My Sister Eileen

My Sister Eileen is a 1955 American CinemaScope comedy musical film directed by Richard Quine. It stars Janet Leigh, Betty Garrett, and Jack Lemmon. The screenplay by Quine and Blake Edwards is based on the 1940 play by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, which was inspired by a series of autobiographical short stories by Ruth McKenney originally published in The New Yorker. The play originally was filmed in 1942. (This musical film is totally different from the 1953 Broadway musical Wonderful Town, though both are based on the original Ruth McKenney source material.) Plot Witty Ruth and pretty Eileen Sherwood, sisters from Columbus, Ohio, relocate to New York City and settle in a rundown basement studio apartment in a Greenwich Village building owned by Papa Appopolous. Ruth aspires to be a writer, while Eileen hopes to achieve success as an actress. They become acquainted with their neighbor Ted Loomis, an athlete who lives with his fiancée Helen. Ruth has a letter of introduction to Bob Baker, editor-in-chief of Mad Hatter magazine. As he rushes off for vacation, he counsels her to write about things she knows rather than the artificial stories she had sent him. Meanwhile, after finding herself the target of unwanted advances from a theatre producer, Eileen goes to the local Walgreens for lunch. Soda fountain manager Frank Lippincott lends her a sympathetic ear and offers his assistance, assuring her many theatrical people eat at the counter.