Good Girls Go to Paris

At Brand University, new professor Ronald Brooke (Melvyn Douglas) befriends waitress Jenny Swanson (Joan Blondell) who confesses her gold-digging plans. Two previous waitresses married rich college boys. Jenny gets Ted to propose, but his wealthy father runs her out of town. Brooke hopes to instill a conscience in her. She next sets her sights on Tom Brand whose family runs the university. She ingratiates herself with the patriarch Olaf Brand. She doesn't know that the daughter Sylvia Brand is getting married to Brooke.

Joan Blondell manages to straddle two opposing sides. She has to be a greedy gold-digger, but she also has to do it with sweetness. She may be a gold-digger, but she has to be nice about it. The relationships get too complicated. It's a mess. I feel that Ronald Brooke is more a mentor to Jenny than anything else. There's no heat there. I do not like taking the relationship beyond that. Otherwise, I do like Blondell's performance and her managing the role.

The movie is a good screw ball comedy, thanks mainly to Joan, playing a naive girl, with starry eyes.

The star she is looking for, is a rich boy, to be black-mailed, or rather it is his rich father, to get rid of a mesalliance, so that she can go to Paris with the money, as she had been reading in the Page-3 of the gossip columns, almost every other day, as she averred.

There are only two obstructions in her being able to execute the plan, the father-confessor : Exchange Professor Ronald, and her own conscience (the flutter).

Though one of the reviews compares it with the It Happened One Night.. but I don't find much similarity, neither with the Cinderella stories... since the black-mailer knew the Prince (and hence made him target) and the Prince, in fact more than one Prince, too knew that she is out to milk them (she had told that herself to them - and in fact to a train-load of passengers).

The innocent and naive role Joan could pull it brilliantly through, and that along with two ever solid performers, Melvyn and Connolly carried the movie on their shoulders. A bit of not-unmentionable part is by Alan Curtis, but except them all other, including the director or rather the story-writer, did their best to spoil it.

Isabel Jeans tried to be some sort of Billy Burke or Alice Brady (in My Man Godfrey) - with a closet Toy Boy - though not too believably, and going overboard in trying to act the type of silly woman, which Billy Burke does well. The Toy-Boy, had his own designs (though he too didn't look too convincing), nor did the first victim Stanley Brown - he was guilty (having written love-letters), but didn't look to be so when charged. His domineering father Clarence Kolb did carry his small part.

But the worst were the trio of Joan Perry (Sylvia, Ronald's betrothed), Henry Hunter (Dennis, Butler's son and Sylvia's lover) and Hickman (the butler). That was a completely hay-ware plot. About to marry Ronald, Sylvia spending nights, daily as the detective said, with Dennis. We can blame it on social morals, but what of the Butler's son and the Butler ? Not they too, certainly. And that wasn't in closet, everyone except the Groom (Melvyn) and Grandpa (Connolly) knew of it.

The behavior of these two lovers was not too explainable- even more during the accident and the aftermath. Sylvia bribed Jenny in taking the blame, but then in the confrontation, she not only told that she had blocked the cheque but also egged Jenny- almost daring her to tell the truth (though Jenny didn't) and then the complete spineless (and Coward, as Jenny told him on face, and rightly so), Dennis can't be the right one for wayward Sylvia, as the Butler father Jeffers said, nor would have the wise Grandpa agreed to the opinion.

Had these four characters (Sylvia, Dennis, Jeffers and Caroline) been better thought of, it could have been a far better movie than it is.

But still, it is entirely watchable, due to brilliance of Blondell.

Joan Blondell spent her career in average and mediocre movies. Warner Bros churned out the TV shows of that day and unfortunately for Joan, she was the studio's workhorse. In later years she often said she couldn't remember much about most of them because they were all the same, and the only thing that changed were the clothes. Her assessment is sadly true; most of them are pretty desultory.

But she got a chance to shine with 'Good Girls Go To Paris' and the results are spectacular!

Jenny Swanson is one of the great characters of '30s films, a girl who moves through life purely on the surface, showing only the most superficial understanding of each situation in which she finds herself. But that 'public face' is only her defense. It conceals her real person, deeply understanding, able to perceive the problems of the people around her, pierce their defenses with ease, and dominate the proceedings to bring about the most satisfactory solution. No man can resist her brilliant personality, as one after the other they fall madly in love with her - even the cold millionaire, played brilliantly by Walter Connelly, is vanquished by Jenny's honesty and charm. None of these poor men have a chance!

All time great romantic comedy.

This is not a well crafted or written piece of cinema. I have been arbitrarily watching comedies from this era of late largely to stick my head in the sand from the horrors of the world at the moment. This film could easily be remade with some updates to the increasing gender equality in the world. The setup was unusually clever for one of these early romantic comedies, the characters were fun, some even had a bit of depth. Joan Blondell is utterly charming and her Jenny Swanson is the original Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, it is delightful fluff entertainment. The whole web of mistaken identity was probably clever for the time and a nod to A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Special appreciation to Walter Connolly's performance, his cartoonish exasperation and chemistry with Blondell were some of the best moments in the film. The actors are genuinely enjoying themselves.

Is the writing silly, sure, the dialog a bit basic, absolutely, but holy crap I enjoyed this ever so much more than anything I've seen in awhile.

...and dull rom coms like this go into the vault until or unless they are exhumed by TCM for god knows what esoteric reason. Just a hymn to the un funny with, as a previous reviewer noted, a too old Joan Blondell (at least too old to be playing a college town lunchroom waitress) and a too somber Melvyn Douglas with, as another previous reviewer noted, zero chem with Joanie. Throw in the usual trying too hard performance of Walter Connolly, dialogue that is at best half ass "Philadelphia Story", and a director who is clearly uncomfortable or unfamiliar with physical comedy of any sort and you can see why this thing is best forgotten. Solid C.

PS...Googled Joan Perry, who played Silvia. Saw that she survived marriage to both Harry Cohn and Laurence Harvey. Now there's a movie I'd like to watch.