Jack Warner took an option on Bernard Ropes’s novel and hired director Mervyn LeRoy, who pulled out owing to exhaustion but not before recommending Ginger Rogers – whom he was dating at the time – for the part of Anytime Annie.

Released on the day of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration, the film became Warner’s biggest-grossing hit of the decade, and rescued the studio from a potentially disastrous slump.

The original negative must have survived in very good condition, judging by the immaculate print to be seen on Warners’ DVD.