Object: Matrimony

Philip Margolius is a cloak-and-suit salesman who has made one catastrophic mistake: dabbling in real estate during hard times. Now his properties are foreclosing, deficiency judgments are piling up, and his financial ruin threatens to destroy any chance he has with Birdie Goldblatt. But Philip is nothing if not inventive. If he can just find a suitor for Birdie's less attractive sister Fannie, perhaps the Goldblatts will look more favorably on his suit. What follows is a glorious cascade of awkward introductions, botched matchmaking schemes, and one spectacularly unexpected marriage that throws everything into chaos. Montague Glass captures early 20th-century New York with sharp, affectionate humor: the pushy mothers, the nervous suitors, the business owners praying for better times, and the sheer absurdity of trying to engineer love through negotiation. It's a comedy of errors wrapped in the particular anxieties of its era, but underneath all the scheming and financial panic lies something timeless: the desperate hope that somehow, despite everything, it will all work out.