hyped garbage

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

With gross rentals of $2 million, number 1 at U.S./Canadian ticket windows for 1937. The movie fared less spectacularly in Australia but still took great money, coming in at 20th place on the year's top box-office attractions. COMMENT: Ironically the first scene in which a double was required occurs right after Harlow's sick-room scene with Gable - a scene at the race-track with the double disguised by binoculars and then turning her back very obviously and very clumsily to the camera. Harlow had completed the long shot outside the box and this is used at the end of the scene. The following scene is entirely the double, this time disguised very awkwardly with a large floppy picture hat despite the fact that the scene takes place entirely indoors and talking on the telephone at that, in which wearing the picture hat seems even more contrived and unnatural. Then the ball-room scene, a very obvious use of the double with her back to the camera at the beginning and end of the scene. Fortunately, Harlow had completed the main portion of the dialogue, all occurring on the terrace outside the ball-room just before she died - is it imagination or does she really look strained? Then the final race scenes, again with the double with the binoculars in the box. Fortunately the final close-up of Harlow and Gable on the train had been shot some time before when the other train sequences were filmed.Conway directs throughout in his usual style, very long takes, good use of a moving camera, an occasional reaction shot insert but very little use of reverse angles. Conway must have been a hot favorite in the editor's department for there was very little the editor had to do other than to trim the slates and join one camera load of footage to another!Unfortunately the script is rubbish. Gable and Harlow do what they can with their junk one-dimensional characters; but Lionel Barrymore revels in this sort of garbage and so to a lesser extent do Una Merkel and to a lesser extent still, Frank Morgan. Cliff Edwards seems right at home too! Needless to say, Conway directs it all at his usual crackerjack speed!

Ordinary comedy would have been a cinematic footnote and a stop gap for Gable and Harlow before their next scheduled pairing on loan to Fox for the much more worthwhile In Old Chicago if not for Jean's sudden death. Instead it ended up becoming the second most profitable film of 1937 and a notorious cash grab for Metro. Not really a bad film but hardly the best film on any of the actors resumes. Other than the ghoulish, rather easy, game of spotting the scenes filmed after Jean's passing with a stand-in the film is packed with great character actors and actresses doing good work. Of particular note is Una Merkel, sassy and smart as an old crony of Gable's. Jean's part is one that's far away from her more famous early persona as a brassy good time girl but in line with the more refined lady-like roles Mayer was moving her towards after Irving Thalberg's death and which she had been transitioning to nicely. Considering the fact that it's an incomplete performance she is fine in her role, she looks weary and a bit bloated throughout not surprisingly since unbeknownst to all her kidneys were failing. Her death actually caused great upheaval in many films that were in development at the time changing the course of many careers. She and Gable were to head over to Fox for In Old Chicago which proved a boon to Alice Faye and Tyrone Power. For their services Shirley Temple was to be loaned to MGM for the Wizard of Oz, when that fell through of course Judy Garland was cast pulling her out and Ann Rutherford in to the small part of Carreen in GWTW. Also among many other planned projects Maisie, originally planned as an A production but moved to the B unit after the loss of Jean, was allocated to Ann Sothern so successfully that it started her on a series that ran, between other films, almost ten years.

With the really A-List cast, you want this movie to be better than it is. Yet is it better than you expect. Why is that? The cast as there is no doubt here about Gable in this one.Based on a play, this movie sold a lot of tickets in New York when it was released because of the time and generation it was released in, plus New York was the biggest market then. For the greatest generation, Horse Racing and Saratoga were magic. Every August, the old tradition still goes on today. But then, Saratoga was a pilgrimage every August for folks who loved racing.The old track there and the August meetings were a magic atmosphere. Ironically, Hollywood already had the tradition of filming in other places and creating their own world. Most of this film was not done in Saratoga. What was being sold was the most magical track to racing fans then, and this cast.Even though Harlow died during filming, having Clark Gable as a nice bookie at the old Saratoga Raceway sold a lot of tickets in the 1930's. Harlow's untimely death added to the box office too, sadly.

It's hard to work up any enthusiasm for this sort of comedy from MGM. With stars of the caliber of Gable and Harlow, one expects much more than a routine story of the jet set circa 1930s amid a horsey racetrack background.Furthermore, watching it with an awareness that Harlow was gravely ill during filming makes the comedy even less enjoyable than it's supposed to be. Her illness shows in more than the make-up needed to hide the shadows around her eyes. She seems to be forcing herself to go through with any sense of comic timing for the sake of getting through the filming of a very tedious comedy. A certain listlessness can be detected in many of her scenes. The use of a double is painfully obvious toward the last third of the film.Seldom is there any inkling of the comic skill Gable showed in films like IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT--and never is Jean Harlow anything less than remote and listless even in some of her best moments. The cigar smoking scene is the only highlight in this otherwise feeble comedy.Only bits of trivia awareness can heighten any interest in this one. Margaret Hamilton and Frank Morgan have a train scene that reminds us they were soon to be prominently featured in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Lionel Barrymore actually walks around without even a cane--and Walter Pigeon makes his MGM debut, giving perhaps the only reasonably faultless performance in a weak film.Summing up: Insignificant both as a comedy and as Jean Harlow's last film. Unfortunately, her bloated appearance and obvious signs of illness hang like a pall over most of the film.