Convention City

At a raucous company convention in Atlantic City, salesmen T.R. Kent and George Ellerbe are both angling for a promotion while their romantic lives complicate every move. T.R. attempts to charm the boss's daughter, Claire, and runs into interference from jealous colleague Arlene Dale. George flirts with Nancy Lorraine, and sideplots of jealousy, mistaken intentions, and late-night trysts turn the convention into a maze of comic misbehavior. The film follows a chain of flirtations and schemes among employees and their guests, where business ambitions and private desires collide, setting up a chaotic decision about who will become the new sales manager without revealing how that choice is resolved.

Released in 1933 and directed by Archie Mayo, Convention City credits writers Robert Lord, Peter Milne, and Edward Chodorov. The ensemble cast features Joan Blondell, Adolphe Menjou, Dick Powell, Mary Astor, and Guy Kibbee. Contemporary studio publicity leaned on the star power and nightclub setting, but the movie is now considered a lost film.

No reliable box office numbers are available for Convention City, and surviving records don't give a clear sense of its theatrical run. Because prints no longer circulate and documentation is spotty, its original commercial impact is hard to reconstruct from studio ledgers or trade reports.

The movie is mainly remembered among historians for its risqué tone and status as an unavailable 1930s studio comedy, rather than for any single famous line or scene. Its absence from archives has made it a frequent example in discussions about early sound-era censorship and films that disappeared from circulation for decades.

Critical and popular evaluations are limited and mixed, with modern ratings based on very few opinions. The story leans on themes of sexual politics, ambition, and the collision of public reputation with private behavior, using farcical misunderstandings and nightlife settings to poke at the social rules of its moment.