The Purchase Price is a 1932 pre-Code American romantic drama film directed by William Wellman and starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent and Lyle Talbot. Adapted from the novel The Mud Lark by Arthur Stringer, with a screenplay by Robert Lord, the film is about an attractive nightclub singer who leaves her criminal boyfriend and becomes the mail-order bride of a humble farmer.

Plot

Joan Gordon, a New York torch singer who has been performing since age 15, has left her wealthy criminal boyfriend Eddie Fields for upstanding citizen Don Leslie. However, when Don's father learns about her relationship with Eddie; she and Don cancel their engagement, and she leaves town rather than returning to Eddie. In Montreal, she changes her name and resumes performing, but one of Eddie's men soon recognizes her and informs his boss. Unwilling to return to him, she trades places with her hotel's maid Emily, who had used Joan's picture when corresponding with a North Dakota farmer in search of a mail-order bride. Offering the maid $100 for the farmer's address, Joan sets out to become the wife of Jim Gilson, with only a vague idea of all the hardships of farm life during the height of the Great Depression.