The Model and the Marriage Broker is a 1951 American romantic comedy film starring Jeanne Crain, Scott Brady, and Thelma Ritter.

Directed by George Cukor and produced by Charles Brackett,[2] the picture effectively features Ritter in a rare lead role as the marriage broker.

She is better at doing that than running a business, as her friend and businessman sharing the same warren of low-rent offices, Doberman, reminds the debt-ridden matchmaker periodically during their frequent games of pinochle during downtime in the workday.

When Mae goes to see another client her purse is accidentally swapped for a lookalike by Kitty Bennett, an imperious but emotionally fragile fashion model.

When the two women get together to exchange purses, Kitty is annoyed upon learning of Mae’s indiscretion and rejects her advice to give the self-admitted "heel" up.

Now that she is recently widowed, very well-off, and terribly lonely, Emmy is aware she’s not so cute as she used to be, and wants Mae to find her a replacement spouse.

She abruptly comes to realize that she will never be lonely as long as she has people to help, but will be terribly so if stuck on an isolated Canadian peninsula with a man who can't even learn to play pinochle.

[3] Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, wrote: ... the bluntness with which these poor people [the clients of the marriage broker] are both ridiculed and burlesqued is nothing short of brutal—or insensitive, to say the least.

And thus the grotesque portrayals of such performers as Zero Mostel, Nancy Kulp, Frank Fontaine and John Alexander, while intended to be full of fun—and which do have their moments of savage humor—are heavy and heartless, on the whole.

However, when Mr. Brackett; his co-authors, Walter Reisch and Richard Breen; his director, George Cukor, and his remarkably able cast get free of preliminaries and square away on a good old-fashioned tale of a nice lady playing cupid to a normal, healthy boy and girl, this essentially romantic picture not only brightens, it hums.