HOLD YOUR MAN (Wood, 1933)

“Two Dynamite-Charged Personalities! … A platinum cyclone meets a dimpled hurricane!”

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Dir. Sam Wood
86 mins.

Production: April 16, 1933 — May 1933
Release date: July 7, 1933
Release status: Available to watch on DVD.

Cast: Jean Harlow (Ruby Adams), Clark Gable (Eddie Hall), Stuart Erwin (Al Simpson), Dorothy Burgess (Gypsy), Muriel Kirkland (Bertha), Garry Owen (Slim), Barbara Barondess (Sadie), Elizabeth Patterson (Miss Tuttle), Inez Courtney (Maisie), Theresa Harris (Lily Mae Crippen), George Reed (Reverend Crippen), Louise Beavers (Restroom attendant), Bobby Caldwell (Ruby & Eddie’s son)

Summary: A career criminal (Clark Gable) breaks into the apartment of pretty young Ruby (Jean Harlow), whose bathtub helps him get away from the cops. Romance, robberies, and reformatories ensue.

Trivia:

The film’s working titles were Black Orange Blossoms and He Was Her Man.

Red Dust and Hold Your Man were two of Harlow’s films referenced in the ironically biographical Bombshell (1933); scenes from Hold Your Man are shown in the opening montage.

Jean Harlow’s character originally had a father in the film–played by none other than Guy Kibbee, whose scenes, and any references to them, were left on the cutting room floor.

First film to feature Jean Harlow singing; her performance of the self-titled number at the reformatory piano wasn’t dubbed like her vocals in Reckless (1935). Interestingly enough, Harlow was slated to sing again for her role as a hotel night operator in Hollywood Party (1933), but was removed after her voice proved unsatisfactory. The song written for her by Rodgers and Hart, “Prayer”, was later retooled and turned into Blue Moon, a jazz standard.