‘How to Marry a Millionaire‘ (1953) was an excellent surprise. I chose it because it stars Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe and because the director is Jean Negulesco. Born in Craiova, Romania, he was an extremely interesting personality, an appreciated filmmaker who worked with the big Warner and Fox studios and with famous actors and actresses of the ’40s and ’50s, author of entertainment films, but also quality social dramas. He was also a very interesting painter, who traveled to Paris as a teenager and studied with Constantin Brâncuși. Something is felt in the originality and visual power of his films. I did not expect ‘How to Marry a Millionaire‘, a film made in the year I was born, to be so entertaining and engaging.
TV sitcom fans will be very familiar with the type of plot and the setting proposed by this film. The story – inspired by two theater plays – takes place in a fabulous apartment in New York, rented by three charming young models. They can’t really afford to pay the rent, so they start selling the objects, the furniture, even the piano in the apartment. Their dream is to find rich men, at least millionaires, and they set out determinedly in search of them. Some are a bit old, others are a bit of a swindler, but the biggest obstacle is that each of them also finds a true love in men who do not correspond to the social and financial status they aspire to. What will they choose in the end?
‘How to Marry a Millionaire‘ was among the first movies to be filmed in Cinemascope format and the first to use stereo recorded music. To make the most of the new techniques, Jean Negulesco does some very interesting things, together with composer Alfred Newman and cinematographer Joseph MacDonald. The film begins with an overture for a large orchestra, as in a musical theater performance. He films in short shots, with the actors in constant moving. He fills the screen with images of 1950s New York, but also of the huge apartment where much of the action takes place. The trio of great Hollywood actresses is, of course, the main attraction. The most experienced was Betty Grable, a star of the 1940s, in one of her last roles for the Fox studios. Lauren Bacall successfully plays one of the few comedic roles in this part of her career. Finally, Marilyn Monroe is delicious playing the short-sighted Pola. The plot is predictable, and we will see it repeated in numerous television comedies. Some of them were inspired by this film that also generated a TV series, many others followed with apartments, friends and girlfriends in New York, from ‘Friends’ to ‘Sex in the City’. All these are written and filmed casually and in good taste, so viewing is enjoyable and should not be avoided, despite the film’s venerable age.