Trans-National Adaptations of the Church Mouse, a Cross-Class Office Romance of the Early 1930s

Abstract

Abstract A Hungarian play, A Templom Egere (The Church Mouse), first performed in 1927, was adapted across nations on stage and for three film versions: the German Arm wie eine kirchenmaus (Poor as a Church Mouse, 1931), an American, Beauty and the Boss (1932), and a British, The Church Mouse (1934). All versions fuse a Cinderella theme with the prevalent discourse of the period on stenographers and secretaries as sexual attractions or as machines, identified with the typewriter, but the versions differ with respect to the heroine’s transformation from machine to alluring female and in their film styles, particularly in the extent and ways they ‘open-up’ the play.