Three Wise Girls

Provincial lemonade sales assistant Cassie (Jean Harlow) wants to get to the top. She moves in with her friend Gladys (Mae Clarke) in New York and hopes for a modelling career. Yet amorous entanglements and dependencies in this patriarchal society make life difficult for Cassie, Gladys and her roommate Dot (Marie Prevost). When Cassie tells them that she was fired for not giving in to her boss’s sexual advances, Dot ironically remarks that a woman in New York can’t have both: virtue and a well-paid job.
Made before the implementation of the restrictive Hays Code, THREE WISE GIRLS is akin to a genre painting and was the second and last film that Jean Harlow shot for Columbia following Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde (1931). Afterwards, MGM placed her under contract and turned her into a star.