FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

JohnHowardReid Although some DVD distributors obviously think otherwise, crime does necessarily induce a movie to fall into the category of film noir. Take "Girl Missing" (1933), for example. Here we have a delightful "B" outing in which fast-talking Glenda Farrell and super-luscious Mary Brian try to penetrate the disappearing act Peggy Shannon stages on her wedding night. All three women are most enticingly gowned by Orry-Kelly, while Arthur Todd's photography, as might be expected, tends to be appropriately light and bright. In the main, although director Robert Florey handles the movie with speed and efficiency, he tends to concentrate more on the players (Ben Lyon, Guy Kibbee, Harold Huber, Helen Ware, Edward Ellis, Walter Brennan and company) and their pungent dialogue than on either the on-screen crimes (murder and attempted murder) or the actual mystery. So, be warned! The situations in "Girl Missing" mainly serve to provide new twists in the plot. And that plot is mainly not what most customers would expect of a mystery thriller. Admittedly, there are a few thrills, but I would describe "Girl Missing" as mainly a comedy of manners.

HarlowMGM GIRL MISSING is a typical Warner Bros. programmer from the early thirties, a passable comedy murder mystery elevated to being fairly entertaining almost entirely due to the ever sensational Glenda Farrell in the starring role. Farrell and Mary Brian play Broadway chorines on the prowl in Florida; Brian has hooked lecherous old Guy Kibbee but she has yet to come across much to the old lech's disgruntlement, having set both (!!) girls up in a swanky hotel. Finally having enough of nothing, Kibbee skips town leaving them with a $700 hotel bill. To add injury to insult, the girls read in the paper a dreaded old chorus girl rival of theirs, Peggy Shannon, has hooked the rich young millionaire Ben Lyon.Broke and broken, the girls run into Shannon who haughtily denies knowing them. Fuming ever more, they sulk at the bar when who should they run into buy another old Broadway acquaintance, gigolo-conman Lyle Talbot, an old flame of Shannon's. Talbot sympathetically offers to pay the girls hotel bill and their fares back to New York and they take him up on his offer, but the next day Brian runs into the groom-to-be Lyon and develops a crush, which causes the girls to miss their train and have to stay over another few days.Lyon and Shannon elope and return to their hotel for the honeymoon, only to have Shannon mysteriously disappear that night. Lyon's announced reward of $25,000 for the location of his wife keeps the girls in town and Farrell in particular thinks Shannon and Talbot have cooked up a scheme together and is out to prove it.This movie only runs 69 minutes but it seems a little longer given we've seen all this before; of the cast only Glenda Farrell really gives it her all. Farrell dives into this little mystery like it's THE MALTESE FALCON and makes the film seem much better than it actually is. She alas receives very little help from Mary Brian, whose performance is astonishingly awkward considering how long she had been acting in films at this point, or even the usually reliable Ben Lyon, here in a rather milquetoast role to which he adds nothing. Lyle Talbot and Guy Kibbee have rather small parts despite their importance to the storyline; Peggy Shannon is not bad as the two-faced bride while Helen Ware and Ferdinand Gottshalk are very good as her bogus parents.This final paragraph is a spoiler that reveals the screenwriter is the one actually spoils the film. We know of course given how these stories go that (A) Shannon and Talbot are behind her "disappearance" and (B) "leads" Lyon and Brian will fall in love and live happily ever after. At the conclusion though when Shannon is at the police station and cornered, she comes up with a sensational story that her husband was behind her disappearance, that he could only get his inheritance by being married and then he drugged her and had her kidnapped. The film-goer has witnessed both Lyon's confession about the inheritance status and him giving her a presumed aspirin for a headache yet dismissed this, believing him the victim of the film and because of how this type of story always plays out in 1930's programmers one knows Shannon and Talbot are the bad guys and Lyon is the good guy by their screen personas. The screenwriter completely blew a chance to make a cutting edge mystery for the era by not making Shannon's tale in fact true - a supposedly "victim" double crossing the con artists who are out to trap him - instead the author passes it over for the conventional sappy wrap-up of the "good" couple walking off into the sunset together even if she is another golddigger herself and he, so supposedly worried about his missing bride yet still makes a breakfast date with Brian! 1930's audiences might have been pleased with this conventional ending but a true surprise ending with not only the Shannon/Talbot gang locked up but a devious heir Lyon as well and the jaded chorines Farrell and Brian off on the train to their next adventure would have packed a stronger punch and made this a vastly better film.

