Libeled Lady (1936)

A 1936 nominee for Best Picture, Libeled Lady features four of the best movie stars of the 1930s in its lead roles: Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. Powell and Loy had already begun the Thin Man series of movies two years earlier, and this film carries on that tradition of sly verbal sparring. Tracy and Harlow (especially Harlow) display a talent for comedy equal to that of Powell and Loy. They all contribute to this being an entertaining movie.

Tracy plays a newspaperman who keeps putting off his wedding to Harlow's desperate-to-wed society girl; she even shows up at his office in a wedding dress when he stands her up at the altar one time. When his paper faces a multi-million dollar lawsuit over an article calling Loy's heiress a homewrecker, Tracy gets the bright idea to marry Harlow off to one of his writers, played by Powell. The goal is to have Powell then charm Loy into breaking up the marriage of convenience, thereby proving that the original story accurately characterized Loy and proving that she was not libeled in the newspaper article. I don't think I could make the plot sound any sillier than it is, but with performers like these, you can accept that it's all meant in fun. They deliver their lines with such style that it's tough not to be swept along.

My favorite scene (probably almost everyone's favorite scene) involves Powell trying to demonstrate proper fly fishing technique, something he's only just learned by reading an authoritative guide to the sport. But in order to charm Loy and her father, who is an avid fisherman himself, Powell must carry out what is one of the best slapstick routines on film from that decade. He's in and out of the water often in his quest to snag a trout.

Harlow is a delight. If you've never seen one of her movies, you've missed one of the great comic actors of all time. She is loud and brassy here, as she often was in the movies, but when she slowly seems to be falling in love with Powell's newspaperman, you also get a glimpse of gentleness beneath all of her bluster. The scene at the end of the movie where all four principals show up to have one rowdy argument demonstrates the passion with which Harlow acted. Her death a year after this film's release was a tremendous loss to the industry and to our culture.