Libeled Lady

[3.0 stars] [IMDB Link]

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

No, this isn't yet another post about Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Fluke. This is about a 1936 movie, a screwball comedy with four, count 'em, four big stars: Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, and William Powell. It was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

The plot, or should I say pretext: Ms. Loy is the high-society daughter of a fabulously rich tycoon; a scandal-sheet newspaper, run by Spencer Tracy, has just printed some sort of slur against her, and will almost certainly lose the $5 million libel suit her dad is about to file against them.

And in 1936, $5 million was a lot of money.

This emergency causes Tracy to put off (yet again) his marriage to Jean Harlow, who's understandably frustrated. Tracy's plan is to enlist his old friend/adversary William Powell in an underhanded scheme to get Ms. Loy into a compromising situation. The resulting scandal will derail the problematic libel suit! Problem solved!

A moderate amount of funny stuff happens, but the humor leans a lot on fast-talking wisecracks and sharp retorts. There are a number of stretches with nothing much going on. The outcome is not surprising. Ordinarily this might not deserve 3 full stars, but—hey it's Loy and Powell, and they had more chemistry than Linus Pauling and Marie Curie.

Now, if Netflix could only track down the two Thin Man DVDs we haven't seen yet…


Last Modified 2024-01-28 8:57 AM EDT