Actress Jean Harlow on TCM: Film series continues with 5 titles, including the Hollywood-set Bombshell
Turner Classic Movies’ Jean Harlow film series continues this evening with four of Harlow’s MGM vehicles – Bombshell, Personal Property, Reckless, and Libeled Lady – and one supporting appearance in Warner Bros.’ The Public Enemy.
Harlow really doesn’t have much to do in The Public Enemy (1931). She looks about as out of place in this otherwise solid William A. Wellman crime drama as she is in Frank Capra’s melodrama Platinum Blonde, released that same year. James Cagney, however, looks anything but out of place as a sociopathic gangster. Cagney, in fact, was so right for that particular role – even if his performance goes way overboard – that early on in the production he exchanged gangsters with fellow player Edward Woods.
In Victor Fleming’s Bombshell, Harlow, known as the Blonde Bombshell, stars in a send-up of her own Hollywood stardom (and Clara Bow’s as well). Jack Conway’s Libeled Lady is funnier. The cast in this Oscar-nominated comedy includes William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy.
Reckless and Personal Property are lesser-known titles. The former is slow-going; the latter has one very funny sequence when Robert Taylor, posing as butler, introduces an undecipherably posh guest at a dinner party.
Actress Jean Harlow movies: TCM schedule (ET)
8:00 PM The Public Enemy (1931)
Director: William A. Wellman.
Cast: James Cagney, Edward Woods, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell.
84m9:30 PM Bombshell (1933)
Director: Victor Fleming.
Cast: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Pat O’Brien, Franchot Tone.
96m11:15 PM Libeled Lady (1936)
Director: Jack Conway.
Cast: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly, Charley Grapewin, Cora Witherspoon, E.E. Clive, Charles Trowbridge.
98m1:00 AM Reckless (1935)
Director: Victor Fleming.
Cast: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Franchot Tone.
97m2:45 AM Personal Property (1937)
Director: W.S. Van Dyke.
Cast: Jean Harlow, Robert Taylor, Reginald Owen, Una O’Connor, Henrietta Crosman, E.E. Clive, Cora Witherspoon, Marla Shelton.
84m