I have never really got the point of "gold-digger" movies. Such films do not, as one might think, deal with the adventures of prospectors in the California Gold Rush of 1849 or the Yukon Gold Rush of the 1890s. At one time "gold-digger" was a slang term for a young woman hoping to ensnare a wealthy man.
Neither have I ever really got the point of Jean Harlow. I know that she is frequently cited as the first great sex symbol of the sound era, but I have never thought her particularly beautiful, certainly not when compared to slightly older contemporaries such as Louise Brooks or Katharine Hepburn, or slightly younger ones such as Ingrid Bergman or Rita Hayworth. Her main attributes seemed to be her masses of peroxided hair and her brazenly sexy screen persona, although her brazenness had to be toned down a bit after the Production Code came into force in 1934.
Well, "The Girl from Missouri" is a gold-digger movie starring Jean Harlow, so it has two strikes against it from the start. Edith "Eadie" Chapman is a young dancer who leaves her home state and moves to New York. You might think from the title that her home state is Missouri, but later in the film there is a reference to her being from Kansas. The scriptwriter Anita Loos presumably could not be bothered to read the title of the film for which she was writing the script. Or possibly she was bunking off school on the day when the geography teacher was covering the Midwestern states.
Eadie is drawn to the Big Apple partly because it offers more opportunities for professional dancers, but more importantly because it offers more opportunities for professional gold-diggers. She thinks that she has hit paydirt when she receives a marriage proposal from millionaire Frank Cousins within a few minutes of meeting him. Unfortunately, Frank turns out to be a millionaire on the debit rather than the credit side of the ledger, owing rather than owning millions, and a few minutes later, faced with financial ruin, he shoots himself, but not before he has given Eadie some expensive gifts (which will play an important part in later plot developments). This episode strikes a very sour note; the film is (or at least aims to be) a light-hearted romantic comedy, so a scene in which a man commits suicide out of despair seems horribly out of place. Eadie, however, sheds no tears for Frank, treating his death as no more than a temporary setback to her gold-digging ambitions.
Eadie has more luck with Thomas Randall Paige junior. Tom junior is young and handsome, and his family's extensive assets are undoubtedly all on the right side of the balance sheet. The problem here is that Thomas Randall Paige senior does not welcome the prospect of a chorus girl as his daughter-in-law; the plot tells of how he is eventually persuaded to relent. To keep the Hays Office happy, Loos's script emphasises that Eadie refuses to have sex until she has got that wedding ring safely on her finger. (This was one of the first post-Code movies, Certificate No. 91). In this, however, she reminded me of Samuel Richardson's heroine Pamela, using her virginity as a bargaining chip to secure an advantageous marriage rather than staying chaste out of moral principle.
Films about gold-diggers were a popular comedy sub-genre in the 1930s- very popular, despite (or possibly because of) the fact that their heroines were generally portrayed as hard-bitten and materialistic. Harlow's Eadie is no exception to this general rule, coming across as a selfish little minx with no thought in her head for anyone other than herself or for anything other than her own financial prospects and how she might improve them. In the Depression era such single-minded pursuit of one's own self-interest might have seemed admirable, at least to some people. Today, the underlying message- that a man's worth is to be measured by the size of his bank balance, and a woman's by the size of her husband's bank balance- makes the film look horribly dated. 3/10
Neither have I ever really got the point of Jean Harlow. I know that she is frequently cited as the first great sex symbol of the sound era, but I have never thought her particularly beautiful, certainly not when compared to slightly older contemporaries such as Louise Brooks or Katharine Hepburn, or slightly younger ones such as Ingrid Bergman or Rita Hayworth. Her main attributes seemed to be her masses of peroxided hair and her brazenly sexy screen persona, although her brazenness had to be toned down a bit after the Production Code came into force in 1934.
Well, "The Girl from Missouri" is a gold-digger movie starring Jean Harlow, so it has two strikes against it from the start. Edith "Eadie" Chapman is a young dancer who leaves her home state and moves to New York. You might think from the title that her home state is Missouri, but later in the film there is a reference to her being from Kansas. The scriptwriter Anita Loos presumably could not be bothered to read the title of the film for which she was writing the script. Or possibly she was bunking off school on the day when the geography teacher was covering the Midwestern states.
Eadie is drawn to the Big Apple partly because it offers more opportunities for professional dancers, but more importantly because it offers more opportunities for professional gold-diggers. She thinks that she has hit paydirt when she receives a marriage proposal from millionaire Frank Cousins within a few minutes of meeting him. Unfortunately, Frank turns out to be a millionaire on the debit rather than the credit side of the ledger, owing rather than owning millions, and a few minutes later, faced with financial ruin, he shoots himself, but not before he has given Eadie some expensive gifts (which will play an important part in later plot developments). This episode strikes a very sour note; the film is (or at least aims to be) a light-hearted romantic comedy, so a scene in which a man commits suicide out of despair seems horribly out of place. Eadie, however, sheds no tears for Frank, treating his death as no more than a temporary setback to her gold-digging ambitions.
Eadie has more luck with Thomas Randall Paige junior. Tom junior is young and handsome, and his family's extensive assets are undoubtedly all on the right side of the balance sheet. The problem here is that Thomas Randall Paige senior does not welcome the prospect of a chorus girl as his daughter-in-law; the plot tells of how he is eventually persuaded to relent. To keep the Hays Office happy, Loos's script emphasises that Eadie refuses to have sex until she has got that wedding ring safely on her finger. (This was one of the first post-Code movies, Certificate No. 91). In this, however, she reminded me of Samuel Richardson's heroine Pamela, using her virginity as a bargaining chip to secure an advantageous marriage rather than staying chaste out of moral principle.
Films about gold-diggers were a popular comedy sub-genre in the 1930s- very popular, despite (or possibly because of) the fact that their heroines were generally portrayed as hard-bitten and materialistic. Harlow's Eadie is no exception to this general rule, coming across as a selfish little minx with no thought in her head for anyone other than herself or for anything other than her own financial prospects and how she might improve them. In the Depression era such single-minded pursuit of one's own self-interest might have seemed admirable, at least to some people. Today, the underlying message- that a man's worth is to be measured by the size of his bank balance, and a woman's by the size of her husband's bank balance- makes the film look horribly dated. 3/10