Jean Harlow – the first great Hollywood blonde – was fresh off two sensations, Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels and William Wellman’s The Public Enemy, when director Frank Capra cast her in this fish-out-of-water story.
Harlow’s startlingly direct sexuality is in full bloom here, and it’s easy to see why the film was retitled Platinum Blonde just days after its preview screening. (During production, it had been called Gallagher, and then The Gilded Cage.)
Jean Harlow: Sex Symbol
In fact, it was this film that really made Harlow’s career, according to Capra’s biographer. “Platinum Blonde,” writes Joseph McBride, “firmly established Harlow’s stardom, bringing out the qualities of humor and relaxed sexiness that had not been evident in her previous appearances, although Capra realized she was not right for the part.” (Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, Simon & Schuster, 1992.)
And he’s right about Harlow being wrong. She’s way too street to be playing Ann Schuyler, the spoiled daughter of the super-rich. Too bad she couldn’t swap roles with the then-18-year-old Loretta Young, who's at the peak of her angelic beauty. Cast as Gallagher, the “spunky girl reporter,” Young’s looks and bearing would have been perfect for Ann.
Harlow as Seductive Society Girl
Platinum Blonde’s surprisingly conventional story is about dog-eared newspaper reporter Stew Smith (the now-forgotten and ill-fated Robert Williams) who hooks up with society girl Ann Schuyler (Harlow). Sadly, that’s about all the story there is.
The episodic film sets up a rich versus working class conflict, then hits the same note again and again.
In brief, wise-guy reporter Smith is assigned to get the goods on a scandal involving Michael Schuyler, the son of mansion-dwelling society swells. In the process he meets Michael’s sexy, sassy sister Ann, who nearly seduces him in front of the whole family.
Before you know it, Smith and Ann Schuyler are dating, to her uptight family’s consternation.
Loretta Young Co-Stars as Best Pal
Smith confides in his best pal Gallagher (Young), who naturally is “secretly” in love with him. That the brunette Gallagher is gorgeous, available and devoted to him doesn’t seem to register with the lunkhead.
This, of course, is one of the more absurd plot devices in movies. It's just as dumb in this 1931 film as it is, for example, in 1985’s Secret Admirer. In that one, the beautiful, smart and equally devoted best pal Lori Loughlin (a brunette, of course) makes no dent in the brain of C. Thomas Howell, who’s obsessed with the scheming (and blonde – see the pattern here?) Kelly Preston.
When Stew Smith and Ann Schuyler marry, she immediately emasculates him, trying to turn Streetwise Stew into her Park Avenue Puppet.
Movie Cliches Abound
The film is a sea of clichés: the wealthy family’s disdain for the tabloid press and preference for buying their way out of scandal; how reporters are competitive cutthroats, mooches and drunks. (A speakeasy scene reminds us Prohibition had not yet been repealed.)
Despite her miscasting, Harlow has an easy charm and low-key eroticism – especially when she sashays through scenes bra-less, or wearing silky night clothes. In one scene, she actually receives a massage in the nude; we only see her face and bare shoulders as she lies on her stomach, smiling and nearly winking at us.
Still, Harlow is hamstrung by a role that has her lurching from seductive bad girl to nose-in-the-air society snob; it’s never really clear who her character is supposed to be, or what she sees in Stew.
Robert Williams fares better as Stew Smith. This is the film that should have made Williams a star after years on Broadway and in a few movies. Sadly, he died of peritonitis just as Platinum Blonde was opening wide.
"Capra Corn" Mostly Missing
Besides a nice bit of business between Stew and the Schuylers’ butler, there are few of the telltale “Capra corn” schticks in this film for which the director later became famous.
In fact, Platinum Blonde often feels stagey and static. Maybe Capra had yet to feel comfortable working in sound pictures after working his way up as a gagman for Mack Sennett, a screenwriter and eventually as a director of silent comedies.
Just three years later, in another heiress-meets-reporter story, Capra hit the jackpot with 1934’s It Happened One Night.
But this one could have been called Flatinum Blonde.
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
Join the Conversation