Modelos de Paris

TCM showed this film in a tribute to Paulette Goddard and the 100th anniversary of her birth. What a lousy film. I guess it's supposed to be a comedy but I didn't laugh one time.

It a collection of vignettes about different women who buy & wear a particular dress to help them achieve goals. The first story, starring Eva Gabor, is about a woman who uses rich men to attain a certain lifestyle. The second, starring Goddard, is about a secretary trying to woo her boss away from his shrew of a wife. The third, starring Marilyn Maxwell, is about a woman trying to get her husband a promotion. The fourth, starring Barbara Lawrence, is about a girl turning 21 who is trying to get a marriage proposal out of her long time boyfriend. The men this dress is supposed to "seduce" are Tom Conway, Leif Erickson, Cecil Kellaway (?), and Robert Hutton. And the dress isn't even all that great. It's a horrible premise for the film, or at least it wasn't used in the correct way. The dress starts off as couture and ends up as a purchase from a Thrift Shop.

The actors, especially the women, deserved better. Oh, and on top of all this, somehow Prince Michael Romanoff, the owner of the eponymous restaurant, got a small part in the film. What a waste--of time, talent and imagination. Skip it unless you're a completist for any of these people.

This movie looks so amateurish it's hard to believe it was released by a major studio, Columbia.

The script might have seemed funny to 9th graders at one time, but anyone older than that would see only a series of lame and very flat jokes.

Eva Gabor's bits with her seductive eyes are done in such an unfunny way you have to wonder if the director, Alfred E. Green, was even on the set when her segment was filmed. (In fact, Green had directed over 100 movies by then, including a few minor hits like The Jolson Story.) The same is true of Paulette Goddard's attempts to seduce her boss. The script and pacing are so poor you can't believe a professional, seasoned director could have been overseeing them. (Goddard, a very talented actress, did what she could with the material, but it still comes off as embarrassing.) And so on for most of the rest of it. Some talented actors, such as Cecil Kellaway and Florence Bates, trapped in a very unfunny script, doing their best not to embarrass themselves.

There is no reason to watch this movie. Even if you're interested in depictions of women's fashions in the 1950s, this has nothing to offer. Try Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or something like that instead.

Yuck.

In Paris, glamorous Eva Gabor (as Gogo Montaine) buys a low-cut dress called "Nude at Midnight" for $890 to attract tired-looking Tom Conway (as Maharajah of Kim-Kepore). At the time, Mr. Conway was Ms. Gabor's brother-in-law (her sister Zsa Zsa Gabor was married to his brother George Sanders). As it turns out, the dress is the "star" of the film, and we move to the second of four tedious stories...

New York secretary Paulette Goddard (as Betty Barnes) tries to seduce her married boss Leif Erickson (as Edgar Blevins) by showing her legs, wearing the low-cut dress, and getting him drunk. They should have cast someone closer to Ms. Goddard's age to play Mr. Erikson's wife. Third story finds bosomy blonde Marilyn Maxwell (as Marion Parmalee) filling the dress to entice old Cecil Kellaway (as Patrick "PJ" Sullivan) into promoting her husband. Finally, in California, curvy Barbara Lawrence (as Marta Jensen) wears the dress to pop a marriage proposal from Robert Hutton (as Charlie Johnson).

*** Paris Model (11/10/53) Alfred E. Green ~ Marilyn Maxwell, Paulette Goddard, Eva Gabor, Barbara Lawrence

A quartet of light hearted stories (each about 20 minutes) linked by the same Parisian gown that makes the rounds for four different ladies hoping this low cut, upper body enhancement will help them hook a man. The film is done on the cheap with, at times, threadbare sets, and is most noteworthy for its primarily veteran cast in need of work.

Eva Gabor comes off reasonably well in the opening episode, trying her best to catch turban wearing Maharajah Tom Conway (!?!), the latter looking even more bored than usual. Gabor charges the dress to one of her (unsuspecting) admirers, but gets short changed herself when Conway sets his eyes on a ravishing Laurette Luez in a casino.

Next on the hit list is Paulette Goddard as the secretary of a lawyer (Leif Erickson), hoping to lure him away from his shrewish wife by getting him to take her to dinner while she wears that dress. A decidedly lightweight episode, Goddard is game but looking past her feisty, vivacious prime, though still able to show off a pair of attractive legs as bait for the lawyer.

The third episode involves Marilyn Maxwell as the wife of a salesman hoping to use the attraction of that dress on her husband's retiring boss (Cecil Kellaway), so that he will appoint hubby as his replacement. Maxwell, by the way, receives top billing in this film, a sad comment on the decline of Goddard's career, since she was once a far bigger Hollywood star than Maxwell could ever possibly be. A frail looking Florence Bates appears as Kellaway's wife in what turned out to be her last film role.

The final story features, as opposed to the veterans, up-and-coming Barbara Lawrence as a young woman seeking to use that dress to get her non committing boyfriend (Robert Hutton) to finally pop the big question to her. This episode is primarily set in Romanoff's Restaurant in LA, with curtains and paper mache "walls" serving as a set, as well as a grim reminder of just how cheap the budget of this film must have been. Of note, though, Prince Michael Romanoff makes an appearance himself here, playing the role of matchmaker. El Brendel briefly turns up, too, as Lawrence's father.

A minor time waster, it's always a little sad to see film veterans forced to collect their paychecks with such meager material. Paris Model (the title referring to the dress, not a person) gets the occasional broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

This is a series of stories of four women who own, in succession, a Parisian evening gown. As such, it might be considered a female version of Duvivier's TALES OF MANHATTAN. The difference seems to be that in the other movie, the clothes in question -- a set of men's evening clothes -- is largely a linking device; and to a man, one set of evening clothes is pretty much like another: if they fit and they're not disreputable-looking (as they gradually become in the course of the movie), they are, basically, interchangeable. Not so for a woman's evening gown!

Because of that structural issue and because this is a woman's picture it is somewhat less interesting to me. Nonetheless, the talent here is always competent, the lines are frequently interesting -- Tom Conway, as a Maharajah, is offered a succession of haute cuisine dishes but prefers simple fare -- and the result is highly watchable.