Para Amar e Ser Amada

Jean Harlow plays a streetwise dame who falls for charming con man Clark Gable. After Gable accidentally kills a guy, he takes off and leaves Harlow to take the rap. She winds up in a women's reformatory where she discovers she's pregnant. Mix of romantic comedy and drama helped a lot by the immense likability and sublime chemistry of its two leads. Harlow is terrific. One great scene has a floozy slapping Jean, only to get a punch in the kisser in return. The floozy tries it again later and gets the same results! Gable is as roguish as ever. It's hard to dislike him, even when he plays a cad. Love the girls at the reformatory. They're fun characters with some great lines. The sweet ending will please everybody but cynical types. Harlow fans should love this one.

I always loved Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, but not so much Jean Harlow. Me = dumb. I'd only seen clips of her films here and there. I always thought she was a hot one-liner, a glamour girl. But after seeing this, my first full length Jean Harlow experience, I admit that Miss Harlow was a truly great screen artist with the gift of creating rich characters. I simply fell in love with her, not because she was the first blonde bombshell or because she died young and became a legend. In this film, Miss Harlow's character is multi-dimensional beyond the traditional 1930's moll. She starts out one place and travels an arduous journey to end up on the other side of life. I loved her tough exterior. I loved her smile. I loved her song at the piano. My God, she was stupendous, she made me burst into tears when she sang her sad song. Most of all, I loved the HAPPY ENDING, Hollywood style. One other thing I was thrilled about was the African American inmate and her preacher father. Anita Loos was SO ahead of her time. She wrote 2 characters who were so lovely and so real. The inmate girl and her father brought such harmony to their scenes with all the white folk. A REVELATION for me. I hate stereotypes.

This pre-Code box office success pairs Clark Gable with Jean Harlow. Gable plays Eddie, a purveyor of the short con who, after taking advantage of his mark (or his women) quickly moves on. Harlow is Ruby, a platinum blond with common tastes who gets around and knows how to handle herself. She's the wiser of the two and she knows the odds are stacked against Eddie due to his criminal myopia.

After Eddie does a stint in jail, their relationship changes, but the consequences of past crimes derail the couple. Some reviewers have said that the film changes tone at this point and suffers from the change in focus. But this is when the viewer realizes this is Ruby's story. Eddie is the one who goes through the greatest transformation, but the tale is told from Ruby's point of view and we follow her ordeals.

Fortunately, Ms. Harlow is up to the challenge, delivering a touching performance that is multi-dimensional and deeply touching.

Hold Your Man (1933)

*** (out of 4)

MGM tearjerker has a couple con artists (Jean Harlow, Clark Gable) falling in love but after an accidental murder they're separated. Gable takes off and Harlow ends up in a reform school where she learns she's pregnant but fears that she'll never see her man again. I really wasn't sure where this thing was going as it blends a strange mix of comedy with drama but in the end I found it quite touching. The first half plays as a comedy and gets a lot of laughs including a hilarious scene where Gable tries hiding from the police by getting in a tub and putting soap all over himself. There are plenty of pre-code moments mixed in with most of them coming from Harlow showing off various limbs. Gable is as good as always but it's Harlow who really steals the show. This is the first time I've seen her take on a dramatic role and she nails it perfectly. She's given several emotional scenes and she comes off very well. The ending is very dramatic and contains a beautiful message that comes across very well. It's also worth noting that there's a black preacher in the film and I think this is the nicest role I've seen a black actor play in this era of Hollywood. The stereotypes we normally see in this type of film are thrown out the window and this must have been one of the earliest films to show a black man in such a nice form.

Clark Gable plays a con man who busts into the life of hard-boiled dame Jean Harlow. He tries to sucker her while she brushes him off with her tough-gal attitude. Despite their cynicism and cons they fall in love. When Gable accidentally kills a man during a sting he runs out leaving loyal Harlow to women's prison where she discovers she's pregnant. Anita Loos' and Howard Emmett Rogers' writing is excellent throughout with many well-drawn and surprising characters (including a Jewish socialist woman inmate and a black woman inmate and her preacher father played with hardly a trace of stereotype). Gable and Harlow show their mettle as actors adding telling nuances and quirks to their characters that send them beyond the typical Gable and Harlow roles. And the direction is much better than you'd expect from Sam Wood. One beautiful shot has Harlow being inducted into the prison, then led out into a surprisingly snowy courtyard as the camera tracks after her. This is one of the best of both the "criminals in love" and "women's prison" genres and has some of the best hard-boiled dialogue ever written.