Bombshell

Jean Harlow is the "Bombshell" of the 1933 film also starring Franchot Tone, Frank Morgan, Lee Tracy, Pat O'Brien, Una Merkel, Isabel Jewell, Louise Beavers, Ted Healy, and C. Aubrey Smith. Harlow plays a star, Lola Burns, who has a career very similar to Jean Harlow's - in fact, she starred in "Red Dust" with Clark Gable! She's the "It" girl where Harlow was the "If" girl.

From the first time we meet Lola, it's obvious that she is overwhelmed by the pressures of her home life, which in turn puts pressure on her career duties:

Her drunken father (Morgan) acts as her business manager but her bills aren't paid and she doesn't have any money; she constantly has to bail her brother out of trouble; there's a newspaper man who prints one lie after another about her; one of the people in her household wears her clothes and steals from her; she has three huge dogs; her brother shows up with a tramp; the assistant director on "Red Dust," Jim Brogan (Pat O'Brien) is in love with her and goes crazy when he sees Hugo, the Marqis de Pisa de Pisa on the set (and it's in his storyline that strong prejudice against immigrants is shown); and her agent (Lee Tracy) is a puppeteer in a sick puppet show - Lola's life.

Lola wants out. She decides that she wants to adopt a child and falls in love with a baby at an orphanage but the home visit is a total disaster. Disgusted with her life and all the leeches around her, she takes off, seeking peace and quiet. It's in peaceful surroundings that she meets the wealthy Gifford Middleton. It's love at first sight. Just when she's meeting Gifford's parents, her father and brother appear.

This is a very funny comedy and also very touching, as Lola's sweet personality and desire for a stable family is evident. She swears to Gifford that she's through with show business but becomes concerned when told there hasn't been anything about her in the papers lately. She's young and has no idea what she really wants. Her agent plays off of this and uses it to his own advantage. To most people, she's a blond gravy train.

All of the actors are terrific. Franchot Tone is hilarious, totally and deliberately WAY over the top saying lines such as the one in the summary box. Harlow is surrounded with the best character actors - Lee Tracy, who despite a scandal in 1934 managed to enjoy a nearly 40-year career is great as Lola's fast-talking scam artist agent; Frank Morgan plays his usual role of a weak man, but not a bad one; Louise Beavers brings spark to the role of a maid; Pat O'Brien is in top form as the volatile Brogan.

But it's Harlow's film, and she keeps up with the frantic pace of the film beautifully. Funny and vulnerable, she's hilarious when she pretends she's upper class, as she's often done in her films - no one has ever pulled that off quite like she has. Certainly one of the most lovable and charismatic actresses ever on screen. It's unbelievable that she didn't have a chance to live a full life. "Bombshell" is one of her best films among a lot of wonderful ones.

Aces all around. This slice of madcap should end talk that Harlow was just a busty figure with platinum hair. She and Tracy deliver their lines faster than a machine gun spits out bullets, and funny lines they are. There's hardly a draggy moment as a colorful supporting cast hustles on and off stage.

Too bad Lee Tracy is a forgotten figure. His frenetic publicity agent looks like the last word in show biz hype, never without a scheming idea or a quick riposte. More importantly, his fast- talker manages to be both likable and obnoxious at the same time, not an easy trick.

Harlow may surprise with her comedic talents. Her movie star character just can't seem to escape the Hollywood hype that's taken over her life. Besides, she's got a dad and a brother unfit for polite society. Worse, they keep popping up at the wrong time. I love it when she tries to impress her betters only to be undone by dad's boisterous shenanigans. Those behind-the-scenes glimpses of studio stages and Hollywood nightlife also get some chuckles, and likely contain a lot of truth for the time. (That's the real Cocoanut Grove nightclub where Lola {Harlow} and her date go dancing.)

Anyway, the pace never lets up nor does the clever dialog, along with the expected pre-Code innuendo to spice things up. There're also several unexpected story twists that produce a perfectly apt last scene. All in all, if this isn't the legendary Harlow's best movie, I don't know what is.

Count me in. This slam-bang, snap-crackle-pop picture is a doozy, never pausing for breath as it zips along its nifty, irreverent way, superbly cast so as to let everyone do what he/she does best.

As if its entertainment value were not enough, it has something to say, so cleverly that it mocks itself along with a half-dozen other victims. Where the movie business is concerned, nothing is what it seems to be - except when it is. At the center of it all are a press agent to whom lies come so naturally that he would require a moment of intense concentration before he could utter a word of truth - if he wanted to; and a colossal star, neither educated nor bright, a small-town girl who, without half-trying, becomes what every woman yearns to become - except that she yearns to be something else.

