There's No Business Like Men Business.

There was a time when "chick flicks" got studios so excited, they even allowed them to become the first movies to feature new technology. How to Marry a Millionaire was the first movie shot in the widescreen CinemaScope despite not featuring a single "epic" moment. 

This would've been the 1990s equivalent of allowing a Julia Roberts movie to be the first to be shot and projected digitally or the early 2000s equivalent of having the first 3D movie be a Nicholas Sparks adaptation (yes, I know...) so let's take a minute to celebrate a time when women sorta kinda-ish ruled the system.

Now, for my favorite shot...

How to Marry a Millioanire is extremely chick flick-y and you can certainly trace something like Sex and the City all the way back to it. Which is why, my favorite shot features the three protagonists literally becoming maneaters as they gulp down huge sausages. 

The sly shamelessness with which  Jean Negulesco shows us how these women defy all social norms and have come to own their sexuality is the more subversive because he sets this scene against a city backdrop and what are skyscrapers if not tributes to the male erection? Yet instead of turning the ominous structures into signs of peril, the film playfully suggests that all these men are only awaiting for these women to capture them. To top this joyful celebration of the women gulp down their hot dogs with champagne.

Truly, what's not to love?

This post is part of Nathaniel's Hit Me with Your Best Shot series.

How to Win a Best Actress Oscar:

Featuring Jane Wyman in "Johnny Belinda".


Play a character who has a disability.
Or better yet two.
Be kind to everyone and smile like a saint.

Have a baby out of wedlock.
Better yet if the baby was conceived from a violent, but secret rape from the town villain.

Go to trial for killing a man.
Even better if your disability makes it impossible for you to defend yourself and your life hangs by a thread throughout the film's last ten minutes.

It also helps if the actress has just undergone a personal tragedy of her own and needs to feel embraced by her peers (see Ronald Reagan divorce and death of infant daughter).

(Gotta love how Lars von Trier plays with this cliché concept in "Dancer in the Dark", the man's a genius...)