Meet the Girls
Cast & Crew
Eugene Forde
June Lang
Lynn Bari
Robert Allen
Ruth Donnelly
Gene Lockhart
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
At the Goldfish Club in Honolulu, Judy Davis and Terry Wilson, who appear through an optical illusion as mermaids in a fishbowl, are fired after they slug Karl Fletcher, a very intoxicated patron, who chases them. Because they have only enough money to return to the mainland in tourist cabins, Terry, who wants to travel first-class, enters a crap game, despite Judy's misgivings. After sailor Delbert Jones wins all of their money, Maurice Leon, a shady character, tries to talk them into helping him steal one of the world's most valuable diamonds from a passenger on the boat, Daisy Watson, whose husband Homer, is one of the richest men in the world. The next day, at the dock, the hungry girls follow plates of food into a cabin where a party is going on. Judy becomes intoxicated, and Terry, with money she has received from the drunken Fletcher for giving him directions to his room, enters a dice game, but loses again to Delbert. The next day, the captain, finding that the girls have no tickets, orders them to work. As Judy makes the bed of Charles Tucker, Daisy's swimming instructor, he tries to flirt with her. Just then, the matronly Daisy knocks, so Tucker, who had a romantic evening with Daisy before the trip, puts Judy into the closet. Daisy, however, finds her and suspects that she wants to blackmail her about her romance with Tucker. After Leon steals the diamond from Daisy's cabin, Judy tells the captain about Leon's plan. The captain interrogates Leon and Daisy, but Daisy denies that the diamond has been stolen. Daisy then secretly offers the girls $5,000 to retrieve the diamond, and Leon threatens to throw them overboard if they don't carry the diamond into the United States for him. Terry plans to hide the diamond in Leon's cabin, tell Daisy and then collect the $5,000 when Leon is caught. When the girls go to Leon's cabin, Brady, one of the ship's men, sees them, but, before he can take them to the captain, Tiny, Leon's huge valet, throws him overboard. The girls try to tell their story to the captain, but he does not believe them, and Brady, now in the hospital, does not remember what happened to him. Terry then decides to tell Homer, a hypochondriac, but finds him under quarantine for the mumps. She brings Homer a number of books with titles such as "Think Yourself Well" and "You Can Conquer Sickness" and soon sees him on deck in fine spirits thanks to the books. She makes a date to talk to him in fifteen minutes, but Daisy has books sent to him with titles such as "Perils of Bacteria" and "Contagious Diseases," and Terry and Judy find him in bed convinced that he has "yellow jack." Next, the girls plan to go to the captain's masquerade and to get Delbert to plant the diamond in Leon's cabin while Leon is at the ball. When Delbert is thrown down by Tiny, the girls see Leon make Tiny stop by tickling him. Terry then plans to plant the diamond on Leon during the dance and to have Homer find it on Leon. Judy convinces Homer, who suspects that another man is involved with Daisy, that Daisy wants a master, not a man who is always sick. On the way to the ball, Homer is attacked by Tiny, but Judy tickles him, and Homer knocks Tiny out. Terry slips the diamond into a drink and switches glasses with Leon; however, Leon sees her and switches them back. When Tucker sees Homer approach with a knife, he nervously drinks Terry's drink and swallows the diamond. Leon then gets Tiny to hold Tucker upside-down to shake the diamond out of him. The captain arrests Leon for assault and battery, and when Homer hears Tucker call Daisy an "old warhorse," he drags Tucker to a doctor with a stomach pump. At the dock in San Francisco, Daisy and Homer plan a second honeymoon. Terry, with the $5,000 reward money, heads off to spend it, and Delbert, with a bandaged eye, hobbles in pursuit with a pair of dice.
Director
Eugene Forde
Cast
June Lang
Lynn Bari
Robert Allen
Ruth Donnelly
Gene Lockhart
Wally Vernon
Erik Rhodes
Constantine Romanoff
Jack Norton
Emmett Vogan
Paul Mcvey
Harlan Briggs
William Wagner
Billy Newell
James B. Carson
Bruce Warren
Allen Fox
Fred Kohler Jr.
Arthur Rankin
Milton Kibbee
Jack Richardson
Stanley Mack
Harry Strang
Lester Dorr
Sherry Hall
Alan Davis
Harry Hayden
Jack Gargan
Robert Emmett Keane
Billy Bevan
Creighton Hale
June Wilkins
Larry Dodds
Dick Elliott
Tom O'grady
Crew
Fred Allen
William H. Anderson
George P. Costello
Haldane Douglas
Howard J. Green
Herschel
Bernard Herzbrun
Samuel Kaylin
Thomas Little
Marguerite Roberts
Edward Snyder
Saul Wurtzel
Sol M. Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This was to be the first of "The Big Town Girls" series; however, only one additional film, Pardon Our Nerve, was produced featuring the characters of "Judy Davis" and "Terry Wilson." In her tentative story outline dated April 8, 1938, in the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, Marguerite Roberts, creator of the proposed series, explained its concept: "This is the story of two modern girls. Born to families without a nickel and thrown on the world to make their own way, they've had too much spunk to settle down to hum drum jobs and wait for the boy in the next block to finally get around to proposing. They're adventuresome and resourceful. It's their habit to take the map, pick out a likely-looking spot and get down to work at almost anything to save enough money to get there. Once they arrive at the likely-looking spot they usually find it's a bit like the place they just left and they promptly get out the map again and figure out the next jump. They're determined to see what there is to see and do what there is to do. At times their activities border dangerously on racketeering, but they always manage to keep their noses clean. Fairly clean, anyway." Daily Variety called this film an "auspicious landing" of the series and stated that it was aimed primarily at the "neighborhood trade." The idea of the series, according to Daily Variety, was to put the two protagonists, one wise-cracking, assured and resourceful, and the other pretty and dumb, "constantly behind the eight-ball," and they were to have no particular romantic involvements. Claire Trevor was originally scheduled to be one of the stars of the series. Early Hollywood Reporter production charts list H. Bruce Humberstone as director and Dick Baldwin as a leading player. It is not known if these listings are erroneous or if Humberstone and Baldwin were replaced during the production.
