FREE Movie: Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Sponsored by Liberty Tax Service in Greenfield, kick off Small Business Saturday Shopping right with the 1940 classic Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart (It's a Wonderful Life) and Margaret Sullivan (Next Time We Love) and Frank Morgan (Wizard of Oz). This is the movie from which the Meg Ryan Tom Hanks hit You've Got Mail is adapted. Shop Around the Corner reunites Sullivan and Stewart two years after their unrelated talkie remake of the 1928 film The Shop Worn Angel (1938) In Budapest, Hungary, the Matuschek and Company store is owned by Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Morgan) and the bachelor Alfred Kralik (Stewart) is his best and most experienced salesman. When Klara Novak (Sullivan) seeks a job position of saleswoman in the store, Matuschek hires her but Kralik and she do not get along. Meanwhile the lonely and dedicated Kralik has an unknown pen pal that he intends to propose very soon; however, he is fired without explanation by Matuschek on the night that he is going to meet his secret love. He goes to the bar where they have scheduled their meeting with his colleague Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) and he surprisingly finds that Klara is his correspondent; however, ashamed After being let go he does not disclose his identity to her. When Matuschek discovers that he had misjudged Kralik and committed a mistake, he hires him again for the position of manager. But Klara is still fascinated with her correspondent and does not pay much attention to Alfred. Alfred works out a plan to reveal himself to Klara's who he is attracted to now that he sees past her attitude.