THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI (1934)

Eadie (Jean Harlow) works at a cheap dance hall with her abusive stepfather as her boss. She and her friend Kitty take off one day for New York City where Eadie becomes something of a virtuous gold digger, vowing to remain a "good girl," but planning on marrying for money. The two become chorus girls and one night when they are hired to entertain at a party at the mansion of Frank Cousins, Eadie sets her sights on Frank. We learn that he needs money and he begs fellow businessman Thomas Paige (Lionel Barrymore) to loan him some, but Paige (whom Eadie initially mistakes for a butler) refuses. Fatalistically, Cousins gives Eadie a pair of expensive cufflinks and says he'll marry her. But instead he shoots himself at his desk. (The next day, when she tells Kitty what happened, Kitty asks, "Did someone ask you to sniff a little white powder?") Eadie is under suspicion for stealing the cufflinks, but Paige helps her out and soon, she has followed him down to Palm Beach, hoping to snag him. Kitty is not so much looking for a lasting relationship as a man in uniform—she flirts with butlers, doormen and bellboys—and says, "I’m just an old-fashioned home girl like Mae West!" When Eadie meets Tom Paige Jr. (Franchot Tone), she becomes a pawn in a father-son power game. Tom assumes that her high ideals are just for show and locks her in a bedroom with him; they kiss and she admits that he could make her "cheap and common," but begs him not, and he lets her go. The rest of the film is a screwball-style battle between Eadie and Tom in which a blackmail attempt rears its ugly head, but is defeated by what appears to be true love.

Jean Harlow, along with Mae West, was a pre-Code screen queen, and this was the first of her films to be released after the Production Code began to be enforced in mid-1934. West's career took a strong downward turn, as her persona couldn't really be sanitized or contained, but Harlow stayed in the saddle, perhaps because of her wider acting range, and because MGM was in control of her career in a way that I don’t think Paramount ever was with West. This film feels a bit schizophrenic and even though Eadie gets to keep her honor and land a husband, it doesn't feel like the right ending—I'm not convinced that the two are truly romantically compatible and will stay together. Nothing against the actors, with Harlow and Tone (pictured above) in fine form as they work up some legit chemistry. But the transactional nature of their relationship (she stays a virgin and he rewards her with marriage) never fully disappears. Patsy Kelly is delightful as the brassy sidekick—I almost think this could have worked even if Harlow and Kelly had switched roles. Barrymore is, as always, Barrymore, but he can't make his character likable. Lewis Stone (who is pretty much always Lewis Stone) plays Cousins in what amounts to a glorified cameo, and in some ways, the movie never recovers from his suicide scene. It doesn't feel as frothy as I think it wants to. See this one for Harlow and Kelly. [TCM]