The Gilded Lily is a 1935 American romantic comedy film directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, and C. Aubrey Smith.

The production's screenplay, written by Claude Binyon, is about a stenographer who becomes a famous café entertainer courted by an English aristocrat and an American newspaper reporter.

Stenographer Marilyn David (Claudette Colbert) and newspaper reporter Peter Dawes (Fred MacMurray) meet every Thursday on a bench outside the New York Public Library to eat popcorn and watch the world go by.

Afterwards on the subway, Marilyn meets a wealthy English aristocrat, Lord Charles Gray Granton (Ray Milland), who is visiting New York incognito as a commoner.

When Charles' father, Lloyd Granton (C. Aubrey Smith), learns that his son intends to propose to an American girl, he insists that they first return to England to break off his current engagement properly.

Believing that Charles was simply using her, Peter writes a fictitious article about Marilyn, whom he calls the "No" Girl, turning down Lord Granton's marriage proposal and deciding to hold out for true love instead.

Through Peter's clever management and publicity stunts, the "No" Girl becomes a household name and a nightclub star, with her image appearing on billboards, posters, and front page newspaper articles across the country.

She invites some American reporters to her flat, announces that she's "going home to sit on a bench and eat popcorn", and Charles is now stuck with a second public jilting, real this time, which he accepts ruefully.