the leading man is my tpye

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Awesome Movie

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

After sugar daddy Guy Kibbee gets fed up with the two chorus girls (Glenda Farrell and Mary Brian) not "putting out" after bringing them to Palm Beach, he leaves them a "Dear Jane" letter, informing them that he's checked out and NOT paid their hotel bill. This leaves the girls broke and stranded and they take up the offer of an old pal from New York to pay their bill as well as their train back to New York. But circumstances beyond their control keep them there, and they get involved in the disappearance of old chorus girl rival (Peggy Shannon) who has married a wealthy young man (Ben Lyon) and is obviously involved in some sort of scam. It is up to Farrell and Brian (mostly out of smug revenge) to expose Shannon for who she really is, and expose the killer of one of the people involved in the scam.This is pre-code society comedy at its seediest, obvious from the start with Guy Kibbee's brief appearance as the lecherous old coot who insists on making love to Brian simply because of his generosity. As icky as that sounds, it is presented with humor, and Kibbee's revenge on the two girls is hysterically funny. These Warner Brothers pre-code comedies are mostly enjoyable because of the wise-cracking dialog, and Farrell gets a dime a dozen. Obviously, Mary Brian was cast in the absence of Farrell's often co-star Joan Blondell, and she lacks the chemistry that Farrell and Blondell shared, coming off rather ordinary. Of course, Farrell and Blondell snapped, crackled and popped whether they were co-horts in some scam or rivals over some man.Ferdinand Gottschalk and Helen Ware are very funny as Shannon's obviously phony society parents, ham actors who obviously can't stand each other and who obviously hate pretending to be husband and wife. A ton of character favorites appear in unbilled minor roles, but are instantly recognizable, including Louise Beavers as Shannon's maid and Walter Brennan as a gas station attendant. You can't find fault in these depression era, pre-code programmers, although some are much better than others. This ranks in the middle, which considering the number of films made each year during this time isn't a bad place to be.

GIRL MISSING is a typical Warner Bros. programmer from the early thirties, a passable comedy murder mystery elevated to being fairly entertaining almost entirely due to the ever sensational Glenda Farrell in the starring role. Farrell and Mary Brian play Broadway chorines on the prowl in Florida; Brian has hooked lecherous old Guy Kibbee but she has yet to come across much to the old lech's disgruntlement, having set both (!!) girls up in a swanky hotel. Finally having enough of nothing, Kibbee skips town leaving them with a $700 hotel bill. To add injury to insult, the girls read in the paper a dreaded old chorus girl rival of theirs, Peggy Shannon, has hooked the rich young millionaire Ben Lyon.Broke and broken, the girls run into Shannon who haughtily denies knowing them. Fuming ever more, they sulk at the bar when who should they run into buy another old Broadway acquaintance, gigolo-conman Lyle Talbot, an old flame of Shannon's. Talbot sympathetically offers to pay the girls hotel bill and their fares back to New York and they take him up on his offer, but the next day Brian runs into the groom-to-be Lyon and develops a crush, which causes the girls to miss their train and have to stay over another few days.Lyon and Shannon elope and return to their hotel for the honeymoon, only to have Shannon mysteriously disappear that night. Lyon's announced reward of $25,000 for the location of his wife keeps the girls in town and Farrell in particular thinks Shannon and Talbot have cooked up a scheme together and is out to prove it.This movie only runs 69 minutes but it seems a little longer given we've seen all this before; of the cast only Glenda Farrell really gives it her all. Farrell dives into this little mystery like it's THE MALTESE FALCON and makes the film seem much better than it actually is. She alas receives very little help from Mary Brian, whose performance is astonishingly awkward considering how long she had been acting in films at this point, or even the usually reliable Ben Lyon, here in a rather milquetoast role to which he adds nothing. Lyle Talbot and Guy Kibbee have rather small parts despite their importance to the storyline; Peggy Shannon is not bad as the two-faced bride while Helen Ware and Ferdinand Gottshalk are very good as her bogus parents.This final paragraph is a spoiler that reveals the screenwriter is the one actually spoils the film. We know of course given how these stories go that (A) Shannon and Talbot are behind her "disappearance" and (B) "leads" Lyon and Brian will fall in love and live happily ever after. At the conclusion though when Shannon is at the police station and cornered, she comes up with a sensational story that her husband was behind her disappearance, that he could only get his inheritance by being married and then he drugged her and had her kidnapped. The film-goer has witnessed both Lyon's confession about the inheritance status and him giving her a presumed aspirin for a headache yet dismissed this, believing him the victim of the film and because of how this type of story always plays out in 1930's programmers one knows Shannon and Talbot are the bad guys and Lyon is the good guy by their screen personas. The screenwriter completely blew a chance to make a cutting edge mystery for the era by not making Shannon's tale in fact true - a supposedly "victim" double crossing the con artists who are out to trap him - instead the author passes it over for the conventional sappy wrap-up of the "good" couple walking off into the sunset together even if she is another golddigger herself and he, so supposedly worried about his missing bride yet still makes a breakfast date with Brian! 1930's audiences might have been pleased with this conventional ending but a true surprise ending with not only the Shannon/Talbot gang locked up but a devious heir Lyon as well and the jaded chorines Farrell and Brian off on the train to their next adventure would have packed a stronger punch and made this a vastly better film.

Motor-mouthed Glenda Farrell adds sass and vinegar to this better-than-most crime programmer dating from the early sound era. She and Mary Brian play a couple of New York gold-diggers stranded in Palm Beach when frustrated sugar daddy Guy Kibbee sticks them with an unpaid hotel bill. Spurred on by the prospect of a big reward, they get mixed up in the bridal-night disappearance of yet another gold-digger (Peggy Shannon), whom they know from her days in the kick line, but who managed to snag a millionaire (Ben Lyon).In the course of their meddling, they encounter an old pal (Lyle Talbot) who seems anxious to get them out of town; a pair of overstuffed hams posing as a society couple (Helen Ware, Ferdinand Gottschalk); and a body in the hotel gardens, still smoking a cigar. Film buffs will catch brief appearances by Walter Brennan, Louise Beavers and Dennis O'Keefe.Without ever really losing sight of its mystery plot or lapsing into the `comic,' Girl Missing brandishes a lot of racy, pre-Code wit, dished out mainly by Farrell. Most of the credit can no doubt go to scriptwriter Jules Furthman, whose credits include Shanghai Express, Bombshell, The Big Sleep and Nightmare Alley. The rest can go to Frenchman Robert Florey, whose directorial career may not be quite so distinguished but bears watching: Cocoanuts (the first Marx Brothers movie), the first `talking' Murders in the Rue Morgue, and a few noirs like Danger Signal and The Crooked Way. Girl Missing succeeds because of good teamwork, and it had a great team.

Glenda Farrell is a delight as Torch Blane in that series. Here we have more of a hybrid:This starts out as a light-hearted comedy dedicated strictly to the fine art of gold-digging.When it eases into the mystery suggested by the title, Glenda keeps pace beautifully and the movie keeps its rhythm.A real pleasure!