OPL?

From a NY Times review...."She is also half-heartedly engaged to the assistant regional coordinator of something known as the OPL."

Probably made up.

Triple Irons-"I could have easily have beaten you, if I had three swords"

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Follow up to the NY Times review. Does seem OPL is a made up stand-in for all
the many alphabet soup of gov't agencies from 30s and into 40s. Hah, still a
staple to this day, with recent addition of color code warnings.
NYT review even throws in a reference to OWI, example of agency soup for real.
Notice in film at beginning when he asks if that is Wartime Standard time?
Even coffee in short supply. Rules & regs were the lifestyle went fighting a
global war. Very instructive film when comparing to today's concerns.
Love that little goofy car with the 4 women in it. NYT parts of review:

The young lady is a stickler for system. She is also half-heartedly engaged to the assistant regional coordinator of something known as the OPL. But after a week of living in a four-room apartment with two strange males, she is neither—but she is something much better. We leave you to guess what that is.

And you'll love "The More the Merrier" if you have a taste for fun. It even makes Washington look attractive—and that is beyond belief.

The rigid course of training which Army doctors must undergo in preparation for joining the forces is interestingly explained in an OWI one-reeler, "Doctors at War," which was released to first-run theatres yesterday. The scenes showing the doctors studying not only medical practices but the many military methods which they must know were made at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The film is concluded with a brief talk by Major Gen. J. C. Magee, Surgeon General of the Army, who urges the public not to ask for "luxury medical care" in these times.

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Mr. Pendergast, Connie's fiance, works for the OPL. Was this a real agency? I have tried to look it up on databases of the "Alphbet Agencies" to no avail...

The "OPL" of the film was, very likely, a fictional stand-in for the real-world OPA (Office of Price Administration). The OPA controlled prices for consumer goods in addition to rents. Retailers and landlords could not charge prices above what the OPA had set as the "ceiling price," regardless of demand.

I imagine that setting a ceiling on rents had the exact same effect that setting ceilings on prices for consumer goods did: it resulted in massive shortages. Otherwise, the price tends to go up for something that a lot of people want, but for which a finite supply exists (like housing). Sure, you can ration the number of cans of green beans a person buys, (as was done during WWII) but rationing where they can live is a bit harder to do. Doubtless a black market sprung up for wartime housing the same way it did for hard-to-get consumer goods.

Richard Nixon spent some time working for the OPA during the war. For many years afterward, he commented that one of the things he learned from his experience is that price controls do not work. Worse, the men and women employed in the defense plants during the war worked for decidedly below-market wages.

Anyway, I, too, was intrigued by the OPL mentioned in the film. However, the OPA is the nearest real-world government agency I could find that might do the kind of things done in the film.

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Office of Pathetic Liars, i.e. an inside joke by the writers? ;)

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