whataboutbobbed
Film Forum’s 66 film – month long salute to ‘Hollywood’s Naughtiest, Bawdiest Year’ – 1933!!! continues…
Day 7’s two for – Jean Harlow’s Bombshell + Hold Your Man
Victor Fleming‘s Bombshell was apparently a satire about his former fiancée, ‘It girl’ Clara Bow, with Jean Harlow playing ‘If girl’ Lola Burns, a dame who seemed to be just as naughty and bawdy as Harlow herself! Regardless of whose life it was actually about, it’s one nutty and fun ride as Jean/Lola’s business and pleasure are endlessly mixed, with not all that much pleasure, and no help, and much harm by studio PR man Lee Tracy. The actual Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan, plays Lola’s father, and the only thing he’s a wizard of here is a wizard of drunkenness! One of my favorite parts of the film was when Lola had to return to the studio to do re-shoots for Red Dust, an actual film Harlow starred in a year earlier, and a film that I love love love! And you would too, both of thems!
Harlow needed no one to tell her to Hold Your Man, especially when her man was Clark Gable! This was the third of six screen pairings, which finds the two getting into trouble, and troubling love! Directed by Sam Wood, from a story AND screenplay by Anita Loos, the film lags in its first two acts, but hits the mark in the final act, when Harlow and Gable are separated when she’s sent off to a girl’s reformatory, but not even that can stop their love!!!!
1933 will never die!!