How to Be a Millionaire

How to Marry a Millionaire is a 1953 American romantic comedy film directed by Jean Negulesco and written and produced by Nunnally Johnson. The screenplay by Johnson was based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It (1930) by Zoe Akins and Loco (1946) by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert. The film stars Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall as three fashionable Manhattan models, along with David Wayne, Rory Calhoun, Cameron Mitchell, and William Powell as their wealthy marks. Produced and distributed by 20th Century-Fox, How to Marry a Millionaire was the studio's first film to be shot in the new CinemaScope widescreen sound process, although it was the second CinemaScope film released by Fox after the biblical epic film The Robe (also 1953). It was also the first color and CinemaScope film ever shown on prime-time network television (though panned-and-scanned) when it was presented as the first film on NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies on September 23, 1961. The soundtrack to How to Marry a Millionaire was released on CD by Film Score Monthly on March 15, 2001.