Girl Missing (1933)

When two ex-chorus girls are ditched by a sugar-daddy who got wise and left them with a $700 hotel bill to contend with, they soon find themselves embroiled in a kidnapping plot when a fellow gold-digger disappears while on her honeymoon.

See, after June Dale (Brian) refuses the sexual advances of her escort, she and her gal pal, Kay Curtis (Farrell), look to Daisy Bradford (Shannon), an old friend and former showgirl, too, for a handout to get them out of their current financial jam. But she refuses.

As to why, well, unlike Kay and June, Daisy has managed to snare herself a marriage proposal from millionaire playboy Henry Gibson (Lyon) through some dubious machinations. This might explain why Daisy denies ever knowing them, scoffs at the notion of ever being a showgirl, and claims to come from a good, well-to-do family.

Stuck and thus, Kay takes what little money they have left to the hotel casino, hoping for a miracle, but they walk out flat busted. Salvation comes when they run into Daisy’s ex-boyfriend, Raymond Fox (Talbot), who agrees to clean up their hotel bill on the condition they both leave town immediately -- he even pays for the train tickets.

Finding the notorious gigilo’s behavior rather odd, and anxious, the girls agree but wind up missing their train. They return to the hotel just in time for the Gibson honeymoon, but that night Daisy up and disappears without a trace. And on top of that, notorious con-man Jim Hendricks (Huber) is found stabbed to death on the hotel grounds.

Smelling a rat -- personified by Fox, who they find out secretly orchestrated Daisy's marriage by faking her socialite background, our heroines, while in pursuit of Gibson’s substantial reward for his new bride's safe return, soon uncover an inheritance grab and a conspiracy to commit even more murder…

I first “officially” discovered Glenda Farrell around 2012 when I caught a broadcast of Smart Blonde (1936), the first of the Torchy Blane films, where Farrell played the wise-cracking, hard-nosed reporter that would help inspire Siegel and Shuster’s Lois Lane.

I had seen her before in other things, but she never really registered -- except my first encounter with Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), where a teenaged me thought the motor-mouthed comedy-relief reporter was kind of annoying and drew way too much attention away from Fay Wray, Lionel Atwill, and the macabre elements that drew me to the film in the first place.

Well, turns out teenage me was an idiot. And an older me thinks Farrell is a highlight and the one who holds that movie together and makes it tick.

Ergo, Smart Blonde led me to the rest of the Torchy Blane movies, including Fly Away Baby (1937), The Adventurous Blonde (1937) and Torchy Gets Her Man (1938). There were eight total films in the series (-- nine if you count 1939s Playing with Dynamite, where Jane Wyman replaced Farrell as Torchy), which are all amazing and perfect vehicles for Farrell’s wise-ass joy de vivre.

And ever since, in my usual obsessive compulsive fashion, I went on a crash course on the life and times and film career of My Gal Glenda, making new discoveries as well as reevaluating films I’d already seen -- which, admittedly, wasn’t that many. (My loss.) And the more I dug, the more I fell in love with her.

A native of Enid, Oklahoma, the Farrell family migrated to San Diego, California, around 1910, where Glenda landed a spot in the Virginia Brissac Stock Company at the age of 11.

Glenda Farrell.

“I got this job doing the kid parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm -- I didn’t play Rebecca till I was 16 or 17, but I played Minnie Snelly and some of the other kid parts in it,” said Farrell (The Reminiscences of Glenda Farrell, Columbia Center for Oral History Collection, 1959). “There were a lot of those old plays they used to do in stock. It was a regular stationary company, a famous stock company in San Diego.”

In 1920, while dancing at a Naval benefit ball, she met Thomas Richards, a decorated World War I vet. They fell in love, got married, and had a son, Tommy. But the marriage didn’t last as Richards fell into a pit of depression and alcoholism that led to their eventual divorce.

Thus, by 1929, Farrell was a divorced single mother. “We were so poor that I was forced to make my baby’s diapers out of old flour sacks,” said Farrell (Classic Images, May, 1988). “But I hemmed them all by hand tenderly as if they had been of the finest materials, for my Tommy was the most welcome and looked-forward-to baby in the world.”

She ran into some luck landing a role in the play The Spider, when the lead actress dyed her hair black and got fired by an irate producer. Here, Glenda was promoted and went with the production when it moved to New York. More roles on the stage followed, including a critically acclaimed performance in On the Spot, where she was spotted by a talent scout for Warners, who cast Farrell to play the girlfriend of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s character in Little Caesar (1931).

“That was just accidental,” said Farrell (CCOHC, 1959). “Lila Lee was supposed to play [Olga Stassoff in] Little Caesar, and she got ill. I was doing some show, and someone approached me about it, and I went out and did the movie, then came back to New York … You see, I tried -- every agent tried to get me into pictures, but I never was a very pretty girl. I always had deep circles under my eyes, and lines down beside my mouth. I’d test, and they’d say, ‘You don’t photograph.’ So at the time they called me for Little Caesar, I thought, ‘Oh -- what’ll I use for a face?’”

