These Jean Harlow MGM melodramas (eg Hold Your Man, Reckless, Suzy) all followed the same pattern: Jean and a hunky male co-star fall in love, start of wisecracking but soon get all serious and turn into this weird hodge podge of drama, indicating much rewriting and reshooting. This one starts off as a sort of industrial drama with Spencer Tracy as a Unionist fisherman – but this is MGM so the bosses and union are crooked and no real workers want to strike. (Tracy was a great actor but not the sexiest co-star Harlow ever had.) They get married, he gets a big head, break up, he becomes a hobo, she winds up in prison, has a baby, he encourages her to escape, she won’t, then she does (there’s a girl prison escape sequence in the rain), he’s a nightwatchman who becomes a hero, then they reunited, Harlow agrees to go back to gaol… It’s a mess really.
There is some great dialogue – Frances Marion and Dorothy Parker worked on the script –Harlow is sweet in a role that has been said to be close to her real personality (loyal, loving, not a platinum blonde… only not a nudist), and Mickey Rooney turns up as Harlow’s brother. But it’s not enough to make up for the dud, messy story.
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