User reviews

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.

Jean Harlow is "The Girl from Missouri" in this 1934 film that ran afoul of the production code and had to be cleaned up. Gone is the tough, sexy gal who's been around the block too many times to count. Now she's cheap-looking but wants the ring on her finger before anything else.

Jean Harlow is Eadie, and she's a delight in this film, which also stars Franchot Tone as the object of her affections, Lionel Barrymore as his father, and Patsy Kelly as her good friend. Eadie sets her sights on an old man, Cousins (Lewis Stone) at a party he throws; he's broke and has just asked T.R. Paige (Barrymore) for a loan. He doesn't get it. Eadie enters, and Cousins gives her his ruby cuff links, which she won't take because they're not engaged. Cousins, knowing he's about to blow his brains out, agrees to marry her, so she takes the cuff links. Before she knows it, he's dead, and she's slipped the cuff links to Paige so she won't be accused of stealing them.

Eadie then sets her sights on Paige and follows him to Palm Beach, where she meets a young man (Franchot Tone) who turns out to be T.R. Paige Jr. She's wildly attracted to him, but he's a playboy. Will he fall for her? Can it work? Good movie. Tone is smooth and elegant. I've never cared for Patsy Kelly; she always seems to be shouting, and she's very stagy. Barrymore is good as always.

So the pure Jean, still with the platinum blonde hair, makes her debut in this film governed by the Hays Code. A shame her career wasn't longer. She had a wonderful screen presence.

"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.

I feel that if this film was released during the Pre-Code era, it would have been less sanitized and longer. It wasn't the whole sanitized aspect that bothered me, it was more... something was missing from this one. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it was merely okay. It was also too short. The story seemed rushed.

I believe that this was Jean Harlow's first film made under the production code. She seems flat and listless (still appealing, but not as much as usual).

Franchot Tone basically plays the same character he was typecast as always playing- a dapper, suave character in a tuxedo. Kind of like a higher-up-on-the-scale Robert Montgomery. He is always a welcome presence, but as usual he isn't given much to do. One can only imagine what he might have become had he not be typecast as the second banana in a tux.

The rest of the cast was okay. Ths story was fairly weak, but the ending was kind of funny. Was this supposed to be a comedy?

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.

This is a typical pre-code comedy in the same style as those Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell pictures, Jean Harlow however is no match for goddess, Joan Blondell.

Even though it feels like it is, it's not actually pre-code

This movie signalled the end of the pre-code era. Proudly showing certificate number 01, it was the very first film to be given the seal of approval from the MPPA Production (Hays) Code which would censor Hollywood for decades to come. Maybe because it had already been completed before the implementation date a lot of typical pre-codiness slipped through - there's not any noticeable difference. There's just as much saucy innuendo, salacious story and Jean Harlow in a soaking wet, body hugging silk negligee.

And we've also got Noel Madison as Jean's New York nightclub manager. You might recognise him as the go-to typical American gangster in loads of English films of the late thirties often alongside with the seal sex symbol of the 1930s, Jessie Matthews.

If you've watched a few Anita Loos scripted pictures you'll be familiar with the story, the optimistic outlook and the gentle saucy humour. Apart from Jean Harlow however in the wet negligee, there's nothing particularly outstanding about this but it's reasonable fun. Even if you think Jean Harlow was absurdly overrated, had an annoying voice and couldn't really act you can still enjoy this. Using an expression I never thought I would: Franchot Tone is superb in this but the marvellous Lionel Barrymore seems like he didn't want to be there. Talented director Jack Conway holds it all together with perfect pacing.

Fairly forgettable but there's worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

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 (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1934), directed by Jack Conway, stars Jean Harlow, the girl actually from Missouri playing the fictional girl named Eadie  from Missouri. In typical Depression era style story about gold diggers out to find rich husbands, THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI is no different from the others, but how it's played makes a difference from one movie to the next. While such gold digging types as Joan Blondell, Carole Lombard or many others might have handled similar assignment roles such as this, Jean Harlow does quite well in a light comedy with dramatic overtones.

As the credits roll to the same underscoring that opened Harlow's earlier comedy success of BOMBSHELL (1933), the narrative opens at Mrs. Chapman's Hot Spot, the Best Beer in Missouri, where Edith "Eadie" Chapman (Jean Harlow) manages  to sneak away from her unhappy existence of her loose-morals mother (Esther Howard) and unsympathetic stepfather (William "Stage Boyd), by packing up and going away with Kitty Lennihan (Patsy Kelly), her closest friend, on the first train leaving town for New York City. Later, Eadie and Kitty acquire jobs as chorus girls, but that's not enough. Eadie's ambition is to better herself,  become somebody and marry a millionaire. Along with the group of chorus girls hired to entertain in the home of Frank Cousins (Lewis Stone) and his guests, Eadie makes a play for the elderly gentleman, unaware that he's broke and in desperate need of  money himself. Unable to acquire financial help from millionaire businessman, Thomas Randolph Paige (Lionel Barrymore), Cousins kills himself. Before he dies, however, Cousins has earlier agreed to both an engagement to a girl he hardly knows as well as giving her his expensive gold cuff links as a gift. In fear of being arrested for having the cuff links found on her, she has Mr. Paige, whom she earlier mistook for a butler, to hide it for her from the police. Most appreciative of helping her out of a jam and offering her money, Eadie goes after Paige, president of T.R. Paige and Company, but her presence becomes too much for the elderly gentleman. Going to Palm Beach on a business trip, Eadie, who takes Kitty as her chaperon, follow suit. While waiting outside his office, Eadie is spotted by Paige's son, playboy Tommy Paige (Franchot Tone), who becomes her aggressor. When Mr. Paige discovers his son's love for this blonde chiseler and intends on marrying her, he does everything possible to break their engagement.

Other members of the cast featured are Alan Mowbray (Lord Douglas); Hale Hamilton (Charles W. Turner); Henry Kolker (Senator Ticombe); Clara Blandick (Miss Newberry, Paige's Personal Secretary); and in smaller roles, Charles C. Wilson, Fuzzy Knight and Shirley Ross. Look quickly for Nat Pendleton as the lifeguard whom becomes Patsy Kelly's latest male prospect

Surrounded by such veteran MGM contract players as Lionel Barrymore and Lewis Stone, along with the studio's up and coming Franchot Tone, in his second of four movies opposite Harlow,  Patsy Kelly, as the second banana, gathers the most attention described as "the old-fashioned home girl like Mae West." Her wonderful presence and wisecracks are most welcome here. When she's not around in some long stretches, Harlow is on her own, ranging from finding herself a sort of Mae West situation making her presence known while on an all male yacht, to getting revenge on old man Paige for breaking up her engagement to his son. Franchot Tone, in one of his many millionaire playboy types, has his moments of keeping himself from "going cuckoo" from Eadie's charms before letting go and telling her how he really feels while both getting wet under a shower

Following the box-office successes of RED DUST (1932), BOMBSHELL (1933) and DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI (1934), although quite entertaining in its own way, is one of the most overlooked Harlow MGM movies in recent years. Interestingly her only 1934 release, she was to follow this with other developed classics, especially her finest, LIBELED LADY (1936), before her untimely death in June of 1937. Looking very much like a pre-code production, there's indication of how many scenes were changed and altered before the film would win the fade-in title card approval rating from the production code. One wonders how this 73 minute production might have turned out had it been released in theaters before the production code was strictly enforced.

In present toned-down form, it's still enjoyable gold digger themed material after millionaire fluff story. Formerly available on home video in the 1990s, the decade when this long unseen comedy made it to some public television stations, THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI can be seen and studied either watching on DVD or whenever broadcast of Turner Classic Movies cable channel.(***)

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.

"Did somebody ask you to sniff a little white powder?"

This vehicle for Jean Harlow is a gold-digger type story that threatens to get dark fast when one old guy she has her sights on commits suicide, but it doesn't stay that way long, soon settling in as a romantic comedy. Oh, Harlow bounces from one rich guy to another so fast it'll give you whiplash, quite open about her intentions, but any immoral overtones about that is offset by her wanting marriage and holding out on physical affection until then, so that she still comes across as virtuous.

That combination of gold-digging virgin in Harlow's character doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's because it was one of the script changes imposed on the film by the Production Code, which went into effect while it was in the pipeline. Another was the film's title, which according to Thomas Doherty in Pre-Code Hollywood veered from "Born to Be Kissed to the Code-approved It Pays to Be Good, before becoming the bland The Girl From Missouri." According to Mick LaSalle in Complicated Women<, the title was originally "Eadie Was a Lady, after a sleazy ballad." Regardless, the character was certainly softened, which is unfortunate.

I still count the film as pre-Code because there are plenty of moments which would not have been allowed afterwards, including the degree to which we see Harlow's body in a bathing suit as well as when she's soaking wet in a negligee.

Harlow's character eventually ends up opposite the son of a wealthy man (Franchot Tone), a playboy who wants her and starts to get sexually frustrated. "For two weeks you've given me the come-on, and every night you put on the frost," he says. He's a bachelor who likes his freedom and is less inclined to marriage so he tries to force the issue by getting her alone and kissing her. She melts, but valiantly resists. "You can make me cheap and common like a million others," she says referring to the possibility of him ravaging her, "but gee, I wish you wouldn't."

