Winter Carnival (1939) DVD

Winter Carnival (1939)

Stars:

Ann Sheridan, Richard Carlson, Helen Parrish

The beautiful Ann Sheridan stars as Jill Baxter, a Dartmouth alumna who was once voted that college's Snow Queen. After graduating, she married a wealthy duke, then divorced him. Now she regrets ever having married him.  A bunch of stereotypical newspaper reporters are pestering Jill; she decides to duck them by hiding in the last place they'd ever think of looking for her. Jill goes back to Dartmouth.

Jill Baxter's younger sister (played by Helen Parrish) is named Ann. Following in her older sister's snowshoes, Ann has also decided to enroll at Darthmouth: in fact, she's just been elected this year's Snow Queen. Meanwhile, another one of those pesky European noblemen (who seem to haunt Dartmouth in large numbers) has shown up: a count, this time. The count, of course, has set his sights on Ann, and now Jill sees that her kid sister is about to repeat all of Jill's mistakes... only farther down the blue-blood scale, since a count is two notches lower than a duke.

Jill tries to talk Ann out of repeating Jill's error, but Ann (understandably) won't listen. So, Jill decides to bust up the relationship by vamping the count herself. Interestingly, there's some actual subtext here: is Jill wooing the count to save her sister, or so that she can get herself back into the aristocracy?