The Major and the Minor is a 1942 American romantic comedy film starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland.

After her first client, Albert Osborne (Robert Benchley), makes a heavy pass and refuses to take “No” for an answer, Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers) quits her job as a Revigora System scalp massager and decides to leave New York City and return home to Stevenson, Iowa.

At the train station, she discovers she has only enough money to cover a half fare, so she disguises herself as a twelve-year-old girl named Su-Su.

When the train is detained by flooding, Philip's fiancée, Pamela Hill (Rita Johnson) and her father, his commanding officer at the military academy where he teaches, drive to meet him.

Pamela's teenaged sister Lucy (Diana Lynn), a student of biology, immediately sees through Susan's disguise.

She promises to keep her secret if Susan will help her sabotage Pamela's efforts to keep Philip at the academy instead of allowing him to be assigned to active duty.

Cadet Clifford Osborne introduces Susan to his parents: His father is the client whose behavior prompted her to quit her job.

Susan returns home, but continues to daydream about Philip, staring for hours at the moths fluttering around the porch light, much to the frustration of her fiancé, Will Duffy (Richard Fiske), and the mystification of her mother (Lela E. Rogers).

During the ensuing years, he and Charles Brackett had collaborated on eight screenplays, including Ninotchka and Ball of Fire, but Wilder was anxious to direct again and producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. agreed to give him a chance.

Paramount Pictures owned the screen rights to the play Connie Goes Home, which Wilder thought was the perfect vehicle for Ginger Rogers, and he and Brackett wrote the role of Philip Kirby with Cary Grant in mind.

"[3] Rogers recently had won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Kitty Foyle and now was in a position to select her own director.

Agent Leland Hayward represented both Rogers and Wilder, who asked him to intercede with her on his behalf, and Brackett also urged her to meet the neophyte director.

They pitched the film during lunch at an Italian restaurant, and Rogers later recalled Wilder "was charming, a European gentleman ...

As a younger woman, she had pretended to be eligible for a child's fare when traveling by train with her cash-strapped mother on more than one occasion, so she easily identified with the plot and agreed to make the film.

"[4] Harrison taught him how to "cut in the camera", a form of spontaneous editing that results in a minimal amount of film being shot and eliminates the possibility of studio heads later adding footage the director deemed unnecessary.

In later years, Wilder commented, "When I finish a film, there is nothing on the cutting room floor but chewing gum wrappers and tears.

The gender-reversal version starred Jerry Lewis as the adult disguised as a child and Diana Lynn, who portrayed teenager Lucy Hill in the original.

The film's soundtrack includes "Blues in the Night" by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer; "Sweet Sue Just You" by Victor Young and Will J. Harris; "Dream Lover" by Victor Schertzinger and Clifford Grey; "Isn't It Romantic" and "Lover" by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said the Wilder-Brackett script "effervesces with neat situations and bright lines" and added, "The gentlemen have written – and Mr. Wilder has directed – a bountiful comedy-romance.