Thoroughly Modern Millie is a 1967 American musical romantic comedy film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Julie Andrews.
The screenplay by Richard Morris, based on the 1956 British musical Chrysanthemum,[3] follows a naïve young woman who finds herself in a series of madcap adventures when she sets her sights on marrying her wealthy boss.
In 1922 New York City, flapper Millie Dillmount is determined to find work as a stenographer to a wealthy businessman and then marry him—a "thoroughly modern" goal.
At a Friendship Dance in the dining hall, Millie meets devil-may-care paper clip salesman Jimmy Smith, to whom she takes an instant liking.
However, she carries on with her plan to work for and then marry a rich man, and when she lands a job at Sincere Trust, she sets her sights on the attractive but self-absorbed Trevor Graydon.
Mrs. Meers makes several attempts to kidnap Miss Dorothy and hand her over to her Chinese henchmen Bun Foo and Ching Ho, but Millie unwittingly disrupts her every time.
When Mrs. Meers finally succeeds, Millie finds Trevor drowning his sorrows, and he tells her that Miss Dorothy stood him up and checked out of the hotel.
Jimmy disguises himself as a woman named Mary James seeking accommodations at the Priscilla Hotel, and "casually" mentions to Mrs. Meers that she is an orphan.
Mary James is subsequently captured by Mrs. Meers and her henchmen, and Millie follows them to Chinatown, where the unconscious Jimmy has been hidden in a room in a fireworks factory where Miss Dorothy is sleeping.
Mrs. Meers, Bun Foo, and Ching Ho follow Millie and the gang, but under Muzzy's leadership, everyone manages to subdue the nefarious trio.
Millie then discovers that Jimmy (whose real name is James Van Hossmere) and Miss Dorothy are actually millionaire siblings and that Muzzy is their stepmother who sent them out into the world to find partners who would love them for who they were and not for their money.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film "a thoroughly delightful movie," "a kidding satire, in a rollicking song-and-dance vein," "a joyously syncopated frolic," and "a romantic-melodramatic fable that makes clichés sparkle like jewels."
"[9] Variety observed "The first half of Thoroughly Modern Mille [sic] is quite successful in striking and maintaining a gay spirit and pace.
"[10] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film was "at its best a fresh-as-paint, cute-as-bees-knees, just swell enchantment" with Andrews "altogether superb," though he found the dance numbers "strangely uninspired" and that the second half suffered from "a slapstick but singularly uncomical chase.
"[11] Clifford Terry of the Chicago Tribune wrote that "for the first 90 minutes, Thoroughly Modern Millie is really swell, a pip, a humdinger, the bee's knees, a doozy.
Spoofing the Fitzgerald folks of the 1920s, the musical comedy bounces and bubbles along as a snappy send-up of the days of roadster ramble seats, Tapioca dances, and unflappable flappers with turned-down hose and turned-on beaux who sometimes were 'fresh as paint'.