Pretty weak showcase for the star who manages to shine brightly despite the ordinariness of the script. The story is cliché and has been told with more imagination elsewhere.It helps that she is pitted against a top rank actor like Lionel Barrymore as her protagonist. Their flinty interchanges are some of the best scenes in this lackluster affair. The other standout in the cast is Patsy Kelly who makes a peach of a sidekick for the brassy Jean. Her easy virtue is used to counterpoint the heroine's chastity in a way that could get around the censors of the day. The actor who is out of place, although he fulfills his role adequately, is Franchot Tone. A fine actor in the right pictures, dramas such as Five Graves to Cairo and the like, Metro for some reason used him mostly as a colorless effete mannequin for their leading ladies. Jean and he are oil and water, she was always more comfortable with an earthy man like Gable or Spencer Tracy. One last thing, what a lousy title for any movie but for a Jean Harlow movie, ridiculous. For some reason the powers that be had a hard time coming up with an appropriate title. Shot under the title Eadie Was a Lady, then changed to 100% Pure then Born to Be Kissed and released in some areas under that title, while none of them is great any would have made more sense than the lemon they ended settling on.

Because the Hays Code was implemented during the production of this film, it has a bit of a contradictory plot - Harlow wants to have fun but she also insists that she has the highest morals. She and her friend Kitty (Patsy Kelly) have bolted Missouri for the East Coast where Eadie (Harlow) wants to hook a rich benefactor. She sets her eyes on the rich elder host of a party, Cousins (Lewis Stone) and he agrees to marry her. However, unbeknownst to Eadie, he has just been turned down for a large loan and will imminently kill himself. She then turns her attentions to TR Paige (Lionel Barrymore), a banking magnate, who isn't interested in her and can see through her games. His son TR Paige Jr. (Franchot Tone), is besotted with her and his dad thinks that if he gets burned by the money-grubber, he might learn something. Eadie shows herself to have a heart of gold and so the film doesn't turn out as the banking magnate might have foreseen it.Some great acting by Tone and Harlow steals every scene she is in. Barrymore is fantastic and effortless in his role. Kelly is very good as Eadie's frisky friend. An enjoyable way to spend 75 minutes.

If the themes of The Girl From Missouri sound familiar it should. That's because Anita Loos who wrote the screenplay here also wrote the classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Unlike Marilyn Monroe in that film, Jean Harlow will accept any kind of jewelry from men of means.And it's men of means that Jean Harlow is after. She leaves the road side hash house run by her mother and stepfather because she's decided that the best way to gain the easy life is to marry it. Her talents as a chorus girl are limited, but she'll be able to trade in on that beauty.Her odyssey starts with her and friend Patsy Kelly getting an invitation to perform at a party thrown by millionaire Lewis Stone. But unbeknownst to Jean, Stone's just having a wild last fling before doing himself because of the moneys he owes not owns. Still she wrangles a few baubles from him that fellow millionaire Lionel Barrymore notices. Lionel's amused by it until Jean sets her sights on his playboy son, Franchot Tone. After that he is not amused and he looks to shake Jean from climbing the family tree.The Girl From Missouri went into production mid adaption of The Code so it went under peculiar censorship. I've a feeling we would have seen a much more risqué film. Still Jean Harlow as a younger and sassier version of Mae West is always appreciated. What a great comic talent that woman had, seeing The Girl From Missouri is a sad reminder of the great loss the world of film sustained with her passing three years later.Ironically enough the casting of Patsy Kelly with Harlow was no doubt influenced by the successful shorts Kelly was making with another famous platinum blonde, Thelma Todd. Harlow and Kelly have the same easy chemistry between that Patsy had with Thelma. Todd would also die a year later in a freak accident/suicide/homicide that no satisfactory explanation has ever really been given. Don't miss The Girl From Missouri, it's bright and sassy, must be from all that sparkling jewelry.

In this film, made JUST as the production code was being enforced, Jean Harlow is Eadie, and Patsy Kelly is the wisecracking, man-chasing sidekick "Kitty". Girl from Missouri starts out with the girls getting on a train, with Eadie making a promise to herself to earn money while looking for a millionaire husband, staying whole-some in the process. It doesn't take her long to meet up with Frank Cousins, (Lewis Stone, was the kindly Doctor in Grand Hotel, as well as Judge Hardy in the "Andy Hardy" films.), but all is not as it seems...The censors must have LOVED Harlow's line "A girl couldn't accept an expensive gift like that from a gentleman unless she was engaged." Later, someone says "You know we've never been alone together" and Eadie replies "Yeah, and we're not going to be!" Lionel Barrymore is T.R. Paige, another rich, uppercrust who comes to her rescue when trouble comes looking for Eadie. At one point, Paige declares "You oughta scratch me off your list - I'm not a ladies man".... I wonder what that line would have been just a couple years earlier before the Hayes code came rolling into town. What was he really saying? Carol Tevis seems to be the high-pitched "Baby Talker" as listed in the credits on IMDb. Looks like she was only in showbiz from 1931 - 1939, with "Munchkin" in Wizard of Oz being the last part she played. Fun, cleancut romp as the girls chase men around the country. Look for Nat Pendleton as the lifeguard, who was an Olympic Wrestler 1920 (silver medal winner) turned film star (he was in many of the Dr. Kildares, and would appear in four of Harlow's films.) Mistaken identity, plot twists, a young Franchot Tone, love stories, even Jean Harlow in a bathing suit in "Palm Beach", although the outdoor scenes of downtown appear to be a backdrop.