Red Dust (1932)

Film: Red Dust (1932)
Stars: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor, Gene Raymond
Director: Victor Fleming
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Jean Harlow-click here to learn more about Ms. Harlow (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Three weeks into our series on Jean Harlow, we reach arguably the most important time in her career. While we've seen her through two classics of the early Sound Era (Hell's Angels and The Public Enemy), Harlow's public persona wasn't really defined, and she didn't have a consistent brand despite clear clamoring from the public for her to be in more pictures.  MGM, however, changed that.  Upon the insistence of her then-husband (who would die soon after from mysterious circumstances we discussed here), she was signed to the studio, and they started to give her "real" parts-not just girlfriends or floozies, but parts that would resemble those played by some of her contemporaries at the time.  One of the earliest, and most famous of these roles was Red Dust, which would team her for the second time with Clark Gable (though neither actor got particularly high billing in their first outing The Secret Six), and would cement them as one of MGM's most iconic pairs of the 1930's.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a plantation owner named Dennis Carson (Gable) who works in Indochina in the 1930's.  He is boorish, rough, and kind of a sexist, and treats a prostitute who is living their named Vantine (Harlow) like garbage, even though he's pretty smitten with her.  When a new worker Gary (Raymond) comes with his classy wife Barbara (Astor), Dennis is torn, and dismisses Vantine for the chance to get with Barbara, which presents itself when Gary nearly dies of a fever.  Barbara is willing to run off with Dennis, despite their differences in station, but after Dennis realizes how much Gary is in love with his wife, he throws her out, saying she was nothing more than a fling (which she wasn't-he was very much in love with her), and she shoots him in a rage.  Dennis, though, wanting them both to leave, covers for her and ends up back with Vantine, whom he clearly was destined for the whole time.

The movie may sound familiar even if you haven't seen the film, and that's because it was remade in the 1950's with Ava Gardner taking on the Harlow role, Grace Kelly taking over for Astor, and Clark Gable weirdly playing the same part in Mogambo.  This was slightly more common in earlier Hollywood than you'd think (you may recall when we looked at Lillian Russell for this series last year that Edward Arnold did something similar with his character of Diamond Jim Brady) but was still noteworthy.  I haven't seen the later film, but I have to say I get the impulse to revisit, because Red Dust is pretty great.  Pre-Code Hollywood isn't my favorite era (in the way it is for virtually every other cinephile) as I find it hit-or-miss, but this is a sexy, fascinating little movie.  Gable is great as a scalawag, and the movie doesn't have to shy away from the clear sexual elements of the picture.  Astor, for example, probably would have had to die or had her marriage wrecked just a few years later for letting her virtue disappear.  But here, we get a happier ending without her having to feel too much shame for her marital indiscretions.

Best of the bunch, though, is Harlow, who brings it hardcore in this role.  The Pre-Code scenes allow for one of the more scandalous moments of the era, Harlow in a tub while basically throwing herself at Gable while a horrified Mary Astor watched.  The most famous pre-Code scene is probably Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross taking a milk bath-while this doesn't quite get there in terms of scandal (unlike Colbert, there is not a "blink and you miss it" scene with her nipples showing, which has basically made The Sign of the Cross one of the most notorious movies of the 1930's), but the clear desire between Harlow & Gable is palpable, and even if it weren't-Harlow's an ace comedian.  There's a great scene where she debates with herself about the merits of different types of cheeses while Gable looks on, flabbergasted at the absurdity of the conversation, and there is no pretense when faced with Astor over whom the audience should root for, even if Harlow's character is the "tramp" and Astor's the "good girl."  Weirdly, in real life, it would be the reverse, with Astor getting involved in one of the most famed sex scandals of Hollywood in the 1930's, before eventually in the 1940's seeing her career turn into a series of matronly roles in classics like Meet Me in St. Louis and Little Women.  By that point, of course, Harlow would have been dead for nearly a decade...but we'll get to that when we conclude our look at the actress next week.