Three Broadway Girls (1932), originally released as The Greeks Had a Word for Them, is a sharp, pre‑Code gold‑digger comedy about three ex‑showgirls who share a penthouse and spend as much time double‑crossing each other as they do chasing rich men. Today, Three Broadway Girls full movie is a free classic movie and public domain movie, often circulated under both titles in varying print quality.
Movie Background Table
Movie Cast Table
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Ina Claire | Jean Lawrence |
| Joan Blondell | Schatzi (Schatze) Sutro |
| Madge Evans | Polaire Quinn |
| David Manners | Dey Emery |
| Lowell Sherman | Boris Feldman |
| Phillips Smalley | Justin Emery |
| Sidney Bracey | The waiter |
| Ward Bond | Taxi driver |
| Louise Beavers | Beautician (uncredited) |
| Wilson Benge | Bellings, the butler (uncredited) |
Full Plot Summary
Three of these glamorous former showgirls, Jean, Polaire, and Schatzi are attempting to make ends meet in the Depression era Manhattan. They combine their save to rent a luxurious penthouse apartment and pass themselves off as upper-end women, hoping that this will enable them to find rich boyfriends or preferably rich husbands. Under the same skin, though, each of the women, beneath the same address, has very different personality and agenda.
The most cynical and unscrupulous of the three is Jean Lawrence who has just returned to France after a disastrous engagement that left her penniless. She is not romantic and does not hide her treatment of men like marks. The kinder, the more honest of the two, is Polaire, who possesses the actual musical skill of a pianist, and who is a shyness which makes her less offensive to money. This is true of Schatzi, who is both fond and sarcastic; on the one hand, she likes luxury and sugary dots but on the other hand, she has a conscientious attitude to work.
Jean is annoyed to discover that while she was away, Schatzi has picked up an unseen older “Pops,” an elderly sugar daddy Jean had always hoped to snag for herself. Still, the three women keep up their pact to share opportunities and expenses, at least on the surface. One evening, they go out on the town with Polaire’s steady boyfriend, nice‑guy Dey Emery, and with celebrated concert pianist Boris Feldman, who has been lined up as Jean’s date.
In one of the nightclubs, Dey negotiates Jean with Boris, whom she initially thinks of as pompous and unimpressive. Boris is however fascinated by the coolness of Jean and makes the encounter an exercise in gambling, he writes the bet of 5,000 dollars on her saying that he can get her in love with him by the morning by merely playing the piano, and she must accept or lose the money. It is a conventional pre-Code coyness–a mixture of temptation and gamesmanship.
The group later moves to Boris’s stylish apartment for drinks and music. While Jean is being coy, Polaire, somewhat ignored, wanders to the piano and begins to play. Boris is instantly captivated—not by Jean, but by Polaire’s talent and quiet charm. He forgets the bet and Jean’s presence almost entirely, telling Polaire he can make her a concert sensation and offering to become her mentor. Dey, seeing Polaire and Boris bonding, quietly excuses himself, feeling suddenly like the odd man out.
Jean realizes that she is losing both the game and the man and adopts a new strategy. She feigns departure, but instead storms off her dress and puts on a coat and conceals herself in the bedroom of Boris until her opportunity arrives. Boris fails to open the door when Polaire runs back to the apartment with second thoughts, just to find out that he is in the bedroom with Jean. When Polaire gets home, Jean has already worked her way into the arms of Boris and stolen him right before her friend.
Over time, the women’s alliances and rivalries keep shifting. Boris becomes increasingly temperamental and self‑absorbed, and Jean grows bored, breaking things off with a shrug and the famous line that she “sleeps when she wants to,” even if it means missing his concert. Polaire, meanwhile, is injured in a car accident, and Dey—still caring for her—rushes to her hospital bedside when he learns the news, leading to their emotional reunion.
Later, we find Schatzi and Polaire sharing a fancy hotel suite, having moved up again in the world. Jean, never far from the action, phones to say she will drop by at three o’clock. Worried that Jean will see through their carefully constructed image, Polaire hires the hotel waiter to pose as their personal butler for a half hour, to make them seem even more established. Jean arrives, sees through the charade almost immediately, and mocks their pretensions. She may be broke again, but she still has the sharpest eye in the room.
Soon after, Dey calls Polaire to say that he and his wealthy banker father, Justin Emery, are coming over so his father can meet his fiancée. Polaire, excited and anxious, begs Jean to leave before they arrive. Jean flatly refuses. She subtly tries to plant reasons to return later, hiding her gloves under a pillow, but Polaire outsmarts her and makes sure she leaves with all her belongings so there is no excuse to “accidentally” drop in during the visit.