Then, in 1932, Jack Warner signed Farrell to play the lead in the film version of Life Begins (1932) -- even though the Broadway show was a bona fide dud. Said Farrell (CCOHC, 1959), “It only ran five performances. We had quite a bit of rehearsal. Several talent scouts came to see me, because it was a very wonderful part, a flashy part and a great part. Warner Bros. suddenly bought it. Now, we only ran five days! But they bought it, and bought me with it, and that was the start of my picture career.”

After finishing the film, Farrell had planned to return to Broadway but Warners picked up the five-year option as part of her Life Begins contract. And the Brothers Warner quickly put the actor to work, taking supporting roles in Three on a Match (1932), The Match King (1932) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) opposite Paul Muni, which led to her role as reporter Florence Dempsey in Mystery of the Wax Museum -- a film she absolutely ran away with.

“Warner Bros. had a great system,” said Farrell (CCOHC, 1959). “They built actors up faster than any other studio. You became known, because they had you in so many that you became known very rapidly. I was just glad to do them. I liked working, and I just did it because they told me to. I went into every picture they gave me.”

After receiving good notices for her supporting roles, Jack Warner decided to finally reward his burgeoning starlet with her own starring vehicle. Thus, Robert Florey’s Girl Missing (1933) would be Glenda Farrell's first time at the top of the bill.

Of course, this snappy, wise-cracking tale full of pretzel-twists and unexpected turns was another spin on Avery Hopwood's play, The Gold Diggers (1919), where enterprising young ladies sink their hooks into a sugar-daddy, making them pay out the nose for the *ahem* ‘milk’ they expected to get for free; only here, there was no show to put on just money to be chiseled and, in this case, a mystery to be solved.

“Really, I’m not the least bit like the roles I play,” said Farrell (Classic Images, 1998). “In movies I’m usually cast as a wisecracking, gold-digging dame, you know. But actually I never wisecrack And as for gold-digging, I’ve never been able to wangle a thing. Everything I’ve ever had, I’ve worked for and paid myself.”

The Brothers Warner had a huge hit with The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) and had been spinning cash-ins ever since. Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) would hit theaters a couple of months after Girl Missing premiered, and Warners would continue making sequels and spin-offs mined from both veins of the same premise until these offshoots kinda collided with Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936).

The film was scripted by Carl Erickson and Don Mullaly, who also wrote Mystery of the Wax Museum, and they definitely scribbled to Farrell's strengths -- meaning her motor-mouth, acid-tongue, and the application of both to cut anyone around her off at the knees. But she never punched down, only up.

Meanwhile, behind the camera, after serving as an assistant to the likes King Vidor and Josef von Sternberg, Florey's first big break came when he co-directed and helped rein in the Marx Brothers on their first feature film, The Cocoanuts (1929).

Big things seemed to be in store for the fledgling director and, after a string of bizarrely avant-garde but well received shorts, Florey was Carl Laemmle Jr.'s original choice for Universal's adaptation of Frankenstein (1931), then slated to star Bela Lugosi.

However, Florey and Lugosi were soon bumped off the project for James Whale and Boris Karloff. Both were given Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) as a consolation prize.

Alas, Frankenstein appears to have been Florey's one big chance. Aside from a few standouts like The Woman in Red (1935) and The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), he mostly bounced around from studio to studio, working in the B-units. And speaking frankly, there isn't much to commend on his efforts in Girl Missing either; but luckily, his cast, led by Farrell, overcompensates for this pedestrian effort.

Teamed up with "the sweetest girl in pictures," Mary Brian had started in the silents, debuting as Wendy Darling in Peter Pan (1924), then made a successful transition to the talkies, and had recently completed Lewis Milestone's version of The Front Page (1931), where she played the jilted fiance of Pat O'Brien's Hildy Johnson.

Now partnered with Farrell, one should note that Girl Missing was one of the first films to feature two female leads in this kind of murder-comedy-romance-buddy picture, which came out about the same time Thelma Todd and Zazu Pitts were paired up in a series of shorts like Asleep with the Feet (1933) and One Track Minds (1933).

In the supporting cast, Guy Kibbee has a glorified cameo as the posh who sniffs out their scheme, turns the tables, and abandons our heroines with the check; an act that officially puts the plot proper in motion. Edward Ellis is also pretty great as the police inspector, who bears the brunt of Farrell's loquaciousness. Sharp eyes will recognize Ellis as the thin man from The Thin Man (1934). And Ben Lyon was a last second replacement for Walter Huston as the playboy.

Another highlight is Helen Ware and Ferdinand Gottschalk, who are hysterical as a couple of grifting fudds posing as the high society parents of the missing bride, who is played with much vice and venom by Peggy Shannon. And Lyle Talbot (another frequent co-star of Farrell's) plays the slimy cad Fox, whose fault all this is.

