Jean Harlow’s last film gets a bad rap because she died during it’s shooting, and an unconvincing body double is used in some shots, but at least it had Clark Gable, a fantastic support cast (Hattie McDaniel, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Pidgeon) and lively racetrack atmosphere. It was a hell of a lot better note to go out on than Personal Property.
The plot has bookie Clarke Gable inherit a race track and Jean Harlow is a girl trying to bag rich Pidgeon. In hindsight, Harlow appears ill here (bloated in some shots) and the scene where her character falls ill is creepy. There’s a sequence where Gable and Harlow all sing on a train with a bunch of other characters (reused at the end to give the film a shot to go out on), which is reminiscent of ‘The Man in the Flying Trapeze’ sequence in It Happened One Night.
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