Hold Your Man

What an odd movie Hold Your Man is. Released in 1933, the first half is typical pre-code: a woman of easy virtue, who has several boyfriends, ends up with a con man, and gets knocked up. The second half was retribution, as the Hays Office demanded it: the girl gets punished for her wicked ways, and the couple has to get married.

Directed by Sam Wood, Hold Your Man was the third collaboration between Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. He plays a grifter who meets Harlow when he's running from police and trying every open door in an apartment building. He finds Harlow taking a bath. He's attracted it, but she plays it cool, although she ends up with him.

Gable and his partner use Harlow to try to blackmail one of her admirers, but things go wrong and Harlow ends up in a reformatory, and suddenly it's a women's prison picture. Talk about whiplash! Gable disappears from the film for a good while, while Harlow deals with roommates that include a Bolshevik and a black daughter of a preacher.

The first half is zippy and fun, with Harlow cracking wise. When of Gable's girlfriends asks, "Who are you?" Harlow responds "The Queen of Sheba." The more I watch her the more I'm convinced that had she lived she would have the pre-eminent comic actress of the century, and probably done like Lucille Ball and conquered television.