Red Dust (1932): Sex in the Tropics

Sex. It permeates almost every frame of the pre-Code classic Red Dust (1932), and why shouldn't it? It starred Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, both at their physical peak and professionally, well, this film shot them to superstardom. It was raw, it was wanton and, if audience attendance was any indicator, it was extremely entertaining. In the world of pre-Code Hollywood (the time before the Hollywood censors would banish any naughty behaviour onscreen), Red Dust fairly reeks of sex with nary a nude scene or onscreen intercourse. Who needed these things with Gable's virile masculinity and Harlow's open sensuality coming together with a charged electricity that crackles in front of the camera (and if rumour is correct, behind it as well).

Set on a rubber plantation in Indochina, Red Dust smells of rugged machismo, Gable and his cronies out in the middle of nowhere, cultivating raw rubber "so some old lady somewhere can take a hot water bottle to bed with her". Enter stage left, Harlow as Vantine, a fun loving harlot on the run from officials in Saigon, who shows plenty of leg, along with everything else. Just as she and Denny (Gable) are getting cosy, enter stage right, Gene Raymond (usually the partner to Ann Sothern in a series of lighthearted romps) and Mary Astor as Gary and Barbara "Babs" Willis, the plantation's new surveyor and his prim, proper and quite pulsating new wife. Gary is immediately stricken with malaria, giving Denny and Babs a chance to ignite a few sparks of their own. Vantine, not the kind of gal who takes a back seat quietly (not alone anyway), lashes out with wisecracks aplenty, making some of the snappiest dialogue this side of the Hays office.

Dialogue was one of the best ~and most brazen~ assets the film had going for it, second to its zesty stars. When Harlow's Vantine first encounters Gable's Denny and his male assistant, she playfully asks them, "What else do you do besides work? Do you play any games?". As her constant chatter irritates a grumpy Denny, he finally shouts, "Do you want me to slap you out of this room?", to which she retorts, "You and what man's army?", and of course this verbal sparring leads to eventual laughter and a seductive fade out. Harlow is ready for Gable. He manhandles her just the way she likes to be manhandled.

The film is not the typical fare produced by MGM at the time. The mega studio had no glamorous backdrop to present its stars and yet, it was immensely popular with the public. The film's director, Victor Fleming, was a "man's man" and a close friend to the macho Gable. Red Dust was the kind of film Fleming thrived on (he also directed Gable in 1939's Gone with the Wind). Gable's role as Denny was originally thought to be filled by silent film star John Gilbert, but studio politics and boss Louis B. Mayer nixed the idea and Gable came away famous.

The movie's tropical setting only adds to the heat already generated by its cast. As Barbara, Mary Astor is even more unwillingly libertine in her adulterous lust for Gable's Denny when one knows the background of the actress' torrid and infamous real life amours. The fireworks are in their scenes together as well. Early on when Astor slaps Gable hard for a verbal offense, he enjoys it, grinning that Gable grin from ear to ear. Then she can barely conceal her growing desire for him as she watches the strong, dark and commanding Denny hold her fair and weak husband, nursing him back to health from the fever. The comparison of the two is indeed notable to the tingly Astor. Then in the scene immediately following, Vantine happily and boldly watches Denny undress for bed, only to be told to go to her own, which she does in disappointment. These two ladies have it bad. The wise-cracking, off color dialogue continues when a disgruntled Harlow proclaims to the parrot, whose cage she is cleaning: "What you been eatin', cement?" The steamy shenanigans culminate in a carnal wrestling match between Denny and Vantine, which ends with our anti-hero being shot in the torso by a jealous Babs.

Jean Harlow was only 21 when Red Dust was released but her erotic, world wise persona is decades older. MGM slated their new cash cow couple into several popular money makers over the next five years. Harlow's last film before her untimely death in 1937 was Saratoga, again with Gable.

The Public Enemy (1931): Cagney Gives a Bang Up Performance (and a Grapefruit Facial)

The gangster film of the 1930's belonged essentially to Warner Brothers studios. Other studios made occasional forays into Gangland but the genre was Warners baby. The decade began with the studio producing Little Caesar (1930), a powerful crime drama starring Edward G. Robinson. Then in early 1931 production was started on an even grittier picture which was to star Edward Woods as brutal hood Tom Powers and James Cagney as Tom's sidekick, Matt. Yet when early rushes were viewed by the film's director William Wellman, he felt Cagney would make a more effective Tom Powers and swapped the actors. The switch and the movie, The Public Enemy, put Cagney on the map and made him a superstar.

The film tells of the rise and fall of a Chicago hoodlum in the early 20th Century. Cagney's is a tour de force performance. He is a brutal, amoral, self-centered, cold blooded killer. Hot headed and cocky, Cagney's Tom has no respect for anyone, save his mother (Beryl Mercer) and even that is questionable. Much of the film's power comes from its proximity in time to real gangster activity in the United States. Like a "ripped from the headlines" story of present day, its grit and realism made a strong impact on Depression era audiences who were still in the midst of Prohibition. Yet with all the violence encompassed in The Public Enemy, any killing is done off screen, making the unseen even more heinous than the seen. Made well before the strict enforcement of Hollywood's self imposed Production Code, the film gets away with much in the way of violence and sexual overtones.