Jean Harlow was considerably more than a glamor girl. Limited (as many studio players were) to one type of screen persona, she brought it off with success in both comedy and drama, perfecting the mannerisms, gestures and nuances. Lee Tracy, born to play the kind of role he was given here (and elsewhere), is without peer as the fast-talking, shifty-eyed conniver, a rascal beholden to no ethical sense but his own. Their supporting cast - with a special nod to Frank Morgan's tipsy, dithering poseur - is uniformly excellent. Don't miss this one.

In the mid '30's, Myrna Loy penned (ostensibly) an article for Photoplay titled, "So You Want To Be A Movie Star," which went into grim detail about the grind that is the real life of a star studio player both on and off the soundstage. BOMBSHELL takes this conceit and runs with it as brilliant and lacerating satire.

Jean Harlow is at her best as Lola Burns, the at-once pampered and put-upon star in question. Depicted are the constant demands for Lola's attention, time, energy and money, and the film has fun with all of it, from fatuous fan-mag interviews and staged photo ops to Hollywood politics and trouble with household and studio staff. Though awakened at the crack of dawn, Lola gets breakfast in bed - but with sauerkraut juice instead of orange juice. "There are are no oranges," apologizes the butler, to which Lola retorts, "No oranges?! This is California, man!" Before she's even out of her boudoir, Lola's had to contend with the pandemonium created by last-minute schedule changes, fussing and bickering from hair and makeup people and the inconvenient attention of her outsized dog. Finally ready to leave the house, she laments, "Well, here goes for another day; 7:00 AM and I'm already dead on my feet!"

Also driving Lola to distraction with his constant headline-grabbing stunts is the scheming studio publicity director played by the irrepressible Lee Tracy, who always gave co-stars a run for their money when it came to on-screen dominance. Harlow more than holds her own with him.

Appearing in able support are reliable players such as Franchot Tone as an apparently blue-blooded suitor unaware of Lola's fame, Pat O'Brien as her understanding director, Una Merkel as a less-than-reliable personal assistant and Louise Beavers as maid Loretta, who is deferential to Lola but takes no prisoners otherwise (responding to Merkel's early-morning crabbiness, she warns, "Don't scald me wit'cher steam, woman...I knows where the bodies is buried!"). As Lola's bombastic father and ne'er-do-well brother, respectively, the usually-lovable Frank Morgan and the never-lovable Ted Healy are ultimately rather tiresome, but that's what their roles require.

In a good-natured way, the film throws in some weirdly biographical elements of Harlow's real life, in which she coped with familial hangers-on in the persons of her domineering stage mother and somewhat sleazy stepfather, and Lola's reference to her palatial home as a "half paid-for car barn" is reported to have been uttered by Harlow herself about her own ostentatious digs. There's even a scene depicting Lola doing retakes on "Red Dust," a hit for Harlow the prior year.

In addition to snappy dialog and a mile-a-minute pace, the picture is enjoyable for its time-capsule look at the Ambassador Hotel and Coconut Grove in their heyday, as well as the grounds of the MGM lot itself, all used as locations.

Although bordering on farce at times (but in a good way), BOMBSHELL gives the impression of an only slightly exaggerated look at what the "real" life of a top-name contract player might have been like at the height of the studio system, with Harlow giving perhaps her most genuine (and least mannered) comic performance.

"Bombshell" does for the Hollywood of the 1930s what "The Player" does for the Hollywood of the 1990s. It's quite interesting to see how well established the Hollywood System was already in the early 1930s when this film was made. Already at that time the film world was centered on stars, studios, and a sycophantic support network that was focused on a false facades and phoniness. There are plenty of hilarious scenes in "Bombshell" sending up the studio system in a way that I found quite surprising given the year (1933) that this film was produced. It seems to present a sensibility - sarcastic, witty, honest - that I don't usually associate with the Golden Age of Hollywood. So many jokes about alcohol and drunkenness! "Bombshell" makes "The Thin Man" seem like an advertisement for AA by comparison.

Good supporting cast - nice to see Frank Morgan (aka the Wizard of Oz) as the inebriated father of star Jean Harlow. Lee Tracy is completely convincing as the smooth-talking oily agent who harbors a secret passion for his client. But what really makes "Bombshell" work - and which explains why I rate it at 8 out is 10 - is the tremendously self-effacing performance of Jean Harlow. She's just terrific!