The Loretta Young Birthday Blogathon: "Private Number" (1936)
Theatrical release poster Directed by Roy Del Ruth, Private Number (1936) tells the story of Ellen Neal (Loretta Young), a beautiful and upstanding girl who is hired as a maid in the house of the affluent Winfield family by their demonically creepy butler, Thomas Wroxton (Basil Rathbone). Wroxton is immediately smitten with her, but she rebuffs his every advance, much to his irritation. When the Winfields' son Richard (Robert Taylor) arrives home from college, he quickly falls in love with Ellen, despite her lower social status. Although she initially refuses to go out with him on the grounds that they are not social equals, Ellen becomes romantically involved with Dick during the family's vacation in Maine. On her 18th birthday, Dick and Ellen secretly marry and she falls pregnant by him shortly before he returns to college. After his plans to marry Ellen himself fall through, Wroxton informs her in-laws, Perry and Maggie Winfield (Paul Harvey and Majorie Gates...