Harlow, Small Town Girl, and Love on the Run
Among all of the unrealized roles in Jean Harlow’s hypothetical filmography, Small Town Girl and Love on the Run (both 1936) may be two of the most overlooked candidates for discussion; however, there’s no one to blame for the relative silence when Wife vs. Secretary and Libeled Lady are occupying the two front seats of Harlow’s ‘36 output.
Nonetheless, we could be occupying a world devoid of either feature; by lifting the curtain and taking a peek into this chimeric parallel universe, where theatergoers would have been graced by Joan Crawford in Reckless (1935) and Jean Harlow in The Greeks Had a Word For Them (1932), we’re able to better contextualize the unique traits of our favorite performers while simultaneously indulging in a healthy amount of nostalgic fantasy.
At the close of May 1935, Jean Harlow had just wrapped work on China Seas, and her next project, Riffraff, entered pre-production by June. Other transient titles floated around in trade mags over the summer before the announcement of Wife vs. Secretary, such as a Jesse Lasky, Jr. screenplay titled Little Miss Nuisance1 that was shelved by August.2
In the interim, Harlow was poised to star as Kay Brannan opposite Robert Montgomery in MGM’s Small Town Girl, a rather unromantic—and moderately unfunny—romantic comedy that deals mainly with Kay’s penance for the unchaste sin of eloping with a rich stranger in order to escape the tedium of Anytown. Interestingly, what ended up becoming a cloying Janet Gaynor role was originally adapted from a Ben Ames Williams novel with Harlow in mind. John Lee Mahin, whose insights were invaluable to the screenplays of Red Dust and Bombshell,3 was one of four credited writers on the troubled project.
Obviously, the stricter Production Code and its attendant effect on Harlow’s sultry screen image contributed to the stark difference between Bombshell’s Lola and Small Town Girl’s Kay: where Lola spits fire at those who do her wrong, Kay takes the doormat route with her head down. Harlow was removed from the project by October 1935 in favor of Wife vs. Secretary, which she was assigned after begging producer Hunt Stromberg for a more serious project with which to hone her skills.4 Stromberg, who produced both films, may have also recognized that Small Town Girl was simply too impotent serve as a successful foundation for Harlow’s new, milder persona.
Late the same month, Janet Gaynor protested her own loaning out from Fox to MGM for the picture, explaining she found the role too Harlowesque even in spite of potential rewrites. The threat of second billing to Robert Montgomery, who had been intended for the male lead, was another stumbling block for Gaynor.5
Nonetheless, Gaynor appeared at MGM in late December for the production of Small Town Girl,6 but Harlow’s final dismissal from the cast list proved to be the least of her worries. Constant squabbles over their differing comedic styles7 culminated in another late arrival, director William Wellman, asking the studio to remove him from the project entirely. Small Town Girl would prove to be his last full film at MGM for the better part of the next decade,8 though it hardly needs mentioning that Gaynor and Wellman found common ground on A Star Is Born (1937).
Gaynor ended up wrong in her assessment that Small Town Girl was a perfect Harlow vehicle. The final film’s humor relied on jokes at the expense of awkward little Kay Brannan, whose callow, sappish efforts at winning over rich Bob Dakin (Robert Taylor) in light of a drunken union gone sour contrasted almost laughably with Harlow’s worldly, tough-talking characters. To neuter Harlow and cut out her tongue in such a dramatic fashion directly after China Seas, even mildly without rewrites, would have set her audience on its head.
Riffraff, Suzy, and Wife vs. Secretary all contained the element of autonomous sex that Harlow thrived in, even if they weren’t as overt as her pre-Codes. Riffraff’s Hattie inhabits a similarly monotonous world as Small Town Girl’s Kay, full of unglamorous busy work and familial feuds, but her feistiness and refusal to fall flatly to Dutch (Spencer Tracy)’s feet keeps her from being reduced to a cooing parody of herself. Not only does Hattie get her man, but she steals money from her wealthy Lothario to get to him, too.
The plot of Small Town Girl is disappointing by itself. Kay’s undeserved, unreciprocated efforts in taking the silver spoon from an immature surgeon’s son's mouth in order to turn him into a grown man are insipid at their best and insulting at their worst. The payoff is nonexistent until the literal last moment, when Dakin realizes what a fool he’s been and goes to scoop Kay out of the backwoods she’s tearfully retreated into.
Frank S. Nugent put it best in his review for The New York Times: “It takes Miss Gaynor, we regret to say, almost the full period to show Mr. Taylor the error of his ways and rescue him for science. Miss Harlow, we are quite sure, could have done the job over the week-end.”9
Small Town Girl has two notable quirks in common with Love on the Run, another MGM romantic comedy briefly considered for Jean Harlow early in 1936: they were both written by John Lee Mahin and set to star Robert Montgomery, who never graduated to being Harlow’s newest leading man (a status later bestowed upon Robert Taylor with Personal Property).