The film goes through lots of melodrama on its way to what we suspect is coming, and when it does come it's rather ridiculous, so this isn't a script I really liked, but Harlow comes across with force in several emotional scenes, making it one of her more challenging roles. She's also accompanied by Patsy Kelly, such a cutie and a plus in any film. Her character is a little more down to earth in her aspirations, quipping "I'm just an old-fashioned homegirl, like Mae West," while advocating for flirting with anyone attractive, even if they're humble doormen or lifeguards. She's wonderful anytime she's on the screen. Watch this one for Harlow and Kelly, and forget the silly script.

Jean Harlow and Patsy Kelly flee Missouri and strike out for Broadway. Miss Kelly goes for anything in pants. Miss Harlow thinks it's easy to fall in love with a millionaire, and to remain a good girl -- the Production Code is in force, after all. To her surprise, she has a hard time resisting Franchot Tone. When he asks her to marry him, his father, high-placed banker Lionel Barrymore decides to frame her.

You can see the horse-trading that went on between MGM and the Hays Office to get Miss Harlow to appear in her knickers for about one half second. The MGM gloss is apparent throughout the movie, with a cast of supporting actors that includes Lewis Stone, Alan Mowbray, Hale Hamilton, and Clara Blandick, and the script by Anita Loos and John Emerson.... well, I'd like to see the first draft of it.

MGM seems to have thought that teaming Tone and Miss Harlow was a good one, with Tone's fussy, upper-class demeanor contrasting with Harlow's raucousness. There's something in that, but Tone always gives me the impression that he doesn't believe any of it, but is going along with the gag because he doesn't want to be thought of as a bad sport. It's mostly up to Miss Harlow to carry this along, and she does so.

Even in a code dimmed comedy like this Jean Harlow's talents shine through. The soliloquy she delivers to Franchot Tone's Palm Beach rich boy about the miseries of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks is the high point of a too flat film. Harlow even manages to steal scenes from one of the master scene stealers, Lionel Barrymore. Ultimately, it's not enough to save a movie whose chief scenarist, Anita Loos, creator of Lorelei Lee, seems to be writing dialogue with a Hays Office sword over her head. C plus.

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.

Edith 'Eadie' Chapman (Jean Harlow) runs away from home with her friend Kitty. Her mother and stepfather run a Missouri beer dance hall and try to turn her into a dancing girl. She intends to marry rich and be a traditional mother. Thomas Randall Paige Jr. (Franchot Tone) is the rich playboy while his father Thomas Randall Paige (Lionel Barrymore) warns against her.

The production code gets dropped in the middle of this movie production. Jean Harlow turns into a virginal girl clutching her non-existing pearls while doing her gold digging. This bit of playing against type is slightly comedic for good and for ill. Everything is colored in the morality debate. Junior is an annoying brat. I'm not sure I like him and I'm not sure that I agree with her. I'm not sure how I feel about any of this and that's interesting.

I'm a Jean Harlow fan, because she had star quality. I don't think her movies are good and I don't even think that she was a good actress, but she certainly was Great in comedies. Every bit of comedy in The Girl from Missouri is very good. But this movie is perhaps more like a love story. Jean Harlow is wonderful in this one and you can forget the rest of the cast - their performances bring nothing new. It always impresses me much to think that Harlow's beautiful body was that of an ill woman. Well, in this movie she does look beautiful.

Jean Harlow was always a sheer delight in her films, so full of life, charming and beautiful with some of the most sparkling comic timing of anybody at that time in film. Such a shame that she died so young with so much more to give and didn't do more films, regardless the film she was always one of the best assets. 'The Girl from Missouri' had a good cast besides Harlow, including Lionel Barrymore, who may not have been what one calls a subtle actor but was always riveting to watch.

Don't let the title of the film put one off. From the title, one expects 'The Girl from Missouri' to be pretty generic, very cute if not much more and basically with not much to it. It is a much better film actually than the title indicates, a much more spirited, wittier and more charming film than one would think and doesn't get too cute. Not perfect, but the cast are on form, it's well directed and the writing sparkles at its best.

Harlow is perfection here in 'The Girl from Missouri'. Truly enchanting and her comic timing dazzles. The other standouts are Barrymore, both hilarious and crusty, and Patsy Kelly, occasionally going a bit overboard but clearly having a great time. The whole cast are good and what makes the film work, as well as their chemistry which never labours. Franchot Tone has been better, but he does his best in bringing colour and wit to his fairly one-dimensional character. Alan Mowbray brings distinguished support as does a poignant Lewis Stone.

'The Girl from Missouri' benefits from a sharp and witty script, a spirited pace, a genuine charm and Jack Conway directs with skill and energy throughout. The story is silly as heck but is never dull.

Some of the situations are a little on the forced and convenient side.

Part of me wished that there was more nuance to Tone's character, because he can be one of those where one is not sure what people see in him.

Overall though, a lot of fun and fans of Harlow should love it. 8/10