zetes Review of How to Marry a Millionaire

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Marilyn is pretty good, as are the jokes about Bogie and Bacall

[7/10 · 12 August 2002]

In this film, three women, played by three huge stars, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable, move in together with the plan to each land a millionaire. They each get involved with millionaires, but men of more humble means (and at least one man pretending to be) end up winning them over in the end. It's kind of lackluster, but it's moderately entertaining. It probably should have been funnier. The only real humor comes from Monroe, who needs glasses but is afraid no man will find her attractive when she's wearing them. She stumbles around bumping into walls and mistaking people's identities. There are also a lot of great in-jokes about Bacall's marriage to Humphrey Bogart. In the film, the millionaire whom she dates is played by the great actor William Powell, who was in his early sixties when the film was made. When he tells Bacall that he's too old for her, she tells him how she adores older men. "You know that old fella from The African Queen. I love that guy!" Betty Grable is pretty forgettable, but, then again, I never found her particularly talented or attractive. She's pretty average on both fronts, as far as I'm concerned. The film is also interesting as an early example of the use of widescreen (supposedly it was the first film in that format). It was developed in 1953 so that cinemas would have an extra draw, as television was destroying the industry. I watched a cropped version, unfortunately, but I think I did a decent job reconstructing how shots were originally composed. The opening and closing scenes are the most interesting. For no other reason than to demonstrate the new format, the screen encompasses an entire orchestra. The word "Cinemascope" appears enormously both at the beginning and at end. 7/10.