Platinum Blonde Reviews

Capra in excellent mood. Harlow is so fresh convincing Williams to use garters -!with a tune!-and to live in the Schuyler mansion; that Loretta has few things to do till the end.

In It Happened One Night, Frank Capra created a delirious, sexy, charming and utterly perfect movie which had a wild-and-crazy idle rich girl falling for a rugged and uncouth newspaper reporter. It won the "Big Five" at the Oscars, the first film to do so, and is still a breezy and fulfilling romantic comedy today. Platinum Blonde picks up where that film ends but loses the humor, warmth and good-nature. One Night proclaimed that even during the Great Depression the two classes could find a happy middle ground, maybe even love each other. Blonde positions that lust exists between the classes, but when it comes down to it there will be no love lost if they just ignored each other.

This is a screwball comedy without a hint of joy, but plenty of sex appeal in star Jean Harlow, the screen's first gloriously bad girl who did dirty things and got away with it. It's hard to imagine a man who wouldn't have gladly become a metaphorical eunuch for her, but part of a screwball comedy's charm is in watching one of the two main characters have a crisis. Harlow's character here isn't her usual bad girl. In fact, she's quite the decent little thing. She just has a body made for sin. It's harder not to side with her then it is to identify and like the noble poor in this film. She stands by her man through thick and thin, defending him against her family's panic stricken outrage at so low class a son-in-law. Harlow started out first as a great screen presence and sexual powder keg before developing a knack for comedy. A scene where she sing-song's a flirtatious fight with her husband shows just how naturally gifted she was at the form.

But unspoken pressures send her husband back into the working class by the very end of the film. Awaiting in the wings? His former-partner and best friend, the tomboyish girl reporter who cleans up good and patiently awaits for the moment when she can sink her claws into him. Loretta Young as the good girl waiting for our main character to realize that she's his perfect match is fine, but Robert Williams as our main character is grating. He's all edge and nervous twitching before he even gets locked in the gilded cage. By the time he's trapped in his luxurious prison he's cranked the volume up on his performance.

But much like the title implies, the film belongs to Harlow. And whenever she's on-screen she's magnetic and charismatic. If the film had actually focused on her, it might have been a little better. But it instead focuses on Williams and Young. No surprise the original title was Gallagher and changed to piggyback off Harlow's growing popularity.