Red Dust

I've been fascinated with Jean Harlow for a while now. Despite the terrible rendition of her in this poster, she was a beauty, but styled in her time (so many women in old movies were made to look older than they were). She died at age 26 in 1937, and her burial place is in a closed off wing in a mausoleum at Forest Lawn. Her death shocked the nation.

Many of her films have slipped into obscurity, but Filmstruck has a number of them on hand. Most of the films she made were pre-code, so she was allowed to be more sassy and unclothed than later films. That's certainly true of Red Dust, where she even takes a bath, showing her bare shoulders and implying she's naked (it's nice to think she really was).

She plays a prostitute (though that word is never spoken) who ends up at a rubber plantation in Indochina. The place is run by the rough-hewn Clark Gable. He's not too happy about her being stranded there, until she makes him laugh with a joke about cheese and they presumably become intimate.

A young engineer (Gene Raymond) arrives with his wife (Mary Astor). They're from society, and are a bit put off by the rustic surroundings. Harlow, who is brassy and sarcastic, doesn't mix well with Astor, whom she calls "the Duchess." But soon enough, Gable and Astor yield to temptation, after he carries her back to her room through a rainstorm. Harlow isn't too happy about it.

The film, like Casablanca, is about a man who has not cared about much becoming noble. It's a great ending, especially the last line of the film, with Gable and Harlow together. "Roquefort or Gorgonzola?" Gable asks Harlow.

Gable and Harlow made six films together, and have great chemistry. She has some great lines, like: "I thought we might run up a few curtains and make a batch of fudge while we were planning on what to wear to the country club dance Saturday night." She has great comic timing.

The film has aged in some unpleasant ways. The workers on the plantation are called coolies, and are described as lazy. Gable's cook (Willie Fung) is a stereotypical Chinese person. I suppose he made a good living playing many characters like that.

Red Dust was directed by Victor Fleming, who went on to direct Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.