Kansas City Princess
Rosie and Marie are wisecracking Kansas City manicurists. Marie is an unabashed golddigger but Rosie would like to marry her gangster boyfriend Dynamite, who's given her an expensive ring. When she loses the ring, both friends have to flee Dynamite's wrath; their adventures include masquerading as girl scouts and taking an ocean voyage to Paris.
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- Cast:
- Joan Blondell , Glenda Farrell , Robert Armstrong , Hugh Herbert , Osgood Perkins , T. Roy Barnes , Hobart Cavanaugh
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Reviews
Waste of time
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
This is a screwball comedy with a plot that plays fast and loose with any semblance of credibility. It has Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, two manicurists, running away from Blondell's boyfriend (Robert Armstrong) because she was duped out of her engagement ring. It just happens to have been by one of his friends, and instead of explaining, the two masquerade as part of a girls club and hop on a train to New York, and then when still pursued, a boat to Paris. It's pretty zany, can you tell? Along the way, the amateur magicians they run into are fun to watch, but the millionaire played by Hugh Herbert is less so. It's not great but watchable, with some entertaining banter between Blondell, Farrell, and Armstrong.
Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell found enough roles between them as wisecracking dames who've been once around the track too often and have learned that they seemed at times to be in every Warner Brothers urban picture for a while in the early 30s. So no matter the quality of the film itself they're always fun to watch and more fun to listen.The two are like peas in a pod here, a pair of manicurists from Kansas City. One of them is engaged to gangster Robert Armstrong and the other still has oats to sow. But when Farrell loses the engagement ring, both manage to con their way to New York and then Paris. The girls do their manicuring thing on the ocean liner after they're caught without tickets. Armstrong too is resourceful and he hooks up with eccentric millionaire Hugh Herbert. That last sentence is a redundancy.No use to tell any more of the plot it's pretty fast moving, but also goes off in all directions and becomes incoherent at times. Note also the presence of Osgood Perkins as a phony French private eye. For fans of Blondell and Farrell, you folks should see Kansas City Princess.
Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell spout zippy dialog as a couple of manicurists moving up in the world in this very silly comedy.Robert Armstrong is Dynamite, a good-natured tough guy who wants to marry Blondell—who is keen on that idea despite Glenda's outspoken disapproval ("If you was the bearded lady in the circus, you'd still be too good for Dynamite"). All three end up on a boat bound for Paris, where Armstrong meets millionaire Hugh Herbert and quickly declares himself Herbert's bodyguard.The plot itself makes very little sense but is held together, more or less, by the personalities of the four stars, who seem determined to make it something fun, however thin the story. The dialog is certainly colorful—packed with phrases like "a low down mug" and "That guy getting fresh?"—and generally delivered as rapidly as humanly possible (especially by Blondell and Farrell, certainly a couple of Hollywood's all-time great fast talkers).Overall, it's not particularly memorable but very easy to take for the hour or so it lasts.
Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell play fast-talking, wise-cracking blondes, roles they often had because they did it so well. They wind up trying to escape from small-time hood Robert Armstrong, who believes Blondell gave her engagement ring to Gordon Westcott, who actually stole it from her. The chase is on when Westcott meets Armstrong and shows the ring to him. He steals it back again, but is furious enough to wring Blondell's neck if he catches up with her. The fun in the first part is all in the chase, with the girls staying one step ahead of Armstrong, first by donning scout uniforms to get on their convention train, and then by jumping into a cab already occupied by two aldermen going to Paris by ship. Armstrong flew to New York to get there ahead of the train and followed the cab, with all three boarding the ship. Before you know it, they are on their way to Paris, but broke. The girls use their wiles to get passage money, and Armstrong uses his gun to force millionaire Hugh Herbert to hire him as a bodyguard. Farrell is more the gold digger of the two, and when she hears a millionaire is on board, they pose as French manicurists to get into his room, where Armstrong is waiting, but more pacified. At this point, the focus of the film changes, much to its detriment. The three hatch a plan to get Herbert's wife, Renee Whitney, to stop fooling around with Ivan Lebedeff in Paris and come back to Herbert. The idea is to trap Lebedeff in a room with one of the girls, so that Whitney can see how unfaithful he is to her. It didn't quite work out that way, with Herbert in for a big surprise.The first half of the film was genuinely funny, with lots of quips and one-liners, including Farrell reminding Blondell that girls these days need three things - money, jack, and dough. The second half was more tedious than funny, and except, perhaps, for the surprise ending, was a waste of time.