Boca para Beijar

Girl from Missouri, The (1933)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Jean Harlow plays a Southern girl who goes to the big city to land a millionaire and she thinks she finds on in a lawyer (Lionel Barrymore) but soon his son (Franchot Tone) starts coming onto her. The film has a pretty weak screenplay and there's really nothing too original going on. Even Harlow seems a tad bit bored as she doesn't contain any of that spark or energy that made her a legend. We do get several shots of her body, which are nice but it's not enough to save the film. Tone makes for a good leading man but it's Barrymore who steals the show with his maniac like performance. What laughs the film does get are due to Barrymore but Lewis Stone also comes off well in his small role. Oh yeah, one of Harlow's sexual scenes includes her being thrown into a shower with her clothes on and then walking out with her nipples showing through her dress.

"I know my singing and dancing won't get me anywhere," Jean Harlow tells friend Patsy Kelly. "I'm gonna get married." Harlow is The Girl from Missouri, and in the picture's opening moments she and Patsy flee their depressing small town gin joint surroundings and head to the City, where they take jobs as chorus girls and set about finding men. Harlow is determined to find a rich husband; Patsy is just as interested in meeting doormen and lifeguards.

Lionel Barrymore is excellent as T.R. Paige, a millionaire who has worked his way up from nothing himself and sees Harlow as a "platinum chiseler" after his son; Franchot Tone is also good as Tom Paige, the son of that wealth whose eager pursuit of Harlow inspires her distrust and his father's dismay. Will he propose to her? Will she accept him? Will Lionel accept her as a daughter-in-law? --All is complicated by Lionel's political ambitions and by a ring Harlow has fashioned from a pair of cufflinks.

Patsy Kelly plays it (mostly) straight as Harlow's friend and companion, and gives a solid performance. Lewis Stone has one poignant scene early on as a ruined businessman. The funniest scene belongs to Nat Pendleton as a beefy lifeguard who, when called, pops up from behind a boat on the sand….

Overall, though, it's Jean Harlow's show all the way—and she is charming, strong yet vulnerable, ultimately as tough and clever as Barrymore's political schemer and a match for Tone and his charming grin. No classic, but good fun.

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.

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.

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.