t opens with “Street Scene,” performed by a full orchestra – an unusual overture for a film that doesn’t have much to do with a big musical performance like this, though it does provide an opportunity to see the musicians in CinemaScope, as this was one of the first pictures to use that widescreen technology. The story proper is set in New York, where confident, elegant businesswoman Schatze Page (Lauren Bacall) leases an upscale apartment – as part of a very specific scheme. Along with somewhat visually-impaired friend Pola Debevoise (Marilyn Monroe), and her friend, New Jersey cover girl “Loco” Dempsey (Betty Grable), the three women (all actually fashion models) plot to bag themselves some rich men, using the new luxury digs as an appropriate staging area (a “bear trap” as they call it – rather than a mousetrap).

“Is there a Mr. Texaco?” With their looks, the trio of vixens manage to do pretty well in most circumstances, with very limited resources. But each marrying a millionaire would presumably set them up for life. Although it takes a few months before they meet the right people, a party at a gathering of oilmen connects them with suitably wealthy targets: Hanley (William Powell, the exceptional persona here, posing an uncommon reasonableness) for Schatze, Merrill (Alex D’Arcy) for Pola, and Brewster (Fred Clark) for Loco. “Bankers would be all right, don’t you thing?”

Although the premise makes women seem as if they’re only interested in money, and that men are only worthwhile if they’re loaded (Tom Brookman [Cameron Mitchell], a man presumed to be a lowly manual laborer, is dismissed repeatedly, solely due to his perceived financial status), the characters are still amusingly comical. Monroe, in particular, garners a great deal of laughs due to her relative blindness, as she refuses to wear her much-needed glasses for fear of being judged (despite the fact that she’s a knockout, spectacles or not). The girls also don’t care about appearances or ages (or even marital entanglements), just as long as their marks can afford the finer things in life. “Men with that much dough are never ‘a little old’.”

The idea here is that while the women hunt for millionaires, they discover true love in the form of regular Joes whom they encounter during their ill-fated courtships of the well-heeled (noting the facetiousness of the title). But with motives and intentions in morally disappointing positions, it’s routinely difficult to believe in any of the romances, even if this is meant to be a lighthearted, airy comedy. And the eventual reveal that those down-to-earth guys are indeed affluent enough to basically fill the roles initially sought by the gold-diggers makes the substitutions moot. No real lessons are learned – or even communicated, since happy endings are destined in these types of pictures.

“Just tell me one thing. Is he holding or not?” Nothing much is demanded from the performers, but some of the dialogue is quite humorous – along with some fitting repetition (and related segues) that aids the love stories that stick. And at least one unlikely but pleasing comeuppance does occur. In the end, it takes a coupling with a normal bloke to convince the steadfast holdout not to go ahead with a marriage for money alone (purely fantasy, but that’s how this entire project is best viewed); and though it’s terribly flimsy and not the least bit reformative, at least the parting scene is quite the punchline.

– Mike Massie