Riffraff

Not only had Jean Harlow learned to act by 1936’s Riffraff, but her hair wasn’t the aggressive platinum blonde of her ribald days. She was at the height of her beauty here, and in the middle of another change of screen persona. The softening of Harlow’s bad girl act was one of trying to find a proper outlet for her zany sexuality. The uneasy combination of melodrama and comedy in Riffraff is not quite a successful outlet, but there’s glimpses of where she could find continued success if things hadn’t ended so tragically.

This finds Harlow in working girl mode as a cannery worker stuck between her union leader beau (Spencer Tracy) and rich suitor (Joseph Calleia). Harlow and Tracy had a pleasing, fiery chemistry together and managed to project a hardedge in their least glamorous parts. You see what drives them together as much as what pulls them apart. But I wouldn’t rank him amongst the best of Harlow’s leading men, not with the roguish Clark Gable, playboy Franchot Tone, and sly sophisticate William Powell right there.

The best parts of Riffraff are the lighter ones, like Mickey Rooney’s hyperactive nephew and Una Merkel as Harlow’s sarcastic sister. When it transforms into a dramatic film it throws too much at the screen without properly developing any of it. There’s a labor dispute, a hobo camp, a prison birth, escape through the sewage system, and even more than that. It’s a case of too much and the kitchen sink.

Riffraff is a curiosity, a fascinating mess that deserves to be seen at least once. Harlow is very good, and Tracy was at his naturalistic best in the 30s before an obvious phoniness set in with his later work. The script lets them flounder, but their personalities shine through.