How to Marry a Millionaire [Blu-ray]

Beautiful Restoration on DVD
This movie is half a century old and followed The Robe as the second Cinemascope feature. It's visually beautiful in the DVD widescreen version, evoking the thrill of first seeing Cinemascope in 1953 (which I'm old enough to remember). Though the story and humor are extremely dated and so many of its stars are now dead, the photography and sound are both so breathtakingly clear and beautiful, it makes one realize how advanced the technical side of filmmaking was that long ago. It's amazing how cinematographers of that day were able to adapt so quickly to the much wider screen and take full advantage of its sweep even during scenes filmed in close quarters, such as those on the airliner (which was a propeller plane, by the way). It's true that Lauren Bacall, though lovely in the film, looks much older than the "25" she's supposed to be. (I saw Ms. Bacall in person pitching her bio at a bookstore 45 years later and she looked un-surgically young and beautiful, so go...

classic Marilyn
HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE was the first non-musical comedy to be released in the CinemaScope ratio. The film was released in 1953, which proved to be Monroe's breakthrough, watershed year, with the success of MILLIONAIRE, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and NIAGARA cementing her place as one of the top box-office attractions of 1953.

MILLIONAIRE is one of Monroe's most delightful offerings. She plays the visually-challenged Pola, who, along with Chotzi (Lauren Bacall - KEY LARGO, THE BIG SLEEP) and 'Loco' (Betty Grable - MOTHER WORE TIGHTS) rents a Manhattan penthouse in the hopes of snagging rich husbands.

Of course, Fate often hands you things totally unexpected, and soon the girls realise that money can't be a substitute for happiness. There are plenty of pin-sharp observations about the opposite sex, a good 50-odd years before "Sex and the City" decided to make a whole TV show about women in the Big Apple.

Marilyn, Lauren and Betty make a colorful trio, and the CinemaSope...

Whimsical comedy starring 3 gorgeous gals
Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe star in a Broadway play adaptation, as three New York models who together rent a Sutton Place apartment in order to attract rich husbands. Their plan appears to go awry when after a few months they are forced to sell the furniture in the lavishly appointed pad for living expenses.

The girls fortunes appear to turn when Bacall meets elderly Texas cattle baron J.D. Hanley played by the debonair William Powell. Grable gets lured to Maine by wealthy but married Fred Clark but winds up falling for and marrying penniless forest ranger Rory Calhoun. The visually challenged but super sexy Monroe winds up on the wrong plane when going to meet her prospective beau in Atlantic City. She winds up enamored with and marrying tax cheat and previous owner of their apartment David Wayne, who is equally blind.

Throughout the film Bacall is pursued by a Tom Brookman played by Cameron Mitchell. She dismisses him as being a poor gas...

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