Kay (Glenda Farrell) and June (Mary Brian) have gotten away from the chorus line in New York and are living it up in a posh Palm Beach hotel, but the price is leading on elderly wealthy Kenneth Van Deusen (Guy Kibbee), and hoping he will just continue to be led with no sexual payoff. He gets tired of the routine and leaves the girls owing a 700 hotel bill. Their solution is to find another wealthy guy, but this time the guy (Ben Lyon as Henry Gibson) is engaged. And he is engaged to somebody they both knew in the chorus line (Peggy Shannon as Daisy), but who snubs them by saying she doesn't know them. The girls have their problems solved when an old friend (Lyle Talbot as Raymond Fox) offers not only to pay their hotel bill but pay their train fare back to New York. When Kay and June miss their train and have to stay an extra night, they hear on the radio the next morning that newlywed Daisy is a "girl missing". Gibson, her new husband, is offering 25000 as a reward for returning her, and Kay and June decide to stick around and solve the mystery. There is a car chase along a seacoast highway, a dead body found on a bench, and a note with a dagger through it saying "you are next". This thing is pure rat a tat action and precode one liners , largely powered by brassy Glenda Farrell who really carries the weight of the energy of this thing. Kibbee is great in his small role as the frustrated wannabe lover. Edward Ellis is memorable as the very skeptical police inspector. Watch this one if you are in the mood for some precode goodness Warner Brothers style.

Instead of the usual two guys as sleuth and sidekick, Girl Missing features two gals, blonde Kay (Farrell) and brunette June (Brian). I guess shaking a leg in a chorus line sharpened their Sherlock skills. Add mystery girl, Daisy (Shannon) and you've got lots of 1930's eye-candy along with the styles and fashions. Seems Daisy mysteriously disappears on her wedding night to a wealthy man, Gibson (Lyon). Her secret is she's a gold digger, but what good will disappearing do since how then can she collect. Thus the mystery begins.This is pre-Code Warner Bros., so how can you lose. Even programmers like this 69-minutes are full of snap and sass. As a brassy dame Farrell belongs up there with Blondell and Rogers. Here she's full of ideas and push, but cutie Brian gets the guys. Together there're a good team, causing me to wonder if WB had series in mind. There's also an unusual wind-up since there're two plausible solutions to the mystery, one implicating apparently nice guy and male lead, Gibson. And catch those rickety old flivvers rolling down the road. I'm surprised they ever held together. Also in passing, check out actress Shannon's bio in IMDb—it's on the tragic side, especially since she had the screen talent. Anyway, the movie's an entertaining way to pass on hour, without being anything special.

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.

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.