A fascinating companion piece to Red Dust – made only a few years later, it’s far more glossy and polished (helped by the fact that the print I saw was better), with MGM giving it a bigger budget as befitting the now-huge popularity of its stars. It’s also a lot cleaner – Jean Harlow is a singer rather than a hooker, classy Rosalind Russell isn’t married but a widow, Clark Gable wears a nice uniform rather than rags, etc.
Irving Thalberg spared no expense – in addition to Gable, Harlow and Russell, there’s also Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone, plus C Aubrey Smith and Robert Benchley (as a – surprise – drunken author).
There’s more plot than Red Dust – well, more correctly, subplots, with Wallace Beery in love with Jean Harlow, and pirates, and Lewis Stone as a disgraced sea officer who redeems himself. Good fun, some OK acting - but you can't help wishing it was a bit grittier.
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