KANSAS CITY PRINCESS (1934)

Fairly amusing gold digger story from Warner Brothers, starring Joan Blondell, though this one's not a musical. Blondell is Rosie, a manicurist who dates Robert Montgomery, a small-potatoes gangster. Like Adelaide in GUYS AND DOLLS, Blondell has been waiting for her man to get serious, but he finally offers her a ring, her buddy Glenda Farrell tells her she could do better financially. When Armstrong leaves town on business, Blondell lets Gordon Westcott take her out; he steals her ring and, to escape Armstrong's wrath, the girls head overseas via passenger liner, getting bankrolled along the way by millionaire doofus Hugh Herbert, who is having romantic problems of his own. They all wind up in Paris, with Herbert's wife conspiring with a crooked lawyer to get a good divorce settlement from him. In the end, Herbert gets the divorce to settle down with Farrell, and Blondell and Armstrong patch things up. Not great but not bad--typical of its genre and time. The two halves of the film are fun but they don't connect in a pleasing way, with the pre-Paris stuff working the best. Armstrong (finder of the ape in KING KONG) is far more animated than I've ever seen him. Osgood Perkins, Anthony's father, plays the lawyer; T. Roy Barnes is a handsome alderman on the ship; Vince Barnett is a sidekick of Armstrong's who spies on Blondell for him. Blondell, Farrell, and Herbert all do their trademarked things and do them well. Definitely worth seeing for Blondell fans.