Cairo (1942 film)
Cairo is a 1942 musical comedy film made by MGM and Loew's, and directed by W. S. Van Dyke. The screenplay was written by John McClain, based on an idea by Ladislas Fodor about a news reporter shipwrecked in a torpedo attack, who teams up with a Hollywood singer and her maid to foil Nazi spies. The music score is by Herbert Stothart. This film was Jeanette MacDonald's last film on her MGM contract. The film was poorly received upon its initial release. Plot. Actress Marcia Warren (Jeanette MacDonald), while "between pictures" in London, hires  an American named Homer Smith (Robert Young), as her butler. What Marcia doesn't know is that Smith is a newspaperman, who strongly suspects that she is a Nazi spy. (The real enemy agent is Mrs. Morrison (Mona Barrie). Reception. According to MGM records. the film earned $616,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $581,000 elsewhere, meaning the studio recorded a profit of $273,000.