J'épouserai un millionnaire

Pretty weak showcase for the star who manages to shine brightly despite the ordinariness of the script. The story is cliché and has been told with more imagination elsewhere.

It helps that she is pitted against a top rank actor like Lionel Barrymore as her protagonist. Their flinty interchanges are some of the best scenes in this lackluster affair. The other standout in the cast is Patsy Kelly who makes a peach of a sidekick for the brassy Jean. Her easy virtue is used to counterpoint the heroine's chastity in a way that could get around the censors of the day.

The actor who is out of place, although he fulfills his role adequately, is Franchot Tone. A fine actor in the right pictures, dramas such as Five Graves to Cairo and the like, Metro for some reason used him mostly as a colorless effete mannequin for their leading ladies. Jean and he are oil and water, she was always more comfortable with an earthy man like Gable or Spencer Tracy.

One last thing, what a lousy title for any movie but for a Jean Harlow movie, ridiculous. For some reason the powers that be had a hard time coming up with an appropriate title. Shot under the title Eadie Was a Lady, then changed to 100% Pure then Born to Be Kissed and released in some areas under that title, while none of them is great any would have made more sense than the lemon they ended settling on.

THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI arrives in New York City knowing exactly what she wants: to amount to something solid by marrying a millionaire - without losing her virginity. With her knockout good looks she quickly catches the eye of the playboy son of a tycoon, but by staying true to her virtue will she also discover true love?

Jean Harlow sizzles in this excellent little comedy. With her platinum hair & gorgeous accouterments, she is a dazzler. But her beauty should not obscure the fact that she was also a very good actress. She has rightfully earned her spot at the very top of the Hollywood pantheon.

An excellent cast gives Harlow fine support: Lionel Barrymore as the wily old tycoon, wise to Harlow's ways; handsome Franchot Tone as his son, smitten with love; raucous Patsy Kelly, stealing her scenes as Harlow's sidekick; debonair Alan Mowbray, as a well-mannered English Lord; elderly Clara Blandick as Barrymore's feisty secretary; hearty Hale Hamilton as a rich man with an eye for the ladies; muscular Nat Pendleton as a lifeguard who catches Kelly's flirtatious eye; and Lewis Stone, unforgettable in a small role as a bankrupted businessman.

It should be noted that this film was produced soon after Hollywood's Production Code was instituted. A comparison with RED-HEADED WOMAN, made two years earlier, would be fascinating - in which Harlow's character goes after the same ends, but uses very different means.

If the themes of The Girl From Missouri sound familiar it should. That's because Anita Loos who wrote the screenplay here also wrote the classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Unlike Marilyn Monroe in that film, Jean Harlow will accept any kind of jewelry from men of means.

And it's men of means that Jean Harlow is after. She leaves the road side hash house run by her mother and stepfather because she's decided that the best way to gain the easy life is to marry it. Her talents as a chorus girl are limited, but she'll be able to trade in on that beauty.

Her odyssey starts with her and friend Patsy Kelly getting an invitation to perform at a party thrown by millionaire Lewis Stone. But unbeknownst to Jean, Stone's just having a wild last fling before doing himself because of the moneys he owes not owns. Still she wrangles a few baubles from him that fellow millionaire Lionel Barrymore notices.

Lionel's amused by it until Jean sets her sights on his playboy son, Franchot Tone. After that he is not amused and he looks to shake Jean from climbing the family tree.

The Girl From Missouri went into production mid adaption of The Code so it went under peculiar censorship. I've a feeling we would have seen a much more risqué film. Still Jean Harlow as a younger and sassier version of Mae West is always appreciated. What a great comic talent that woman had, seeing The Girl From Missouri is a sad reminder of the great loss the world of film sustained with her passing three years later.

Ironically enough the casting of Patsy Kelly with Harlow was no doubt influenced by the successful shorts Kelly was making with another famous platinum blonde, Thelma Todd. Harlow and Kelly have the same easy chemistry between that Patsy had with Thelma. Todd would also die a year later in a freak accident/suicide/homicide that no satisfactory explanation has ever really been given.

