The Hot Heiress

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.

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

'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.

This is a very inconsequential film, a curio really. Ben Lyon is a riveter, and the film opens with him singing to his partner on the job. Rich girl Ona Munson is at a window, he steps in (the window) for lunch, and then takes her out on a double date to a Chinese restaurant that evening. She then invites him out to their country house to meet the folks, the double-daters also coming along. After complications, they get together again. That's the plot, but there's even less here than it sounds. The film gets by--barely--on two things. First there's Lyon's bright performance. Second is the unapologetic vulgarity, brashness and total lack of etiquette and decorum of the double-daters (Tom Dugan and Inez Courtney) and, to some extent, Lyons. For example, in the Chinese restaurant, the guys pass food back and forth to each other, ignoring the gals in between who try to grab some. The film's biggest hoot is the zany and uninhibited dancing in this scene. There's very little class snobbery displayed, the film being too trifling to have that sort of unpleasantness. Pidgeon, barely in the film, doesn't plot and scheme much, merely reveals at an inopportune moment that Lyon is a riveter. The best one can say about the film is that, though it's VERY slight, it's not quite as tiresome as it might have been.

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!