Kansas City Princess

Kansas City Princess is a 1934 American comedy film starring Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell.[1][2][3] The film is directed by William Keighley and was released by Warner Bros. on October 13, 1934. Farrell and Blondell were a comedy team in five Warner Bros. films in the early 1930s as two blonde bombshells. The other four films are Havana Widows (1933), Traveling Saleslady (1935), We're in the Money (1935), and Miss Pacific Fleet (1935).

Kansas City Princess
Movie poster
Directed byWilliam Keighley
Produced byLou Edelman
Written bySy Bartlett
Manuel Seff
StarringJoan Blondell
Glenda Farrell
Music byLeo F. Forbstein
CinematographyGeorge Barnes
Edited byWilliam Clemens
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
  • October 13, 1934 (1934-10-13)
Running time
64 min.
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Rosie and Marie are two manicurists from Kansas City. When Rosie loses an expensive ring her gangster boyfriend gave her, she and Marie take an ocean voyage to Paris and masquerade as Girl Scouts.

Plot

Rosie Sturges (Joan Blondell) is a Kansas City manicurist, who has a gangster boyfriend name Dynamite Carson (Robert Armstrong). Rosie's friend Marie Callahan (Glenda Farrell) a fellow manicurist and roommate, urges Rosie to drop Dynamite and go after the three things a girl really needs "money, fur and diamonds". While Dynamite is away on business, Rosie goes on a date with a customer, Jimmy the Duke (Gordon Westcott), and he steals the diamond engagement ring that Dynamite gave to Rosie.

Fearing Dynamite's anger, Rosie and Marie travel by train to New York and disguise themselves as Girl Scouts. In New York, Rosie and Marie meet two businessmen, Samuel Warren (Hobart Cavanaugh) and Jim Cameron (T. Roy Barnes), and follow them on a ship bound for Paris. Rosie and Marie persuade the two men into paying for their ship fares and buying them new clothes. Dynamite, who has followed the women to New York and on board the ship, is hiding in the stateroom of millionaire Junior Ashcraft (Hugh Herbert). Junior has hired detective Marcel Duryea (Osgood Perkins) to investigate his wife, who is having an affair in Paris with Dr. Sascha Pilnakoff (Ivan Lebedeff).

Rosie and Marie learn that a millionaire is on board the ship, and they pose as French manicurists to enter his room. When Dynamite exposes them, they fall into hysterics. Junior gives them a check to calm them, and then repay Samuel and Jim for the fare. In Paris, Marcel reports to Junior, and Rosie agrees to pose as Dr. Sascha's lover to make Junior's wife jealous. Marcel, who is in league with Junior's wife, double-crosses him. However, instead of his wife's finding Rosie with Dr. Sascha, she finds Junior with Marie. Junior decides to get a divorce and marry Marie, and Rosie promises Dynamite to return to Kansas City with him.

Cast

Production

The film was completed three months before its release, but Warner Bros. decided to delay the release of the film until after the birth of Joan Blondell's child, so that Blondell would not be off the screen for too long a period. Before the release, the film was titled "Princess of Kansas City".[4]

Reception

Andre Senwald of The New York Times wrote: "If you can imagine the Misses Blondell and Farrell as bogus girl Scouts you can imagine almost anything, a factor which should prove of considerable assistance at Kansas City Princess. In the athletic farce at the Roxy these racy girls, the screen's foremost professors in the study of the female acquisitive instinct, are demonstrating the merry art of getting something for nothing. Like most of the product which wears the Warner Brothers trade-mark, this one is fast and lively even when it isn't funny. Its principal misfortune is that its stock is shopworn. The cynical gold-digger has gone out of fashion lately, and the photoplay suffers the ills of obsolescence. The humor is improved by Hugh Herbert and Robert Armstrong, while Osgood Perkins is attractively loony as a treacherous French detective. But Kansas City Princess is muscular, loud and frantic, rather than impressively hilarious, and even for farce it never makes a great deal of sense."[5]

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References
  1. "Kansas City Princess". Moviefone. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  2. "The Kansas City Princess (1934)". British Film Institute. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  3. "The Kansas City Princess (1934)". All Movie. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  4. "The Kansas City Princess". American film Institute: catalog of feature films. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  5. SENWALD, ANDRE (November 5, 1934). "Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell in 'Kansas City Princess,' at the Roxy -- Other Films". The New York Times. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
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