User reviews

This peculiar but interesting drama has Barbara Stanwyck as a weary nightclub torch singer with a "who cares?" attitude. To escape her underworld boyfriend, she decides to hide out in the bleak plains of North Dakota as a mail-order bride. As her shy farmer husband, the normally debonair George Brent is almost unrecognizable in a pair of overalls, but gives a sensitive characterization. The bulk of the plot follows the growing feeling between the reserved ‘country mouse' and the tough ‘city mouse', complicated by several villains. Tough guy director William Wellman keeps things moving at a clip, and uses his low budget wisely to stage several good set-pieces, including a drunken shivaree for the happy couple. In the supporting cast, Leila Bennett stands out as a plain-talking maid.

BARBARA STANWYCK is a city gal fed up with the sophisticated life of a nightclub singer and her lecherous boyfriend (LYLE TALBOT) and who sees an "escape" by fleeing to the country for a more bucolic existence and more wholesome environment. She gets more than she bargains for when her mail order husband turns out to be shy farmer (GEORGE BRENT), whom she at first repulses when he comes on too strong with his lovemaking and then spends the rest of the film trying to make it up to him.

The unusual domestic drama gives both Stanwyck and Brent offbeat roles which they handle beautifully. Brent is a surprising revelation as the shy, bumbling country guy with no understanding of Stanwyck's softer feelings and holding off loving her until the final reel, after the two of them have to save their crop of wheat from burning to the ground.

Only weak point in the story is the overdone nature of the wild party scene shortly after their wedding and Stanwyck's reaction to the crudeness of the country bumpkins. It seems a bit of a stretch to believe the way this scene unfolds.

But otherwise, an interesting look at Stanwyck who excels in showing both sides of her character--tough and tender--and Brent, who is usually the more debonair, sophisticated man showing us another side of his personality (and with some nice touches of humor too) as the shy groom. They both get excellent support from LYLE TALBOT as "the other man" in a rather thankless role that he makes believable.

Well worth watching and nicely directed by William Wellman.

The appeal of this somewhat run-of-the-mill film is Barbara Stanwyck in an early display of her mega-watt star power and her ability to turn mediocre material into something special.

Her character doesn't make much sense: a nightclub singer from the city who wants to get away from the bootlegger boyfriend hounding her and so agrees to an arranged marriage with a farmer up in the wilds of North Dakota! The bootlegger (played by Lyle Talbot) isn't threatening or abusive, so one wonders why Stanwyck needs to go to such great lengths to avoid him -- keep wondering, because the movie never explains it. But if you can swallow that, then you can easily swallow the fact that this urban good-time gal seems to know all about how to run a farm.

Which brings me back to Stanwyck. The movie's premise isn't remotely plausible, but Stanwyck somehow makes it so through the confidence of her performance. I really think she could make anything worth sitting through just for the pleasure of watching her.

The film does provide an interesting look at what farm life in the early days of the 1930s was like, a lifestyle I've only seen recreated in more modern-day movies.

Grade: B-

Of course this delicious tour-de-force is totally incredible... but WOW! You can't take your eyes off the screen in case Wellman gives his heroine whiplash as she moves from plushly-kept woman in Manhattan to mail-order farmer's bride in North Dakota. From take-out at Tiffany's to hauling coal nuggets 20 miles through a blizzard. From igniting the lust in men with her daring chanteusing to putting out the fire villains set to her and hubby George Brent's last-hope crop of wheat. All in just over 60 minutes!

This film deals with Stanwyck, who works as a singer in New York. She has been working the nightclub circuit since she was a teenager and is romantically involved with the leader of the underground crime world. Fixture of the pre-code world, Lyle Talbot, portrays the underground kingpin. Because breaking up with such a powerful man, like Talbot, may prove to be difficult, Stanwyck opts to escape to Montreal. In Montreal, she resumes her career under a new name. Stanwyck is spotted by one of Talbot's henchmen. In lieu of returning to Talbot, Stanwyck hatches a scheme with the maid at her apartment building. It seems that the maid has been corresponding with a North Dakota farmer, George Brent, who is looking for a mail order bride. In one of her letters, the maid mails Stanwyck's picture instead of her own, because she finds the youthful Stanwyck more attractive than herself. Sensing the perfect plan, Stanwyck offers to pay the maid two month's worth of wages if she can go to North Dakota in her place. The maid agrees.

Stanwyck and Brent marry and soon it's Stanwyck's turn to learn about life on a farm during the Great Depression. On their wedding night, Brent tries to make advances on new wife Stanwyck to consummate their relationship, but she turns him down and forces him to sleep elsewhere. I know they're married and all, but I don't blame her, she literally just met and married him that same day. I imagine however, that sex probably comes with the territory as a mail order bride. But I digress.

For most of the film, Brent is aloof to Stanwyck and keeps his distance. She genuinely begins to embrace life on the farm and learns how to sew, cook, clean, etc. She is friendly with the neighbors and even helps a neighbor who has recently given birth. Stanwyck helps out with the baby and even instructs a young Anne Shirley how she can help her mother who is recuperating from the birth.

The main conflict in the film, aside from Brent's unhappiness with Stanwyck, is that he is broke and will lose his farm if he cannot pay his back bills. His saving grace however is that he owns a strain of wheat that grows well and is of high quality. He's sure to sell his wheat if he grows and harvests it. Brent and Stanwyck are finally on the same page and work together to save the farm.

This was an okay film, definitely not among one of Stanwyck's best. It definitely doesn't rank up there with my favorite Stanwyck pre-code, Ladies They Talk About. She gives the part her all, even though the plot is somewhat absurd. Brent is just there. He doesn't do much except give Stanwyck the silent treatment. But then this strong silent type was probably Brent's interpretation of a farmer of Scandinavian ancestry living on the Great Plains.

There were definitely some pre-code elements in the film, like Stanwyck walking around the bedroom clad in only a short slip and knee high stockings. She also lays a negligee out on the bed for George Brent to see and get excited, but he's mad at Stanwyck, and won't take the bait.

Sometimes I think you just have to be in the mood for certain films. This may have been one of those times. "The Purchase Price" from 1932, largely thanks to Barbara Stanwyck, is actually a very sweet film.

Stanwyck plays Joan, a torch singer, unhappy with her present life and the racketeer, Eddie Fields (Lyle Talbot) with whom she's involved. When she finds out that someone has used her photo and sent it off to be a mail-order bride, Joan decides to show up in person and takes off. She ends up in farm country with Jim Gilson (George Brent) who's in debt up to his eyebrows. However, over the years, he has developed an excellent grain seed - if he can stave off the creditors until the next planting season, he'll be okay.

To Joan's credit, she settles in, determined to make him a good wife and to be a good neighbor, and she falls in love with Jim. When her ex-beau shows up, Jim jumps to some wrong conclusions.

Barbara Stanwyck is great in this, giving a warm, sincere performance. She is glamorous in the first few scenes (though boy, she can't sing), and she remains sexy and pretty even plainly dressed on the farm, causing a lot of men to notice her and make dumb old Jim jealous. This is a different kind of role for George Brent, who soon would be well-dressed, mustached, and sophisticated as he played opposite Bette Davis. Here he's an oaf.

The movie is short and moves quickly. Stanwyck's performance helps give a freshness to a story that was old even back in 1932.

After paying THE PURCHASE PRICE for his mail-order bride, a lonely wheat farmer gets more than he bargained for.

Barbara Stanwyck is first-rate, as always, in this pre-Code drama, as a nightclub chanteuse who leaves her East Coast entanglements behind and escapes to the Great Plains and marriage with a stranger. The story is completely inconsequential, but Stanwyck never fails to entertain. Whether she's crooning a sultry song, busheling wheat or jumping into a barroom fight, she's always believable.

George Brent effectively submerges his usually sophisticated mien to play the roughhewn farmer whose simple life and straightforward lovemaking is greatly complicated by Stanwyck's arrival. Brent' s evenhanded performance provides a fine counterpoint to her slightly more flamboyant portrayal.

Lyle Talbot appears as Stanwyck's wealthy former lover who follows her out from New York; David Landau is the rich Dakota landowner who tries to destroy Brent's farm; Hardie Albright as an immature playboy & Leila Bennett as a Montreal hotel maid each make the most of their short appearances.

Movie mavens will recognize brassy Mae Busch (veteran of many a Laurel & Hardy comedy) as the noisy dame seated next to Stanwyck on the train; sour faced Clarence Wilson as a grumpy Justice of the Peace; and young Anne Shirley as the poor farm girl with the new baby brother--all uncredited.

The film does a grave disservice to the good people of North Dakota, making them appear, almost without exception, as drunken louts, imbeciles or scoundrels. Was this really necessary?

THE PURCHASE PRICE is one of ten films Barbara Stanwyck for Warner Bros. in the early 1930's when she was under non-exclusive contracts to the studio and Columbia Pictures. The Columbia films are often quite good, several of them directed by Frank Capra, but most of the Warner Bros. she made in this period are little more than potboilers, films rarely running over 70 minutes with few ambitions. This title is among Stanwyck's weakest films although it is raised immensely by a typically fine Stanwyck performance making it much more interesting and appealing than it should be.

Stanwyck stars as Joan Gordon, a sexy nightclub torch singer who is the mistress of married bootlegger Lyle Talbot. This duo apparently have quite an open relationship as Talbot isn't too bothered by the fact that Stanwyck is also seeing society boy Hardie Albright who wants to marry her. When Albright finds out about Stanwyck's relationship with Talbot he dumps her, crushing Barbara's dream of a quiet life as somebody's wife. Wanting to get away from Talbot's lair, she skittles to Montreal and begins performing under a new name. While in Canada, she befriends hotel maid Leia Bennett whom she later learns is about to become a "mail order bride" - and has used Stanwyck's picture to net her fiancée! When Stanwyck sees some of Talbot's associates she knows it's only a matter of time before he comes up to Canada to get her so she offers Bennett $100 in exchange for letting her take her place as the wife-to-be ("Wow, a $100" Leia exclaims, "I can get a city husband for that!") Stanwyck then travels to North Dakota to meet "her" groom, poor farmer George Brent. They are married but the wedding night proves to be a disaster with Barbara brushing off George's crude attempt at love making. Infuriated, Brent refuses to have anything to do with after this on a personal level, Stanwyck simply becomes a wife on all levels except romantically.

This little film moves quickly and is entertaining but incredibility is all over the film. One little forgotten tidbit is that while Leia Bennett passed off Stanwyck's photo as her own she apparently used her own name but Barbara uses her real name of Joan while in North Dakota! And just why Stanwyck would so harshly reject Brent after no doubt having been pawed by scores of men far more rougher and less attractive? It makes about as much sense as Brent's willful refusal to forgive her for this one night of rejection (wouldn't many a man in this era have found a new bride less than at ease their first night together?) when it's clear she soon wants to make amends. There's also the little fact that Stanwyck is portrayed as a straight shooter, early in the film she insists to Albright she would have told him about Talbot - yet she doesn't give Brent a clue about the relationship or her past until Talbot shows up unannounced sometime into their marriage!

Barbara Stanwyck fully earns her reputation as an outstanding actress, she always seems sincere and real even in this silly little story. She's also stunningly beautiful in scenes where she is presented "naturally" without city artifice and heavy makeup. The big surprise for me was George Brent's excellent performance. Not known for being one of the more expressive of actors, Brent seems perfectly cast as the inexpressive, reserved farmer and was seldom more attractive (although being cast as about the only non-coarse hick caricature among the North Dakotans perhaps helps). He is terrific here and I can't remember him giving a better film performance. Lyle Talbot is also very good looking and so good-natured one has to wonder just why Stanwyck keeps running away from him unless she really DOES want to be just a typical housewife. Most of the supporting roles are fairly small and in bits one can see silent favorites Snub Pollard (as one of the locals) and Mae Busch (as an earthy blonde on the train with Stanwyck also in route to her mail-order man).

This is sold as "pre-Code," as if there will something risqué or shocking, but certainly by today's standards -- or lack thereof -- and even by those of the era, there is nothing to bother your grandma or even your (reasonable) preacher.

There is something, though, to excite the movie-lover: Barbara Stanwyck's performance.

Apparently in real life she was a pretty tough cookie, and certainly she played some hard women in many of her films.

In "The Purchase Price" her character refers to herself as having maintained some sort of a reputation and in fact she comes across as a very nice, even admirable person.

She certainly looked good, with a gentle strength, or strong gentleness, poking out of the chorus girl/mistress persona.

The story, though, never does make much sense, and why the people did what they did, except for the character played by Lyle Talbot -- in a great role for him, and excellently played -- is not clear.

One more glaring error: North (brrrr) Dakota doesn't have any hills, and the shots of snow-capped peaks showed that wherever this film was shot, it sure wasn't North (brrrr) Dakota, you betcha.

One scene of plowing showed the genuine agoraphobic look of that state, where neither hills nor even trees are native. Except for cottonwoods along the creeks and rivers, what trees there are in North (brrrr) Dakota have had to be brought in from the real world.

Plus North (brrrrr) Dakota drunks and brawlers are not Irish and Scots, as this movie implies, but Poles and Czechs and Germans, sometimes even Norwegians, unless they are Lutherans then, of course, they don't drink or brawl. And if you don't believe me, ask their preachers.

Anyway, watch this for Stanwyck and suspend your disbelief about all the rest. She is worth spending your time.

If you stop to think about the actual story you'll realise that it's the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen. Fortunately William Wellman directs this at such breakneck speed you don't have time to stop - you're whisked along on the Wellman express.

That all this can happen in 68 minutes is crazy but this was Warner's specialty in the early thirties. They were brilliant at it and this is a great example. It's not a fantastic picture but it is so typical of those fast moving features of pure entertainment Darryl Zanuck knew his audiences would lap up. If good quality early thirties movies are your thing, this will tick your boxes. Even though the setting isn't the usual mean streets of New York, it's still got all the usual ingredients.

A common ingredient of pre-code films that's present in this is the overriding importance of marriage. Although in pictures like this it's the single most vital thing in the world for a girl - which must have reflected reality, it seems completely unimportant who they marry as long as they can provide food and shelter. It's irrelevant whether he's a gangster, a decrepit pensioner or in this case, a complete stranger who advertised for a wife (essentially a housekeeper) in an agency. Disturbingly, mail order brides are still around today. Anyway...

One of those other usual key ingredients is George Brent. He's his usual dull self but for a change, that bland personality is suited to this role. Fortunately 'the other man' in the love triangle is Lyle Talbot who always adds some slightly shady charisma. These two however are definitely second fiddle to the absolute star of this picture, Barbara Stanwyck.

She effortlessly melds her gangster-moll persona to devoted farmer's wife as though it's the most transition in the world. Were this role be played by a lesser actress (and directly a lesser director) it could have been a joke picture because the premise is so stupid but she (and Wellman) make it seem completely believable and therefore thoroughly enjoyable.

As in all her thirties pictures (apart from the monstrous Stella Dallas) despite not having the classic Hollywood looks, she inexplicably oozes enough sex appeal to fuel the planet for a hundred years. She certainly had 'it.' This isn't one of her best films but it's still pretty decent - and she's absolutely lovely in it.

The Purchase Price is an entertaining , if hit-and-miss, potboiler directed by the always reliable William Wellman. It starts off deliciously with Barbara Stanwyck crooning torch songs (using her own voice), in a New York nightclub. When she is dumped by her Social Register fiancé (Hardie Albright) because of her underworld connections, she in turn dumps her own gangster boyfriend (Lyle Talbot in one of his better efforts), flees to Montreal where she attempts to start a new life under an assumed name, is almost tracked down by Talbot but escapes by switching identities with her hotel maid who has just negotiated a deal to be a mail order bride for a struggling wheat farmer (George Brent!) in North Dakota! At this point we are whisked to a dusty farmhouse in the Great Plains where Stanwyck resists the marital ardor of Brent while milking cows, cleaning house, and tending to needy neighbors in a most unconvincing and sudden transformation from pampered chantoozie to faux-earthy farm wife. The below-zero Dakota winters are poorly recreated but a certain crude and rowdy atmosphere is achieved by Wellman and his technical team.

She may be dressed down for the farm wife's part, but this is Stanwyck at her youthful loveliest. So, can Joan (Stanwyck) adjust to the rigors of rural life after the glamor of big city nightclubs. If you can buy her becoming a mail-order bride as an alternative, you might buy the rest. Seeing her city girl alone on the vast Canadian prairie, suitcase in hand, waiting for her intended, does present a stretch. Nonetheless, now she's got purpose in life, no longer just a meaningless rich man's ornament. I do wish Brent as her mail-order hubby showed a little charm, something that would help us believe she would stick with her new life. Instead, he's overly dour and insensitive, wanting to manhandle her on their wedding night. Getting the two in step with each other makes up the movie's main part.

The movie's quite good at showing the rigors of farm life—the primitive farm house, the constant grubby toil, the relative isolation. I expect Dust Bowl audiences could identify with these demanding aspects, especially when the bank threatens to repossess Jim's (Brent) farm. That Joan manages to stick it out and thrive suggests that behind city decadence lies a common humanity and hidden grit-- a good message for that time and maybe any.

Anyway, pre-Code doesn't disappoint as Stanwyck gets to show off fancy and not-so-fancy underwear. Then too, sleeping arrangements leave little in doubt. Note too, how little is done to prettify either the rough-hewn people or their lives, even though most are stereotypes. Also, I could have done without the barking idiot as comedy relief. All in all, this Warner Bros. antique (1933) remains a fairly interesting little programmer, with a humane underlying message.

Found on 'Forbidden Hollywood Part 3', this tale of mail order bride Barbara Stanwyck and her farmer husband George Brent meanders a bit but is a typical example of a pre-code drama. There is liquor, sex, semi-nudity, suggestions of slavery ... and that's just for starters.

Let down a bit by its weak ending and a lack of focus amongst its clichéd minor characters (all of which seem taken from the 'stereotypes manual'), 'The Purchase Price' stands as an OK film, but nothing special.

George Brent here plays something of a muttonhead who doesn't really deserve the luminous Stanwyck (who'd been in the chorus line before turning farmer's wife); but Stanwyck is very good and well worth watching.

This is a great film mainly because of the famous Director, William Wellman and the great acting of Barbara Stanwyck, (Joan Gordon) and George Brent, (Jim Gilson). Joan Gordon is a cabaret singer who is involved with a small town hood and racketeer named Eddie Fields, (Lyle Talbot) and Joan decides to answer an add for a mail order bride and she finds Jim Gilson, (George Brent) as a husband. They get married by a Justice of the Peace in a local town where Jim lives which is way out in the sticks of no where. Jim has a farm and lives in very rough conditions. Jim seems to have trouble trying to consummate his marriage and they both act like total stranger with each other and sleep in separate rooms. Howsever, Jim does make an occasional peek at Joan when she undresses for bed. There is many twists and turns in this film which will keep you glued to your seats to the very end of the film.

Barbara Stanwyck had me from the beginning, as she crooned "Take Me Away" so seductively in the movie's first scene, and she could do no wrong from then on. Those eyes, that voice. She's so beautiful, and so natural as an actor. She plays a nightclub singer who becomes a mail-order bride to a farmer (Jim Gilson) in the middle of nowhere after wanting to get away from city life. It all moves a little too quickly for her as she has a rapid civil ceremony practically after stepping off a long train ride, and that evening she rebuffs her new husband's advances. He's the sensitive sort and can't forget it, even after she comes around and makes it clear she wants to consummate their marriage, talking to him sweetly and sincerely, and later beckoning him with lingerie. The movie is not all that well regarded, but I found it sweet, and Stanwyck captivating.

The Purchase Price (1931)

There are two great actors here--Barbara Stanwyck of course, a great young star in the young talkie era, and George Brent is excellent in his steady, manly way, a good counterpoint to Stanwyck's lively edge. Then there is a clever twist of a plot, where one woman switches places with another, kind of (I'll let you find out how), and so the movie is a funny dramatic farce. It's quite funny in small ways all long, little excesses (the woman in their fancy coats pigging out in the train is a treasure).

Too bad the plot is so thin it couldn't be rescued.

What starts in New York and makes a pitstop in Montreal eventually ends up in North Dakota. (Maybe this is where Stanwyck got the idea that she liked doing westerns!) You might get tired of the hick clichés after awhile, but Stanwyck, of course, is no hick, and she more than anyone keeps it going through all the quacks and country idiosyncratic.

