The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 American romantic comedy-drama film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, and Joseph Schildkraut.

[2][3] Eschewing regional politics in the years leading up to World War II, the film is about two employees at a leather goods shop in Budapest who can barely stand each other, not realizing they are falling in love as anonymous correspondents through their letters.

Kralik's co-workers include his friend, Pirovitch, a kindly family man; Ferencz Vadas, a two-faced womanizer; saleswoman Ilona Novotny; clerk Flora Kaczek; and Pepi Katona, an ambitious, precocious delivery boy.

The next day, Novak calls in sick after her mystery man failed to show, and at Mr. Matuschek's behest, Kralik fires Vadas.

Dolly Haas and Janet Gaynor were each at one point attached to the film before Margaret Sullavan was cast in the lead role alongside James Stewart; both were not available at the time that production was originally set to begin, so Lubitsch decided to postpone the start date.

The website's consensus reads: "Deftly directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a smart, funny script by Samson Raphaelson, The Shop Around the Corner is a romantic comedy in the finest sense of the term.

[10] Dave Kehr argued Lubitsch makes "brilliant deployment of point of view, allowing the audience to enter the perceptions of each character at exactly the right moment to develop maximum sympathy and suspense.

The shot of Sullavan's gloved hand, and then her ruined face, searching an empty mail box for a letter is one of the most fragile moments in film.

[14]The Shop Around the Corner was dramatized in two half-hour broadcasts of The Screen Guild Theater, first on September 29, 1940, with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart,[15] second on February 26, 1945, with Van Johnson and Phyllis Thaxter.

It was also dramatized as a one-hour program on Lux Radio Theater's June 23, 1941 broadcast with Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche.