This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "Female Buddy Movies", something you might have thought at first was a more recent phenomenon. But I thought about it for a bit and went way back in time to come up with three features and a short from the 1930s:
Reducing (1931). Buddies: Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. Marie Dressler grew to become one of the most popular actresses of the early 1930s until her untimely death in 1934. Dressler was partnered in several smaller features with Polly Moran, such as this one having her play a country cousin who because of the Depression goes to the big city to work at her sister's (Moran) beauty salon. Dressler shakes the place up, not always to Moran's liking. The two each have a daughter and those two daughters wind up rivals too.
Girl Missing (1933). Buddies: Glenda Farrell and Mary Brian. Farrell and Brian play a pair of gold-diggers trying to wheedle money out of Guy Kibbee, who dumps them unceremoniously in a hotel in Palm Beach, stiffing them with a bill for hundreds of dollars. Thankfully, they discover a fellow chorus girl they knew (Peggy Shannon) has successfully gotten a millionaire (Ben Lyon) but has gone missing. They (mostly Farrell) try to solve the mystery in order to get their bills paid. Unsurprisingly, Farrell gets the best lines and makes this movie run; best is when they get the "Dear Jane" letter from Kibbee: "It's addressed to us all right: 'To the G.D. sisters.' I wonder if he means 'gold-diggers', or that other well-known word."
We're in the Money (1935). Buddies: Glenda Farrell and Joan Blondell. If any woman could keep up on screen with Glenda Farrell, it would have to be Joan Blondell. In this movie, the two play a pair of process servers for lawyer Hugh Herbert. They're asked to serve a warrant on a playboy millionaire (tragic Ross Alexander) who is notoriously good at avoiding such things, but they discover that the millionaire has been slumming in the park and there has become the boyfriend of Blondell.
The Tin Man (1935). Buddies: Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly. Todd (who died tragically young under mysterious circumstances) and Kelly appeared together in a series of shorts made by Hal Roach, Kelly having replaced Zasu Pitts more or less. In this short, the two girlfriends wind up in a house owned by a mad scientist who's created a robot (the titular "tin man"). Also winding up there is an escaped convict. You can imagine the sort of two-reeler comedy that ensues.
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1 comment:
I have not seen any of these but they are so excellent because I love Marie Dressler. These are film stars that could hold their own against the bigger stars of the era. Glenda Farrell is great and poor Thelma Todd is mainly known for her murder.
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