How then does a sophisticated and somewhat wayward city girl, a singer and philanderer, get along on a wheat farm in the hinterlands? You might only guess too easily.

Director William Wellman has to struggle a bit to make this one work, and he doesn't seem to have a feel for this kind of comedy (though he would later pull off "Nothing Sacred"). For one thing he leads Brent astray into an exaggerated type that doesn't suit him. The situation is practically a pre-screwball comedy with an unlikely couple at odds from the start, and some sexual tension turned to madcap comedy. It just isn't madcap enough--the weird location is meant to supply some of the absurdity. And the so-called tensions between Brent and his rivals (there are lots of them for the attractive Stanwyck, is seems) don't add up to much.

This one isn't much worth the trouble with so many fabulous Stanwyck dramas from this same period to go to first.

This old friend of mine is definitely a pre-code movie, with its hints of rape, a casual attitude towards marriage, and the drunken charivari that accompanies the unconsummated marriage. Barbara Stanwyck's past with gangster Lyle Talbot puts the kibosh on her upcoming marriage to Hardie Albright. She can't go back to being Talbot's mistress, so she heads up to the back end of nowhere: Canada. Even that isn't far away enough for Talbot not to have her spotted, so she flees as a mail-order bride to Canada's wheat belt, and George Brent with a perpetual head cold. But Brent is so casual and insistent, that she repulses him. Yet just as she can't go back to her old life, Miss Stanwyck comes to take an interest in Brent's work, the rough-hewn town, and eventually Brent himself.

Brent is not so good in his role, but Stanwyck really shines as a woman finally growing up. The charivari is amusingly done, and the hardscrabble life of a farmer is well indicated, with a slam-bang fire to end the proceedings. With a script that borrows liberally from THE WIND, Miss Stanwyck offers something thst Lillian Gish could not: the portrait of a woman who has lived as a sexual creature, but has tired of it.

After being successfully teamed in the first sound version of So Big, Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent made a follow up film The Purchase Price. With the spectacular climax of the wheat fire and the theme of rugged men and women lifting themselves up by the bootstraps, this could have been a minor league Edna Ferber novel in the vein of So Big.

Stanwyck mixes the right combination of toughness and vulnerability as a dance hall hostess who in pre-Code days is probably not above picking up a little rent money in the oldest way. She's the woman of small time crook Lyle Talbot, but wants out of that life and runs away and becomes a mail order bride in this case purchased by farmer George Brent.

Brent who is usually a dapper fellow on screen is doing something outside his box as the rugged wheat farmer. He and Stanwyck try to make a go of it, but they have to contend with lecherous older and more prosperous farmer David Landau and the reappearance of Talbot.

It's rugged country in North Dakota and it isn't always easy, but Stanwyck in one of her least glamorous roles gives a good account of herself. She and Brent as they grow on each other fall in love.

Barbara Stanwyck fans should be pleased.

Anybody watching this is obviously a fan of Stanwyck, George Brent, perhaps William Wellman, and undoubtedly '30s films. Even by the creaky standard of most early '30s films, this one is pretty bad. The storyline is so preposterous that you watch it, even accepting the conceit that the screenwriters are handing out, but still rolling you eyes at its ludicrousness. To escape her life as the moll of a cheap crook, Stanwyck on a whim decides to pay off a maid $1000 (in 1930s dollars, no less!) to switch places with her and become a mail order bride of a hick farmer in North Dakota. That is just the beginning of a storyline that you will not for a minute swallow the entire time you are watching the film. The conditions are appalling, her husband is surly, disrespectful, unloving, judgmental, unforgiving, and sneers at her for a year, but she continues to smile, and falls in love with him. As other reviewers have said, no way would she have moved to ND, no way would she choose this life with this man, no way would she accept continuous abuse when she was so independent a career woman already. I found it also one of the weaker Stanwyck performances, but that could be because the material forces her to act and feel a way that doesn't make any sense, especially for a strong, independent kind of woman that she is, inherently. George Brent is always serviceable, I've always had a soft spot for him, but in this movie he, too, has to act strangely hostile, and maintain that hostility throughout the entire film. Sets are cheap, you never believe it's really subzero weather. The only two decent set pieces are the train ride to ND, and the post-marriage shivaree. Only for die-hard classic movie fans, clearly.