Rich Man, Poor Girl Reviews

All you have to know about this movie is contained in the title. Young is a wealthy young businessman who falls for Hussey, his executive secretary. She is part of a YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU family that includes Kibbee and Padden as her parents and Turner as her jitterbugging sister. Young is in love with Hussey, but she doesn't want to marry him until he sees the kind of family she's from (which is very close to the plot in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's play). Young decides that the only way to get Hussey is to prove his love and his ability to understand her background, so he moves in with the large family. Ayres does a neat bit as a middle-class young man and proves he is as adroit at comedy as he is at drama, something he'd already shown glimpses of in HOLIDAY. The picture concludes with Hussey and Young getting together and the wealthy man learning a great deal about how the other, poorer, half lives. This was a remake of a 1929 movie that had been directed by William DeMille, brother of Cecil. That one starred Conrad Nagel, Bessie Love, and Leila Hyams and was called THE IDLE RICH. The original title of this four-week wonder was "It's Now Or Never" but that was tossed aside in favor of the more on-the-nose name they gave it. It was Turner's best part after several bits, including the one she did as the "Kissing Bug" in LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY. The legend about Turner being discovered at the world-famous Schwab's Drug Store (now closed) is untrue. It was Hollywood Reporter owner Billy Wilkerson who found her at Currie's ice cream parlor across from Hollywood High School at Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Hussey was appearing in her third movie and would go on to get an Oscar nomination for her role as the hard-boiled photographer in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY two years later. Five years after that, she triumphed on Broadway in "State of the Union" but lost the movie role to Katharine Hepburn.