Kansas City Princess

Plot

Rosie Sturges (Joan Blondell) is a Kansas City manicurist, who has a gangster boyfriend name Dynamite Carson (Robert Armstrong). Rosie's friend Marie Callahan (Glenda Farrell) a fellow manicurist and roommate, urges Rosie to drop Dynamite and go after the three things a girl really needs "money, fur and diamonds". While Dynamite is away on business, Rosie goes on a date with a customer, Jimmy the Duke (Gordon Westcott) and he steals the diamond engagement ring Dynamite gave to Rosie.

Fearing Dynamite's anger, Rosie and Marie travel by train to New York and disguises themselves as Girl Scouts of America. In New York, Rosie and Marie meet two businessmen, Samuel Warren (Hobart Cavanaugh) and Jim Cameron (T. Roy Barnes) and follow them on board a ship bound for Paris. Rosie and Marie persuade the two men into paying for their ship fares and also buying them new clothes. Dynamite, who has followed the women to New York and on board the ship, is hiding in the stateroom of millionaire Junior Ashcraft (Hugh Herbert). Junior has hired detective Marcel Duryea (Osgood Perkins) to investigate his wife, who is having an affair in Paris with Dr. Sascha Pilnakoff (Ivan Lebedeff).

Rosie and Marie learn that a millionaire is on board the ship, and they pose as French manicurists to enter his room. When Dynamite exposes them, they fall into hysterics. Junior decides to give them a check to calm them down, and repay Samuel and Jim for the fare. In Paris, Marcel reports to Junior, and Rosie agrees to pose as Dr. Sascha's lover to make Junior's wife jealous. Marcel, who is in league with Junior's wife, double-crosses him. However, instead of his wife finding Rosie with Dr. Sascha, she finds Junior with Marie instead. Junior decides to get a divorce and marry Marie and Rosie promised Dynamite to return to Kansas City with him.

Cast

Production

The film was completed three months before its release, but Warner Bros. decided to delay the release of the film until after the birth of Joan Blondell's child, so that Blondell would not be off the screen for too long a period. Prior to release, the film was titled "Princess of Kansas City".

Reception

Andre Senwald of The New York Times writes in his movie review: "If you can imagine the Misses Blondell and Farrell as bogus girl Scouts you can imagine almost anything, a factor which should prove of considerable assistance at "Kansas City Princess". In the athletic farce at the Roxy these racy girls, the screen's foremost professors in the study of the female acquisitive instinct, are demonstrating the merry art of getting something for nothing. Like most of the product which wears the Warner Brothers trade-mark, this one is fast and lively even when it isn't funny. Its principal misfortune is that its stock is shopworn. The cynical gold-digger has gone out of fashion lately, and the photoplay suffers the ills of obsolescence.The humor is improved by Hugh Herbert and Robert Armstrong, while Osgood Perkins is attractively looney as a treacherous French detective. But "Kansas City Princess" is muscular, loud and frantic, rather than impressively hilarious, and even for farce it never makes a great deal of sense."