Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 25-May-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
How to Marry a Millionaire is a good choice for this week's Spotlight because of the contrast it offers to Down With Love, the subject of one of last week's Reviews (although if this was a deliberate choice, it was a subconscious one). Both movies rely on glamour and gender stereotypes and revolve around women who connive to entrap men through deception; in other words, both have great potential for being shallow and offensive. But as so often happens, the older movie succeeds where its modern descendent fails. Featuring a dazzling trio of leading ladies (sorry, Renée) and replete with clever, funny lines, How to Marry a Millionaire avoids the pitfalls of mean-spiritedness and ends up being a thoroughly charming, if inconsequential, little lark.
Lauren Bacall takes center stage as Schatze Page, a bitter divorcée who has given up on love but still thinks that marriage is "the biggest thing you can do in life," as long as it keeps you in diamonds and furs and makes little demand on your emotions. Schatze teams with fellow models Loco (Betty Grable), an all-American girl whose bulb isn't exactly of the highest wattage, and Pola (Marilyn Monroe), a bodacious but extremely near-sighted innocent, to rent a posh apartment from which to launch an all-out attack upon New York's wealthiest. Schatze's brutal determination causes her to reject the seemingly lowbrow suitor who really revs her engines (Cameron Mitchell) and engage herself instead to a kindly older man with tons of cash (William Powell); but the more easygoing Loco and Pola ditch their rich beaux and run off in pursuit of true love with a couple of poor but compatible Joes. Reuniting with her comrades on her wedding day, Schatze has to decide whether to follow their lead, and her heart, or to carry her superficial plans through to their loveless conclusion. (If you can't guess how that one ends, you need to watch more movies.)
How to Marry a Millionaire definitely bears the mark of its era, but not in its depiction of gold-digging females and the doofusy males on whom they prey (which sick, socially contrived game is alive and well today in TV shows like Joe Millionaire). The inevitable '50s theme song is, thankfully, presented as an overture to the film instead of an awkwardly inserted scene with one of the stars crooning. However, there is an awkwardly inserted scene of a different kind, when Schatze's spurned lover Tom commissions a personal fashion show that feels like an Eisenhower-era cross between a lap dance and MTV's House of Style (and is also the obligatory opportunity for Grable to show off her legs). This bizarre scene is entirely too long and makes Tom seem like a boor — but it's questionable whether contemporary audiences would have found it as unpleasant as I do, even while they must have thought it boring and irrelevant.
But although Tom is smarmy and the other men are mostly dullards, the movie isn't really about them, so it doesn't make much difference. The women are all perfectly cast: Bacall really looks like a dangerous wounded animal, but one you can't help but admire for her beauty and cool, and Grable and Monroe are just as cute as buttons. All three inhabit their characters' skins with absolute ease and grace, so that whether they're being ditzy, callous, or swoony, you can understand how they would be tempting to any man who crossed their path. In addition, the stars all benefit from a constant flow of amusing dialogue courtesy of screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, as when Bacall tries to seal the deal with Powell by listing all the older men she finds attractive, like "that old fellow What's-His-Name in African Queen. How to Marry a Millionaire is predictable and sort of sitcom-y, but because of the script's wit, Grable and Monroe's sweetness, and the happily-ever-after ending, it conveys an enjoyably light frame of mind that dispels any cynicism its plotline might suggest.
Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
