Red-Headed Woman (1932)

Red-Headed Woman, directed by Jack Conway and released by MGM in 1932, is perhaps the most cheerfully amoral of all pre-code movies. In fact it might even be described as cheerfully immoral. It’s huge amounts of fun either way.

It’s one of Jean Harlow’s three greatest movies (the others being Red Dust and Bombshell).

Lil Andrews (Jean Harlow) is a girl on the make. She was born on the wrong side of the tracks but she intends to get herself over onto the right side of the tracks and stay there. She has set her sights on her boss, Bill Legendre Jr (Chester Morris). He’s an up-and coming executive but more importantly his family has pots of money. And respectability. Marrying Bill would be a smart movie for Lil. There are however two minor problems. Bill is already married, and he loves his wife. Lil believes that these are very minor obstacles.

What Lil’s seduction technique lacks in subtlety it makes up for in sheer fanatical determination. She is simply not going to give up.

Lil achieves her objective but then finds she has some major new problems to deal with. She has made an advantageous marriage but respectable society in Renwood will not have anything to do with her. She is snubbed, in a particularly callous and cruel way. Lil is genuinely hurt and humiliated.

But you can’t keep a bad girl down. No matter how severe the setback Lil will always pick herself up and try again. Or, more usually, she will try a different strategy. She has a pretty clever strategy in mind to deal with this situation and she has prepared the groundwork already.

Lil will have plenty of further ups and downs but she will never admit defeat.

The very pre-code ending is everything one could hope for.

Harlow is in sparkling form. Lil is unscrupulous and dishonest and manipulative but one can’t help admiring her unquenchable spirit. She is also vulgar, trashy and obvious but that’s the secret to her success. Girls who are pretty, sexy and trashy are irresistible to men. And Lil oozes sex. Lil could have been a monster but Harlow manages to get the audience on Lil’s side. She’s just such a cute adorable bad girl.

Harlow of course looks gorgeous. She looks gorgeous in a cheap glitzy trashy sort of way but Harlow could always pull that off with style.

Chester Morris is pretty good as well. Where Lil is concerned Bill is torn between repulsion and attraction and Morris conveys this effectively.

Una Merkel almost steals the picture as Lil’s best friend, the delightfully ditzy Sally. Una Merkel is always fun in pre-code movies.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the screenplay but Irving Thalberg hated it. It lacked the wit and playfulness that Thalberg wanted, so he hired Anita Loos to do a complete rewrite. Loos was the right woman for the job. This is the sort of thing she did supremely well and she produced a sparkling and very playfully naughty script which delighted Thalberg.

It’s that playfulness that incensed the moral watchdogs. It’s bad enough that the movie deals with adultery but to deal with that subject flippantly and with cheerful approval was just too much. This is wickedness played for laughs. 

Even worse, when her men lose patience with her and slap her she enjoys it.

Lil has her share of temporary defeats but at no time does it ever occur to her that she is doing anything morally wrong. When things get tough for her that just means that she needs to readjust her strategy. She has never considered the option of becoming a good girl. She intends to be a rich girl. She was born without any of the advantages that would allow her to be a rich good girl, so she’ll be a rich bad girl. She never has any regrets and she never apologises for being what she is.

And the movie never apologies for being what it is. If you’re thinking that maybe somewhere along the line some hint of moral disapproval, or some hint that sin has to be paid for, will sneak its way into this picture then you’re going to be disappointed. As far as this movie is concerned sin pays.

Red-Headed Woman is one of the great pre-code movies. Very highly recommended.