Jean Harlow and Clark Gable hold their movie son, little Bobby Caldwell, in publicity/production stills for Hold Your Man (1933).
The purpose of these portraits, along with all numbered stills from MGM, can be determined by examining the photography codes. These are usually found written in one of the bottom corners, as seen here.
First, we have Hold Your Man’s production number, 678; the “X” that follows tells us these stills were specially picked to be distributed by the publicity department. In this case, we can definitely see why.
These stills, funnily enough, were actually published with an alarming issue; it has to do with incompetence on publicity’s part. When one made it to print, it was accompanied by the following pasted caption:
The problem? The kid’s name isn’t Bobby Cook at all, despite appearing as such in the press kits that made it to newspapers and magazines; at this point, he went by Bobby Burns. Only a handful of publications got it right.
At first I attributed this to a simple rapid change of stage names, but then I found this paragraph in the Los Angeles Times.
Bobby Burns, who went by his middle name, later reverted to using his surname, Caldwell. All this points to how confusing things can get when publicity makes a small mistake!
Caldwell passed away in 1982, and as far as I know, had never talked about his childhood career; given the treatment of child actors at the time, I don’t blame him. It’d be great to know if he remembered anything about Jean, though.
Harlow Heaven 