See, Fox and Daisy were in cahoots all along. The scheme was to conspire to get Daisy married to Gibson, then have her husband “disappear” -- permanently. Then, when he’s declared dead, Daisy would inherit his money and she and Fox would live happily ever after. That is, they would have before Kay and June got involved.

Things started to unravel when fellow con-man Hendricks sniffed out their plan, which is why Fox killed him in the hotel’s garden. This forced an audible, which led to Daisy’s faux disappearance instead -- all part of an attempt to frame Gibson for Hendricks’ murder.

Meanwhile, Kay and June team up with Gibson to find Daisy and claim that $25,000 in reward money. But along the way, June and Gibson obviously start to have feelings for each other. This is cemented when the girls save Gibson from a fatal car accident when they discover his automobile was sabotaged.

Here, Kay starts to piece it all together (-- well, she should, as she was an acquaintance of all the nefarious players involved), and suggests they pretend Gibson was killed in the wreck and see what happens.

Sure enough, when word gets out that her husband is dead, Daisy magically reappears, safe and sound, claiming Gibson had kidnapped her after she witnessed him killing Hendricks. 

This accusation, of course, quickly unravels when Gibson reveals himself. And as the scheme collapses completely -- but not without a fight, caught, the killers finally confess and are carted off to jail.

With that, Gibson gives Kay all the reward money because June won’t be needing it. You see, they have officially fallen in love and will soon be married. But! He has to divorce Daisy first, and to those ends jumps on the Reno Express with a promise to return, which brings us to…

Girl Missing was shot in 13 days with a budget of $107,000 under its original title, The Blue Moon Murder Case. (In reference to the Blue Moon Hotel, where the majority of the story takes place.) When it was released, The New York Times (April 1, 1933) called the film a near miss:

"The question of what happened to Peggy Shannon is worrying the principal characters in Girl Missing, but the routine and slow-paced quality of the production makes the problem less acute for its audiences. Hidden away in the picture is the material for a lively melodrama which never realizes its full possibilities. The resources that the Warners have summoned to the task of telling this story include a good deal of unintelligent dialogue, feeble direction and an unconvincing arrangement of the narrative.”

In Girl Missing, Farrell and Brian definitely have great chemistry together as they run circles around the cops, solve a murder, unravel the conspiracy, save the hero, and, most important of all, make some money. (And they both look positively gorgeous dudded-up in all those Orry-Kelly fashions.)

Now, there's also a great secret toy surprise to be found in this film, too, in the form of a then unknown actor playing a brief cameo as a bamboozled grease-monkey (-- pictured below), who loans out his “flivver” to our gal-pal-amateur sleuths, so they can catch up to Gibson before his own sabotaged car does him in.

(L-R) Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell in Kansas City Princess (1934).

And if nothing else, we should all be grateful because Girl Missing showed this kind of Two-GIrl, two-punch combo had box-office potential, setting a solid template for a series of films where Farrell was paired up with Joan Blondell, a national treasure, who provided the donner und blitzen for Havana Widows (1933), Kansas City Princess (1934), I’ve Got Your Number (1934), Traveling Saleslady (1935), Miss Pacific Fleet (1935) and We’re in the Money (1935) to mucho box-office success.

“Glenda Farrell is, at all times, very natural,” said Blondell (Hollywood Magazine, January, 1936). “She isn’t one bit camera-conscious. Doesn’t know a good angle from a bad one and works just as hard with her back to the camera as facing it. Her movements are always quick, her speech spontaneous. When she goes into a scene she never follows the script to the sacrifice of her naturalness. She acts just as she would if the same situation arose in her every-day life. In other words, she suits the part to her personality instead of trying to suit her personality to the script.”

Said Farrell (The New York Times, February 9, 1969), “We really were a big happy family at Warners. When I went out there to do Little Caesar in 1930, the talkies were still new. Not many actors could talk, so they shoved the ones who came from Broadway into everything. It all went so fast. I used to ask myself, ‘What set am I on today? What script am I supposed to be doing -- this one or this one?’ Up at five every morning, start work at a quarter of six, work till seven or eight at night. By the time you got home it was nine. Then you had to study your lines, have your dinner and bath and go to bed. You worked till midnight on Saturday. All I ever really wanted was a day off.”

All told, Girl Missing was a pretty good time -- not great, but pretty good, and it's fairly easy to see why it got made. As a showcase for Farrell it was a good dry run for what would come later with Blondell. And, well, we all have to start somewhere.

Originally posted on June 15, 2013, at Micro-Brewed Reviews. 

Girl Missing (1933) The Vitaphone Corporation :: Warner Bros. / P: Jack Warner / D: Robert Florey / W: Carl Erickson, Don Mullaly / C: Arthur L. Todd / E: Ralph Dawson / M: Bernhard Kaun / S: Glenda Farrell, Mary Brian, Ben Lyon, Lyle Talbot, Peggy Shannon, Edward Ellis, Guy Kibbee