part of the day, Bill (his motivation redirected) sneaks away to be with Connie (who falls and flounders into Bill's stream) in private at her residence, refusing her repeated entreaties to be with her in public. Secretly dispensing with the original set up of the frame-up, Chandler attempts a new, subtler line of persuasion to convince Connie to drop the lawsuit.

Anxious over Bill's not yet having found an opportunity for the subterfuge, Haggerty wakes up to the news when he's told: "Maybe he's working on the wrong girl." This is all prelude to the swift torrent of entanglements that follow.

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