How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
Directed by Jean Negulesco

Film Review

How to Marry a Millionaire is one of those loud, glossy Hollywood productions of the 1950s that was intended to make a big splash but delivers far, far less than is promised.  True, its trio of leading ladies - Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and a curiously spectacled Marilyn Monroe - has a magnetic draw that few can resist, but none of the charismatic stars really gets much chance to shine in this over-egged, lightweight and fairly tedious run-around comedy.  Instead, each actress seems to fall into a nicely caricatured groove:  Bacall is aloof and waspish, Grable is man-hungry and shallow and Monroe is, yet again, the dumb blonde getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.  So much for female emancipation.

The film, directed with great gusto, but very little in the way of imagination, by Jean Negulesco, is based on Zoe Akins's popular play The Greeks Had a Word for It, first performed on Broadway in 1930.  Negulesco was an exceedingly odd choice to direct the film. He first came to real prominence with his atmospheric film noir thrillers of the 1940s - notably The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and Three Strangers (1946) - but he was also adept at handling melodramas and romantic comedies, evidenced by Humoresque (1946) and Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).  How to Marry a Millionaire is one of Negulesco's lesser offerings, and seems to be the work of an altogether different director - a tawdry crowd-pleaser that shows little of its director's visual flair and technical rigour.

The plot is entirely predictable and offers few surprises and even fewer decent laughs.  Despite its obvious failings, the film manages to be entertaining for the most part and doesn't drag - if you overlook the ludicrously bombastic and completely superfluous five minute intro, in which a full orchestra plays a Gershwinesque overture, a hideous indulgence that has folie des grandeurs written all over it.

How to Marry a Millionaire has the distinction of being the first film to have been shot using the new CinemaScope widescreen process.  The studio (20th Century Fox) immediately followed this up with a much grander film, for which the widescreen format was much better suited - The Robe (1953).  It was the latter film that was released first - a wise decision by the studio as CinemaScope is completed wasted on Negulesco's instantly forgettable comedy.  In spite of this, and despite the generally unfavourable reviews, How to Marry a Millionaire proved to be a box office smash, both at home in America and abroad - the second most successful Hollywood production of the year after The Robe.  The film's popularity with the public is no doubt what led to it being turned into a television sitcom in 1957, starring Barbara Eden, Merry Anders and Lori Nelson.  The film was subsequently remade in 2000 as the TV movie How to Marry a Billionaire, with three male characters seeking a fabulously wealthy mate.

Film Synopsis

The enterprising Schatze Page is determined to make her fortune the only way she knows - by hooking an unsuspecting millionaire husband for herself or her two friends Loco Dempsey and Pola Debevoise.  To that end, the three young women rent a swanky New York apartment from a man who is in hiding from the tax authorities, but they end up having to sell all of the furniture to pay the rent when their dream husband fails to materialise.  Just when all seems lost, Loco lands a wealthy businessman who invites the three of them to a cocktail party.  It is just the opportunity they have been waiting for - and, sure enough, the three girls each gets her suitably rich sugar daddy.  However, the girls' plan to get rich quick soon runs into difficulties and none of them gets quite what she bargained for...