Don't miss The Girl From Missouri, it's bright and sassy, must be from all that sparkling jewelry.

During the early 1930s, pretty much anything went when it came to films--nudity, cursing, adultery and graphic violence. However, these sort of films did not set well with many Americans or special interest groups, such as the Catholic Legion of Decency and attendance began to drop--leading the leaders of the various studios to scramble to bring back viewers. Ultimately, this led to the creation of the new Productiton Code of 1934. Gone were all the excesses of the past years and in its place was a very sanitized world--where husbands and wives didn't even sleep in the same bed! This was a problem for some actresses. Jean Harlow, Kay Francis and Ann Harding (among others) specialized in sexy movies where women who were tramps--and REALLY enjoyed it. Now, with the Code, plots were drastically changed and some of these actresses faded (after all, who today remembers Ann Harding?) while others adapted to new roles. In the case of the previously steamy Harlow, this meant her playing a girl who LOOKED cheap but who was pure deep. Even this image caused problems with the censors and a Harlow film was usually given extra scrutiny by the board because of her reputation in films.

Because of this background, making "The Girl From Missouri" was tough and it required many rewrites and cuts. And, as a result, it resulted in a very strange sort of morality. In this film, Harlow looks and sometimes acts cheap--but she ain't. Down deep she has VERY strong morals. She will NOT sleep with a man before marriage BUT in a nod to the old Harlow, she still insists that she must marry a rich man--love him or not! So, she's a gold-digger with a heart of gold! As a result of these changes, the films were still fun--but if you thought about the plots, they really made no sense at all.

"The Girl From Missouri" is well worth seeing though it's not as vulgarly wonderful as her earlier films (like "Red Dust", "Red-Headed Woman" and "Dinner at Eight"). It does have some lovely supporting actors--in particular Lionel Barrymore and Patsy Kelly. And, the film is quite fun from start to finish.

By the way, I mentioned Kelly in this film because I usually hated her films. However, here she was less brash and loud--and was a positive element in the movie. Here, she really proves she could act and behaves like a hilarious man-crazy dame (but without all the yelling). In reality she was apparently a lesbian and I assume that due to the rigidity of the new Code the studio deliberately gave the normally sexually ambiguous Kelly a VERY heterosexual role--as it was VERY atypical of her earlier roles. So, thanks to the Code, some folks went even deeper into the closet--as gay characters were pretty common up until 1934.

In this film, made JUST as the production code was being enforced, Jean Harlow is Eadie, and Patsy Kelly is the wisecracking, man-chasing sidekick "Kitty". Girl from Missouri starts out with the girls getting on a train, with Eadie making a promise to herself to earn money while looking for a millionaire husband, staying whole-some in the process. It doesn't take her long to meet up with Frank Cousins, (Lewis Stone, was the kindly Doctor in Grand Hotel, as well as Judge Hardy in the "Andy Hardy" films.), but all is not as it seems...The censors must have LOVED Harlow's line "A girl couldn't accept an expensive gift like that from a gentleman unless she was engaged." Later, someone says "You know we've never been alone together" and Eadie replies "Yeah, and we're not going to be!" Lionel Barrymore is T.R. Paige, another rich, uppercrust who comes to her rescue when trouble comes looking for Eadie. At one point, Paige declares "You oughta scratch me off your list - I'm not a ladies man".... I wonder what that line would have been just a couple years earlier before the Hayes code came rolling into town. What was he really saying? Carol Tevis seems to be the high-pitched "Baby Talker" as listed in the credits on IMDb. Looks like she was only in showbiz from 1931 - 1939, with "Munchkin" in Wizard of Oz being the last part she played. Fun, cleancut romp as the girls chase men around the country. Look for Nat Pendleton as the lifeguard, who was an Olympic Wrestler 1920 (silver medal winner) turned film star (he was in many of the Dr. Kildares, and would appear in four of Harlow's films.) Mistaken identity, plot twists, a young Franchot Tone, love stories, even Jean Harlow in a bathing suit in "Palm Beach", although the outdoor scenes of downtown appear to be a backdrop.