Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Old Summertime, and You’ve Got Mail are three movies that have a great deal in common. Jimmie Stewart and Margaret Sullavan made the 1940 picture The Shop Around the Corner from a script written by Samson Raphaelson.

Judy Garland and Van Johnson reprise the storyline and the characters in the 1949 semi-musical In the Good Old Summertime. The original play was known as Parfumerie written by Miklos Laszlo, a Hungarian American playwright. The third incarnation was She Loves Me, a 1963 Broadway musical.

The storyline is of a man and a woman who have been exchanging letters for some time and have fallen in love. The pair are coworkers in a perfume store and then in a music store. That changes in 1998’s You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Meg owns The Shop Around the Corner that is a bookstore. Tom Hanks is a CEO of a major chain of bookstores that are moving into the neighborhood.

They are exchanging messages in an AOL chat room. The scene where the couple agrees to meet at a local restaurant is almost identical in all the productions. He looks in and sees that she is a woman that hates him. When he enters and sees her, he doesn’t admit that he is her good friend. He makes fun of the other man. This is the plot in each script.

The unique part of the You’ve Got Mail movie is that the characters Meg and Tom play are involved with someone else and are keeping it a secret from their lovers. Can you be in love with someone you have not yet met? It is an intriguing question.

This was not the first play or movie where two adults who seem to hate each other become lovers. Another series of productions reverse the order. The original was The Front Page from 1931 tells of a newspaper reporter and his editor that have a falling out after being friends for years. That’s the reverse of a couple that hates each other and then falls in love.

What if the reporter is female and the editor is male? They are also a divorced couple. The 1940 movie His Girl Friday starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell was the first incarnation of this twist. Switching Channels from 1988 teams Burt Reynolds with Sharon Stone as a cable news network owner and his top reporter that use the same story. Do you know any other movies or TV shows with the same story? I’d enjoy hearing about them.

©Copyright 2021 by Charles Kensinger