Not willing to give up, Jean shifts to a new scheme. She offers Polaire her expensive pearls as a “gift,” which Polaire refuses to accept, sensing a trap. Jean slips the pearls into Polaire’s coat pocket anyway. When Dey arrives to take Polaire to meet his father, Jean races ahead to the Emery home to play a different role: the wronged woman. There, she accuses Polaire of stealing her pearls, producing a story that casts herself as victim and Polaire as a thief.
Justin Emery believes Jean. Outraged at the supposed theft and scandal, he insists that Dey break off his engagement to Polaire immediately. At the same time, Justin, flattered and intrigued by Jean, becomes engaged to her himself, neatly demonstrating how quickly moneyed men in this world can be manipulated by appearance and performance. Jean has once again turned a friend’s happiness into her own temporary gain.
The last act of the story takes the rug out that Jean is on. The stage version or summary has Jean leaving Justin at the altar to flee with her girlfriends and three French aviators to Paris, whereas the movie dilutes or reinvents the conclusion. Generally, however, Polaire and Schatzi are reunited, older, more mature, and more alive, and the eternal machinations of Jean leave her without a really safe, or earnest, relationship, yet without being ever really put in an unrefined sense in the dock.
In the whole film, Three Broadway Girls maintains its main theme of the three women and their relationships of friendship, jealousy, fidelity, and betrayal as a whirlwind. Men are rewards, challenges, and fools at times but the real emotion is in the way the women treat one another as they ascend.
Genre and Key Themes
Three Broadway Girls is a pre‑Code romantic comedy with a strong “gold‑digger” and buddy‑picture streak. It mixes witty dialogue, nightclub settings, and frank talk about money and sex in a way that would be toned down after the Production Code was enforced.
Key themes include:
- Money, class, and performance
The women rent a penthouse and play at being rich to attract real wealth, underlining how much of social status is costume and staging. - Female friendship vs. competition
Jean, Polaire, and Schatzi are genuine pals but also rivals. Loyalty regularly gives way to self‑interest when a prime “catch” appears, yet they keep drifting back to each other. - Romance as transaction
The film is frank that these relationships are often about security and luxury as much as (or more than) love. Bets, sugar daddies, and strategic affairs drive the plot. - Pre‑Code female agency
Unlike later sanitized comedies, these women are allowed to be openly ambitious, sexual, and morally flexible without the story forcing a heavy‑handed punishment on them. - Influence on later films
The structure—a trio of pretty schemers chasing millionaires—directly inspired Three Blind Mice, Moon Over Miami, and How to Marry a Millionaire, making this an important ancestor of the “rich husband hunt” subgenre.
Three Broadway Girls (1932)Full Movie Watch and Download
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Movie Review
Three Broadway Girls (The Greeks Had a Word for Them) can be supported as an energetic, even scathing representation of pre-Code Hollywood. The promanu Ina Claire, who is a member of the stage, portrays Jean in the exquisite, feline accuracy: she is witty, ruthless and has never been behind until she was. Joan Blondell is warm, sarcastic, and full of working-girl vitality in her role as Schatzi which snatches scenes through her timing and takes the edge off some cynicism in the story with sincerity. The simplest to sympathize with, and therefore providing the film some emotional weight to the woods of intrigues, is Polaire of Madge Evans.
Director Lowell Sherman maintains a light and light-hearted tone, with a lot of verbal juttiness, cocktail-party set-ups, bedroom-door allusion rather than general slapstick. It is fast-paced, which is characteristic of the early-30s comedies, and the movie does not stay too long with a single man or a single set-up before another loyalty change.
Modern and contemporary critics can point out that the movie is acetic in its perception of relationships: there are no one hundred percent innocent people, and love is seldom seen without a price tag. This disposition is one of its appeals to pre-Code enthusiasts, but anyone who looks to the movie to get a nice moral lesson or a strictly romantic reward might find it less sentimental than it is in later versions.
Being a public-domain film, Three Broadway Girls full movie has been “ripplied into oblivion, and this implies that a lot of the copies of the film online and on low-cost DVDs are scratched or improperly edited. But restorations and film festivals of The Greeks Had a Word for Them in its original title demonstrate that it can be made to look stylish and polished when made out of better material.
To any person with an interest in pre-Code movies, or the origins of How to Marry a Millionaire, Three Broadway Girls 1932 film is a historical treasure and also a movie worth viewing, and not necessarily due to its elaborate love-hunt machinations of the female characters, but also because of all the snappy lines that the women say to each other.
Movie Tags
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