Bombshell

Friday night has come to be my Jean Harlow night. The latest film of hers I've seen is Bombshell, a 1933 pre-code film directed by Victor Fleming and written by Norman Krasna. It is an absolute delight from beginning to end, and of the Harlow films I've seen is her best performance.

Harlow plays Lola Burns, a Hollywood star. She is constantly bedeviled by her employees, her family, and especially her press agent, Space Hanlon (Lee Tracy), who is constantly leaking false stories to the media in order to make her more famous. At a certain point she decides she wants to give it up all and adopt a baby, but of course when the adoption ladies are there all hell breaks loose.

Bombshell is an early example of screwball comedy, and pretty much follows the rule of that genre--everyone is moving. Whenever Harlow walks across a room people are swarming around her. The film almost never takes a breather, and it's exhilarating to see all the pieces move.

Frank Morgan plays her father, who is almost always drunk and/or playing the ponies. He is her "business manager" and is always asking for money. Her brother is Ted Healy (who founded the Three Stooges), who is even worse. Harlow is in love with a "Marquis," who is really a gigolo, and whom Tracy (who is secretly in love with her) gets deported. She also loves a director (Pat O'Brian) whom she decides she wants to marry.

Later in the film, Harlow escapes to a town somewhat like Palm Springs, where she meets Franchot Tone playing a hunky rich guy who says romantic things to her like, "You hair is like a field of silver daisies. I'd like to run barefoot through your hair!" He doesn't know she's a movie star, and neither do his upper crust parents.

Bombshell is full of rapidly paced dialogue, most of which belongs to Tracy. Of himself he says: "He's seen to it that Lola Burns is a family slogan from Kokomo, Indiana, to the Khyber Pass. Strong men take one look at your picture, go home and kiss their wives for the first time in ten years. You're international tonic, you're a boon to repopulation in a world thinned out by war and famine."

Supposedly the film is based on Clara Bow (Fleming was once her fiance) but Harlow makes it her own, especially when the film gets a little meta and has her doing reshoots of Red Dust (which Harlow did make the year before this one). Real people, like Clark Gable, Janet Gaynor, and Alice Brady are mentioned.

I love screwball comedy, which is hard to do well. The players here, including Morgan and O'Brian, are top drawer. Tracy, who never really became a big star, doesn't seem right for the part. I can only imagine how great Cary Grant or Gable (who made many films with Harlow) would have been. But Bombshell really works in creating a world where Harlow is at the center of a whirlwind around her, blown hither and yon. So much fun.