Marilyn Monroe and Betty Garble in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).

Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda, Three Coins in the Fountain) directed How to Marry a Millionaire, based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It (1930) by Zoe Akins and Loco (1946) by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert.  Adapted for the screen and produced by Nunnally Johnson, How to Marry a Millionaire stars Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable as three couturier models who lease a posh Sutton Place apartment in Manhattan in their search for eligible millionaires.  Along the way, they discover love, and perhaps their real fortunes, in the most unlikely fellows.  Filmed in CinemaScope and photographed by Joseph MacDonald (The Sand Pebbles), the film co-stars veteran actor and three-time Academy Award nominee William Powell (The Thin Man, My Man Godfrey, Life With Father) as J.D. Hanley, the millionaire who falls for Schatze Page (Bacall).  How to Marry a Millionaire also stars David Wayne as Freddie Denmark, the apartment owner on the run from the IRS because of overdue taxes, and Rory Calhoun as Eben Salem, who is not the millionaire Loco Dempsey (Grable) believes him to be.

20th Century-Fox wardrobe director Charles LeMaire, a 16-time Academy Award nominee and winner for All about Eve, The Robe and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and Travilla (William “Bill” Travilla), best known for designing Marilyn Monroe’s costumes, received an Academy Award nomination for Color Costume Design.

The print for this screening, recently restored by 20th Century Fox and added to the Academy Film Archive collection, begins with a six-minute sequence of composer Alfred Newman conducting the 20th Century-Fox Symphony Orchestra as it plays part of the score he wrote for Street Scene, the 1931 United Artists release.

20th Century-Fox. 1953. CinemaScope. 96 minutes.