Another up and comer in the movie world to be featured was Jean Harlow. Although hers was a small role in terms of screen time, she smoldered and oozed sex, giving audiences a sneak peek of what she would offer in her MGM hits a few years later. The blonde bombshell was only 19 when The Public Enemy was filmed but she exuded the confidence and appeal of a woman many years older. Other females featured in the male dominated photoplay were the always delightful Joan Blondell and starlet Mae Clarke. Cute Blondell does fine with the handful of lines that she is given, but it is Miss Clarke, whose scene with Cagney shoving a grapefruit in her face at the breakfast table, who is best remembered. The grapefruit scene became an icon of Hollywood clips, shown in many retrospectives through the decades (Mae Clarke also starred in another classic 1931 film, the original Frankenstein, as Colin Clive's fiancee). Cagney recounts in his autobiography that Clarke's ex-husband, Lew Brice (brother to comedienne Fanny Brice) would often buy a ticket for the film, go into the theater, watch the grapefruit scene and leave.

As stated before, The Public Enemy shot James Cagney to stardom and made him a hot commodity at Warners, but it was at a price. The former hoofer and vaudevillian was typecast as a gangster for much of the 1930's despite colorful excursions in Footlight Parade (1933) and Warner's all-star A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). It wasn't until his Oscar winning role in 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy that his full range was appreciated. However, his performance in The Public Enemy shouldn't be minimized as typecasting. His is a riveting portrayal, one can't take their eyes off his brutality and callousness, a menacing coil ready to spring into action at a moments notice, whether to kill in cold blood or shove citrus in his girlfriend's face.

Review: The Girl from Missouri

Released on the cusp of the enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code, the censorship system set up in 1934, The Girl from Missouri started out with the title Eadie Was a Lady, then changed to Born to Be Kissed, then once again to 100% Pure, all deemed too suggestive for a Jean Harlow film which focused on sex or at least potential sex. Potential because Harlow plays a gold digging chorus girl looking for a rich husband while keeping her chastity in tact, a hot topic for MGM with a brand new board of censors breathing down its neck. But then most any early Harlow film would prove a challenge for the censors.

Jean plays Eadie Chapman, a platinum cutie who leaves her home town of hard knocks and heads to New York City, with her wisecracking girlfriend Kitty (Patsy Kelly) in tow. Once there, they get jobs as dancers in a chorus. While Kitty is on the make for any good-looking man that crosses her path, Eadie is determined to find a husband of the wealthiest order and she makes it crystal clear that its hand off in the romance department until the ring is on her finger and the license filed at city hall. While working as one of the entertainers at a party thrown by down on his luck businessman Lewis Stone, Eadie privately meets with the host, unaware that he is now broke, in hopes of attracting him as a potential suitor cum husband. Not realizing he is about to commit suicide, she accepts a pair of star ruby cuff links from the depressed gent. When she leaves his private office, she hears the fatal shot and runs back in as the gun falls from his hand (the irony of the scene can't be lost considering her husband Paul Bern had committed a similar suicide two years earlier). As the authorities arrive and question her presence in the dead man's office, she worries about the jeweled cuff links, which she has pinned in her stockings. To her rescue comes wealthy tycoon, T.R. Page (Lionel Barrymore, with more boot black on his eyebrows and moustache than on his shoes). Page retrieves the links before Eadie is searched. From that point on the middle aged T.R. is Eadie's marital target. She uses the money he lends her for bills, to follow him (along with Kitty) to Florida. There she inadvertently meets his young and handsome son, Tom (Franchot Tone), who falls head over heels for her, much to his father's chagrin.

Because of the new censorship restrictions, Harlow's character was softened from her previous roles. Before the Codes enforcement she was the whore with the heart of gold, ala Hold Your Man and Red Dust, both with Clark Gable in 1932, or the man eating vamp of Red Headed Woman, which had a similar storyline to The Girl from Missouri, but with Harlow's character much more lax in her morals. The newer, softer Jean Harlow, though still a red hot bombshell, had a more endearing, every girl quality, that made her more popular than ever. Never claiming to be a great actress, Harlow does much better in the light-hearted and comic scenes than in those that require more dramatic depth from her. She is particularly animated in her jail scene, voice rising and limbs flailing, its almost camp.

The stock MGM cast offers ample support to its blonde star. Franchot Tone (who would become Mr. Joan Crawford the following year), an actor who never made it to true star status, is fine as Harlow's young amour. Lionel Barrymore, as Tone's wealthy father, has fun going from playfully needling Harlow's Eadie to vengefully trying to destroy her in order to get her out of his sons life. Patsy Kelly is a real comic gem in the film. She wisecracks aplenty while working her way through an assortment of handsome lifeguards and doormen.

Though a problem for MGM in trying to keep the censors satisfied, The Girl From Missouri (which is where the films' star was actually from) ended up a more than adequate Harlow vehicle. Not as raw as her earlier films, nor as polished as her latter ones, it played as an excellent transition film between the two. It was one of many films she left as her legacy when she died tragically three years later at the age of 26.