Grable was cast in "That Lady in Ermine" (1948), a film project that previously had been considered for either Jeanette MacDonald or Gene Tierney. It co-starred Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and originally was directed by Ernst Lubitsch. After Lubitsch's death early in production, Otto Preminger took over. It was reported that Grable often quarreled with Fairbanks and Preminger, and that she nearly walked out on filming, but decided against on the advice of her agent. When the film was released, it received mixed reviews; it was referred to as "a bright and beguiling swatch of nonsense", and it did not generate the revenue Fox had hoped. Grable immediately thereafter began filming "When My Baby Smiles at Me" (1948), co-starring Dan Dailey, which became a blockbuster, cementing Grable and Dailey's status as a bankable movie duo. Closing the decade, Grable starred in "The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend" (1949), an oddball movie that unevenly mixed musical numbers with Western clichés. Despite a casting consisting of Cesar Romero and Rudy Vallée, the film was panned by critics, but it was a reasonable success at the box-office.