RED-HEADED WOMAN (Conway, 1932)

“I’ll sing you a siren song of a red-headed woman…“

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Dir. Jack Conway
79 mins.

Production: April 28, 1932 — May 27, 1932
Release date: June 25, 1932
Release status: Available to watch online and on DVD.

Cast: Jean Harlow (Lil Andrews Legendre), Chester Morris (Bill Legendre, Jr.), Lewis Stone (William Legendre, Sr.), Leila Hyams (Irene Legendre), Una Merkel (Sally), Henry Stephenson (Charles B. Gaerste), May Robson (Jane), Charles Boyer (Albert)

Summary: A gold-digging young stenographer from the wrong side of some Ohio train tracks sets out to weaponize her sexuality and get herself not only a meal ticket out of Middle American poverty, but a ladder to take her all the way to the top.

Trivia:

Harlow’s first film under her seven-year contract to MGM–she got the news that her contract sold and she’d be making a screen test for Red-Headed Woman on her twenty-first birthday, March 3, 1932. She filmed it on March 19 on the East Coast. (The gap in Harlow’s production schedule from December 1931 to April 1932 is due to her personal appearance tour).

The property was a hot commodity and the leading role a hotter topic by the time Harlow came into the fold, having already been passed on by Clara Bow and Colleen Moore; enough actresses were tested for the leading role that it was lampooned by Marie Dressler, who donned a red wig to contend for it herself. Lillian Roth, Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, Ann Sothern and Alice White were other names placed in the suggestions box.
F. Scott Fitzgerald bungled the screenplay before Anita Loos of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes notoriety was asked to step in and take over a more humorous rewrite.
The material was a divisive topic at the Production Code Administration and many cuts were made by individual state censors. Colonel Jason Joy wrote to Will Hays that the script was ‘utterly impossible in every way’ and that he’d ‘let out a yell’ if changes made to the script left it similar to the version he read. The French Embassy was even seen to take issue with the apparent negative portrayal of Frenchmen in the film’s PCA file, lodging a complaint against the ‘French chauffeur [Charles Boyer] playing an ignoble role, allowing himself to be kept by an American woman of bad morale and also comporting himself as a coward when the fiancé of the woman learns of his conduct’.

The first of Harlow’s films with Una Merkel, who would become her four-time onscreen sidekick at MGM.

Harlow’s excellent wig in this film was created by Perc and Ern Westmore, of the legendary Hollywood Westmores, during their tenure as directors at Max Factor’s hair department.
The song in the introduction (which is reprised by the uncredited nightclub singer where Lil and Gaerste dance) is called ‘The Red-Headed Woman’ and was written by jazz standard heavyweight Richard A. Whiting with partner Raymond B. Eagan, yet no legitimate recordings of the song have surfaced. This also rings true for the version of ‘Frankie and Johnny’ played by Harlow just before going on her drunken rampage to Bill Legendre’s house, which is credited to ‘Anonymous’; some sources credit it to Cliff Edwards, and this is likely true, but no concrete credits or other recordings corroborating that have surfaced, either. Interestingly, the song playing during Lil’s initial seduction of Bill is none other than the theme song for Letty Lynton (1932), which plays in its opening credits

RHW was meant to receive an unproduced sequel titled Red-Headed Woman in Paris, which was killed by the Code in 1934. Harlow complained about it to her “safety valve”, penpal Stanley Brown, early that year: “I’m sore. Here I was all set to do Living in a Big Way. Then it was decided I was not to make it. Then Red-Headed Woman in Paris. And now I am not to make that. Then Repeal and I have not heard one word further about what is what. So maybe they’ll take that away from me.”
Two of the robes Harlow wears in this film as Lil Andrews were recycled by MGM and and worn by two of her friends, Mary Carlisle and Anita Page, for publicity portraits: