Simple in conception, flexible in execution, the so-called “three girls movie” has long been a Hollywood staple. The “girls” are always young and beautiful, always pals but with slippery loyalties that come second to landing a man. The Greeks Had a Word for Them, directed by Lowell Sherman and released by Samuel Goldwyn in 1932, is a funny and bracingly cynical example, with three ex-chorus girls whose income consists of what they can extract from any rich man in arm’s reach. Goldwyn bought the rights to Zoë Akins’s hit play The Greeks Had a Word for It, “it” becoming “them” in a meek effort to clean up the joke. He signed Ina Claire with an offer to play wisecracking Schatze, while behind Claire’s back he tried and failed to get Jean Harlow. Goldwyn finally settled on Joan Blondell as Schatze; Madge Evans as serious and sincere Polaire; and Ina Claire as Jean, the most unscrupulous of the trio. Claire was furious at the double-cross, but she may have put the lesson to hilarious use in her work. Jean steals jewelry and men, downs her “drinkies” at a rate that could stupefy Nick Charles, and casually drops her cigarette on the floor of a highend speakeasy. At one point Jean sheds her evening dress to work her wiles naked under a fur coat. That dress was by Coco Chanel, costume designer for just three Goldwyn films before what she called Hollywood’s “sartorial anarchy” drove her back to Paris. Still, Chanel made the gold-diggers of Greeks uncommonly chic, even if they do wear diamonds in the daytime. Director Sherman also plays oily concert pianist Boris Feldman; great though he was in caddish roles, the typecasting helped drive Sherman to directing. Here, Sherman punctuates simple conversational set-ups with vigorous touches, like a pan across a bar and an ominous shot of an elevator’s descent. His talent was evident, but though he directed a version of another Akins play, 1933’s Morning Glory, and several hits after that, Lowell Sherman died of pneumonia in 1934.

Farran Smith Nehme