The Hot Heiress

'Hap' Harrigan (Ben Lyon) and his friend Bill Dugan are a riveting team on a highrise construction. Everybody in the next building hates them. Hap falls for socialite Juliette (Ona Munson) in the opposite apartment. A flying rivet crashes through her window and Hap jumps to the rescue. They start a fun romance and she breaks up with her rich boyfriend Clay (Walter Pidgeon).

This is a pre-Code romance-comedy with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It is light-weight. It is rather boring. Quite frankly, the high-rise construction site is the only interesting aspect. The songs are fine. The romance is a little bland. They are a happy couple and lacks the required heated banter. It takes almost fifty minutes before there is any drama. It is all light and bland.

Not many musical comedies feature a riveter as the leading man. Ben Lyon is Hap Harrigan singing tunes about how only his mother loves a riveter across the steel beams he traverses with Broadway ease. He and his partner Bill Dugan, played by Tom Dugan, espy the comely Ona Munson asleep with the windows open next door in her high-rise Park Ave. apartment. Gob- smacked by this vision, Hap misses a hot rivet thrown his way and it lands in the apartment and starts a fire. Naturally, the boys hop into the apartment to save this half-naked damsel who is grateful enough to fall in love with Hap. She's out of his league, as they say, but even though she's rich, she likes the simpler things like working class muscular riveters. Rogers and Hart wrote some ditties for the picture. Inez Courtney is the most fun as Dugan's girlfriend and there's a young Walter Pigeon as the snobby alternative. Stiff and confused, he looks to be three feet taller than than everyone else. An early talkie, its still interesting even if just from an archaeological perspective. Boy and girl meet cute, love at first rivet, boy and girl break up, boy and girl end together happily.

"The Hot Heiress" was one of 10 movies that Ben Lyon made in 1931. The popular leading man, though mostly in B movies, transitioned well from silent to sound movies with a good voice that could carry a tune along with his looks and persona. This is a fairly good comedy for its time. It's a slice of life about the wealthy and the common working folks. When romance crosses the two with Lyons' Hap Harrigan, and wealthy Ona Munson's Juliette, the sparks fly. Well, sparks fly quite a bit in this film with riveters working on the girders of a rising skyscraper.

Not many films have been made that show men - whether actors, stunt men, or real workers, plying their trades in the skeleton shell of a high rise building. That's quite interesting in itself.

Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, who were married in 1930, before WW II moved to England where they were hit performers and had a popular radio show for many years. Movie buffs will see Walter Pidgeon in an early sound film, as a jilted suitor of Juliette. Munson would die of a suicide OD in 1955 at age 51. And another cast member, Thelma Todd, as Lola, would die in four years at age 29 of carbon monoxide poisoning. Although there was never a court case, there was speculation over her death. Was it accidental, suicide or homicide?

Here are some favorite lines from this film.

Juliette, "Don't bother about money. Money never worried me." Hap Harrigan, "Yeah, money never worries them that's got it."

Hap Harrigan, "I got principles. Haven't you got principles?" Juliette, "Yes. But I've got a heart too."

Juliette, "I don't care about luxuries. I could live in a tent, if the plumbing was good."

High-rise construction worker Ben Lyon (as "Hap" Harrigan) notices "The Hot Heiress" Ona Munson (as Juliette Hunter) in an apartment window. Although he's only a common laborer, the pair fall in love. They begin dating, with Ms. Munson's snooty friends mistaking Mr. Lyon for an architect. At a swanky charity bazaar, Lyon's co-worker pal Tom Dugan (as Bill Dugan) gets drunk and reveals the truth about Lyon being poor, to Munson's romantic rival, a well-heeled Walter Pidgeon (as Clay).

Lyon, who found success with "Hell's Angels" (1930), is sure-footed on the construction beams, but not a memorable singer. The Rogers & Hart songs weren't their best. Leading lady Munson, from the stage, was most memorable as the veteran prostitute "Belle" in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). The film's staging wasn't bad for 1931, but everything else is ordinary. Lyon's character "Hap" Harrigan has nothing to do with the plainclothes adventure hero "Hop" Harrigan, who was popular in the 1940s.

**** The Hot Heiress (3/28/31) Clarence Badger ~ Ben Lyon, Ona Munson, Tom Dugan, Walter Pidgeon

When the story begins, a riveter is working on a new building outside of Juliet's apartment....and she is smitten with 'Hap'. This really never made any sense as he's not that hot and you wonder why the rich lady would want to go slumming with him. Regardless, they begin seeing each other and soon they are in love and Juliet insists that they marry. Her family is clearly not thrilled with the match (as they really do seem to have nothing in common). Can the couple somehow make a go of it?

While this doesn't make a lot of sense, the actors try their best and the story is enjoyable. Just turn off your brain and enjoy!