Good Girls Go to Paris

Good Girls Go to Paris is a 1939 American romantic comedy film starring Melvyn Douglas and Joan Blondell. Plot Jenny Swanson is a waitress in a small college town whose dream is to go to Paris by any means necessary. She confides her plan for a little gold-digging and blackmail to Ronald "Ronnie" Brooke, a professor on exchange from England. Brooke tries to dissuade her, telling her that "good girls go to Paris, too." Her first attempt ends badly. Although she attracts rich Ted Dayton Jr., his father refuses to pay her off, insisting she back up her claim that she has a written marriage proposal. When she does not produce it, the father threatens her with the police, unless she agrees to leave town and never come back. She tells Brooke she had the letter in her purse, but at the last moment, could not bring herself to take it out. Brooke advises her to go home, then reveals that he is getting married in New York City and returning to England. Jenny starts to buy a ticket home, but then decides to go to New York instead. At the train station, she runs into Brooke and his fiancée's brother, Tom Brand. She and Tom become acquainted on the train. He likes her very much, even after she tells him all about her blackmail attempt. In New York City, he takes her to nightclub after nightclub. At one, she encounters Tom's mother Caroline, out with her boyfriend Paul Kingston. At another, she spots Sylvia Brand, Brooke's fiancée, dancing with medical student Dennis Jeffers, whom Sylvia has known since childhood. Jenny eavesdrops and learns that Sylvia is in love with Dennis, but fears being disinherited by her very wealthy grandfather Olaf if they married (Dennis is the son of the family butler). She also discovers that Tom owes $5000 in gambling debts to Mr. Schultz.