kidboots "For the G.D. Sisters - I don't know whether he means Gold Digger or that other well known word"!!!Directed by the very under rated Robert Florey using some quite unusual camera angles (overhead shot of gambling tables, camera shots from the floor ala "Citizen Kane"). Delectable Peggy Shannon may have been the "Girl Missing" and pretty Mary Brian may have been the chorus girl used as "beauty bait" but sizzling Glenda Farrell was sensational and just the whole show. Her rapid fire delivery of lines would have left James Cagney standing and proved she could have run the New York Police Department with one hand tied behind her back. "Listen you dumbbells - I'm running the show now"!!! Unfortunately the ending had simpering Mary Brian bagging the handsome millionaire while Glenda had to be content trading wisecracks with the Chief of Police - "Now Kay, don't get tough - I don't get tough, I am tough"!!! In one of her few starring roles and she still doesn't get her man!! "Snake-eyes!! Wouldn't that frost your grandmother's cake!!!""Working for a living's old fashioned"!! Kay Curtis (Glenda Farrell) and June Dale (Mary Brian) are two chorus girls left with an unpaid hotel bill of $700, thanks to June's irate "sugar daddy" who has left them high and dry. They run into a fellow chorine, "Dumb" Daisy (Peggy Shannon) who is looking distinctly up market, with her millionaire fiancée, Henry Gibson (Ben Lyon) and her "society parents" -"Daisy's folks - she can have them and they can have her"!!. Needless to say, she gives our gals the air - "He thinks she's first rate society instead of second row chorus"!!On her wedding night she goes "missing" and the hapless groom offers a reward of $25,000 to whoever can help solve the mystery. Kay, who thinks she can and wants the reward, rushes to Henry's hotel. He has already met June in the lift and you suddenly know who is going to end up with who!! - "He likes you, I'm only the stepchild - everything I do is wrong"!! Kay and June think they know who is behind the disappearance - Raymond Fox (Lyle Talbot) met them in the bar and seemed awful eager to have them leave town - even paying their hotel bill. He had once been close to Daisy and wants them to let her have a break (by marrying millionaire Henry). Kay knows the real Daisy and after saving Henry's life - his car wheel has been tampered with by Raymond's driver - convinces him to fake his death to the papers - "that'll bring Daisy back in the picture" - and it does!! It also exposes her "parents" as a couple of ham actors, hired along with Daisy to hook millionaire Henry (a plot device used the same year in Jean Harlow's "Bombshell"). It all finished, with plenty of pre-code humour and wisecracks, as Kay pulls a gun and gets confessions from the right people - much to the admiration of the Chief of Police. "Yeah and what did I get - Don't worry you've still got it coming"!!Peggy Shannon, after such a promising start in films ("The Secret Call") was now, due to temperament and alcohol, way down in the cast list, usually playing hard boiled chorus girls ("Girl - Missing" and "The Case of the Lucky Legs"(1935)). It was a sad end, eventually, to such a promising career.Highly Recommended.

Ron Oliver Two gold digging chorines think they can solve the mystery of a criminal's murder and a GIRL MISSING on her wedding night.Fast-moving & fun, this is another example of the comedy crime picture that Warner Brothers was so expert at producing. Casts & plots could be shuffled endlessly, with very predictable results. While this assembly line approach created few classics, audience enjoyment could usually be assured.Warners' wisecracking brassy blonde, Glenda Farrell, and pretty Mary Brian play the chorus girls stranded in Florida who must crack the homicide and kidnapping case in order to earn the sizable reward. They are both excellent in their roles, with sassy Farrell especially funny slinging her one-liners.Ben Lyon plays the newlywed husband with much unexpected trouble on his hands. Lyle Talbot appears as a successful New York gigolo gone adventuring to Miami. Little Ferdinand Gottschalk is the eccentric parent of the purloined bride and wonderful character actor Guy Kibbee enlivens his few scenes as an old lecher desperate to get his hands on Miss Brian.Movie mavens will recognize Louise Beavers as a maid & Walter Brennan as a garage attendant, both uncredited.