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Created Mar 07, 2012 10:03PM PST • Edited Jun 05, 2014 02:02AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   How to Marry a Millionaire opens with a five minute bravura orchestral concert, which amazing though it is, is five minutes of men in tuxes when you’re expecting Marilyn Monroe.

   Then you get Lauren Bacall as the queen bee, the head girl, the model with a plan. And a luscious Marilyn. And Betty Grable and a series of second rate beaus.

   Three queens and those who would court them, you might say.

   The divine costumes show off the greatest sex symbol the silver screen has ever known, along with a never better Lauren Bacall and an adorably funny Betty Grable. It’s like a funny Fifties peep show.

   The jokes mostly clunk but the high concept is sumptuously mounted and perfectly delivered by the three Screen Queens, including Moviedom’s Prima Donna herself. That’s entertainment.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Lauren Bacall’s effortless moxie and willowy glamour show why Bogie was crazy about her.

   Marilyn Monroe’s effortless sexiness shows why she remains the screen’s greatest sex symbol. She also proves a deft comedienne, physical and otherwise, as her blind-as-a-bat character keeps bumping into walls.

   Betty Grable was a decade older than Monroe and Bacall, but still has a wonderful girl-next-door quality and those Million Dollar Legs, even if she’s less an actress than her costars. “I’m a song-and-dance girl. I can act enough to get by. But that’s the limit of my talents,” said she. She was right.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    The film suffers from a “Hey, let’s put on a show” quality. As one of the first CinemaScope pictures, it opens with a showy concert by the 20th Century Fox orchestra. Why? To demonstrate the great sound quality and widescreen image of CinemaScope. Whup-dee-do.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play OK 2.5

    Amongst the inside jokes, Lauren Bacall’s character says “I’ve always liked older men… Look at that old fellow what’s-his-name in The African Queen. Absolutely crazy about him.” She was referring to her real life husband, Humphrey Bogart.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.3

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Glib 1.4

24. Physical Natural 1.0