How to Marry a Millionaire [G]

Schatze, Loco, and Pola are three gorgeous models that rent out a luxurious apartment in the hopes of using it to lure and capture rich husbands. Through a series of events, the three do end up getting hitched, but not to the rich tycoons they initially set their sights on. 

I have a real love for Marilyn Monroe, so it was a natural course for me to raid the classics section at work and pull out this movie to watch on this particularly cold and rainy Tuesday night. By no means a Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire is still a film not without its romantic charm: it’s actually rather a funny take on the battle of the sexes, using cleverness and cunning to gain the upper hand. The entire film became a jaggedly edited, but fun and charming little battle of wits, with each sex trying to outsmart the other…sort of. I don’t believe it’s a keeper, but I certainly enjoyed its lightness, charm, and mindless entertainment value. 

Schatze, Loco, and Pola are three gorgeous models that rent out a luxurious apartment in the hopes of using it to lure and capture rich husbands. Through a series of events, the three do end up getting hitched, but not to the rich tycoons they initially set their sights on. 

There’s not really a lot to say about this movie. Its story is stable and one that is open to nice and charming romantic and comedic interpretation and the performances were all very good with Lauren Bacall as the more maternal and level-headed of the three, Betty Grable providing the film with a fair amount of comic relief as the dumb and sometimes unladylike of the trio, and finally Marilyn Monroe as a self-conscious and innocent ditz. 

My one problem with this movie was that I found it very hard to keep track as to what was happening. There are a fair number of characters to remember, and the script and screenplay was written in such a way that made everything happen suddenly and jaggedly, without offering that period of verbally telling the audience what was actually going on. I got there in the end, but for a while I did become a little lost. 

Also starring David Wayne, Rory Calhoun, Cameron Mitchell, Alexander D’Arcy, Fred Clark, and William Powell, How To Marry a Millionaire was a charming little romantic comedy that did offer its audience light and mindless entertainment, but was ultimately not the greatest romance to grace the screen. Filled with misunderstandings, schemes, money, pretty faces, comedy, romance, and very light drama, it’s a film that I enjoyed, but am happy to have seen just once.