In September 1938, an American diplomat negotiated in London the peace of Munich, rather than rush to Paris where his wife, a famous film actress, is about to fall into the arms of a young first. He gains peace but loses his happiness.
Une Femme de Chambre
The battle of the sexes as drawing room social satire. Philippe, a middle-aged newspaper editor, has lived for six years with Paulette, a successful stage actress. He tells her friend Claudine, a realistic and enterprising reporter, that he's thinking of proposing. Into the mix steps Carl Erickson, a charming Hollywood matinée idol in Paris briefly. He meets Paulette, sees her act (his box seat compliments of Philippe), and sets out to seduce her. The next two days bring talk, tears, separation, despair, surprises, and, perhaps, reconciliation as characters speak "exactly half the truth." It's a quadrille of changing partners.
Madeleine
A hotel for women-only and catering to working girls is the setting for not being able to get a USA PCA seal-of-approval for this French-film, but New York City's 55th Playhouse played it anyway. Along the way the audience meets the girl who sneaked her lover into her no-men-allowed room and her patch soon turns blue; a young lady with a passionate intensity who chooses another young lady as the object of her affections; the blindly-misguided director of the hotel, another lady of real easy virtue who is not the one who smuggled her lover into her room; and a girl who is only there as a procurer for a slavery ring.
