Hold Your Man **** (1933, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Stuart Erwin) – Classic Movie Review 4982

Rapier Thirties wit Anita Loos wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for director Sam Wood’s wisecracking, love-at-first-sight 1933 romantic comedy Hold Your Man about a crook and a moll especially for MGM’s great stars Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, who were then at around their peak in Hollywood. Both of the stars relish her witty lines, and they are great together, but Harlow is the stand-out.

Gable plays the smooth crook Eddie Hall and Harlow plays the cynical moll Ruby Adams, into whose apartment he bursts in his race from the cops, and, whaddaya know?, they instantly fall for each other.

The wonderful performances from all the MGM actors, Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers’s witty dialogue, Wood’s imaginative and pacey direction and Sam Wood and Bernard H Hyman’s careful production easily disguise the slightly thin, melodramatic, old-fashioned story about Ruby having Eddie’s baby and sitting it out in prison while he is in jail too for manslaughter.

With this screen-writer, there are no Loos ends in the screenplay, obviously.

Also in the cast are Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Burgess, Muriel Kirkland, Paul Hurst, Garry Owen, Barbara Barondess, Elizabeth Patterson, Inez Courtney, Blanche Frederici, Helen Freeman, Joe Sawyer, Charles Sellon, Sam McDaniel, Lillian Harmer, Frank Hagney, G Pat Collins, Wade Botelier, Nora Cecil, Louise Beavers, Theresa Harris, Vera Lewis, Eva Mckenzie, George Reed, Harry Semels, Philip Sleeman and Ben Taggart.

Hold Your Man is directed by Sam Wood, runs 89 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers, from a story by Anita Loos, is shot in black and white by Harold Rosson, is produced by Sam Wood and Bernard H Hyman, is scored by Nacio Herb Brown, and is designed by Merrill Pye, with music by Arthur Freed.

Gable and Harlow made six films together, including The Secret Six (1931), Red Dust (1932), Hold Your Man (1933), China Seas (1935) and Wife vs Secretary (1936), up to her last movie, Saratoga (1937).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4982

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