Love on the Run, which entered production in August 1936, also ran through a steady supply of potential contributors before its clay set; it was originally bought for Montgomery and Myrna Loy, though both stars were too busy with other films to apply their talents to this one. Loy was switched out for Harlow, Montgomery was traded in for Robert Taylor, and after rewrites were subsequently swapped for Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. Robert Young signed on to play Gable’s rival, but was replaced by Franchot Tone by the time filming began (doubtlessly to capitalize on Tone and Crawford’s recent marriage).
While Harlow and Crawford were fundamentally different personalities, especially in their personal lives, both of MGM’s golden geese embodied the same grit and liveliness that made their performances stand out without sacrificing audience relatability. Love on the Run wouldn’t be the first, or the last, production on which they’d move in parallel.
Victor Fleming, who helmed Red Dust and Bombshell alongside John Lee Mahin (and had just directed Harlow in Reckless), was briefly saddled with directorial duties during the Harlow tenure, though he disappeared from the project about when Harlow did. Next up to bat was ‘One-Take Woody’ (W.S. Van Dyke), whose subsequent illness and assignment to The Devil Is a Sissy slowed down production enough to render his sobriquet ironic.10
Harlow’s recent success as the titular showgirl in Suzy had culminated in a $5,000 bonus from MGM and top billing in Libeled Lady,11 a much higher quality project than Love on the Run’s half-baked, pale recycling of It Happened One Night. In the meanwhile, quarrels and delays on Parnell, which poor Myrna Loy would later be punished with, were responsible for tipping Crawford and Gable into Love on the Run.10,11
Positing Love on the Run as a missed opportunity for Harlow after the too-similar Suzy (which also deals with runaway women, Paris, and planes) and before the superior Libeled Lady would be myopic, but it’s easy to imagine just how she would have played Joan Crawford’s scenes—some were in fact better suited for Harlow’s disposition. As easily corroborated by her work in Bombshell, Harlow wouldn’t have been completely out of her element as Sally Parker, a flighty madcap heiress with a justified wariness of reporters.
At the risk of chipping away at some of Miss Crawford’s unquestionable, hard-earned respect, her austerity—which enhances and distinguishes her best performances—is sadly misplaced in her attempts at screwball comedy as Sally Parker in Love on the Run.
In their first scene together, Clark Gable (as Mike Antony) bursts into Crawford (Sally Parker)’s hotel room after a charming runaway bride sequence and offers her the bouquet she lost on the way. Crawford’s barking delivery of “Take them away!” is so straightforwardly indignant that it all but draws away from the line’s intended humor.
Harlow, whose barbed tongue was subtler and a touch warmer, would have elicited the intended reaction without Crawford’s harshness; the sheer authenticity in her anger drags us back to Earth and quashes the suspension of disbelief necessary for such a daffy screwball plot. It would have also been fun to see Harlow play off Ivan Lebedeff for a second time, whose grubby Prince Igor, left by Crawford’s Sally at the altar, isn’t far off from Bombshell’s Marquis Hugo.
Unrelatedly, there is a dreamlike sequence in Love on the Run in which Mike and Sally, having flown a plane to Paris, take up residence for a night inside the Palace of Fontainebleau. Sally stumbles upon the bedroom of Marie Antoinette, and tiptoes around the room waltzing to the Queen’s wind-up music box.
One role Jean Harlow expressed a strong desire to play was that of Marie Antoinette,13 which was then being developed for Norma Shearer at MGM; had she starred in Love on the Run, she’d have gotten a small taste of her wish. The delicacy of the scene meshes well with the sentimentality Harlow could have lent it, especially during a time full of her own laments about unsympathetic typecasting.
Harlow’s filmography may be heartbreakingly short, but her vim, vitality and talent are hardly contained within. It’s hard not to imagine the path she would have forged after Saratoga when faced with such a disciplined, dynamic onscreen presence that all but unexpectedly fizzled out at its apex. In looking at Small Town Girl and Love on the Run as pieces of a bigger, unrealized puzzle, even more comes together; Hunt Stromberg, who tasked Harlow with Wife vs. Secretary as proof of his confidence in her ability, would go on to buy The Women with Crystal in mind for her.14
While it’s wishful thinking to shake a fist at the sky, cursing the inability to move the clock back by over eight decades to prevent the unpreventable, discussing roles considered for Harlow that were never taken help flesh out her emotional qualities, and keep us abreast of an astute actress whose lifetime—and body of work—continually drift farther from us.
References
“Salvage Yarn for Harlow.” Variety, vol. 119, no. 10, 21 Aug. 1935, p. 4.
Niemeyer, H.H. “Big Shake-up Follows Sheehan’s Resignation from Fox Company.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8 Aug. 1935, p. 2D.
Stenn, David. Bombshell. Doubleday Books, 1993, pp. 94, 150.
Rooney, Darrell, and Mark A. Vieira. Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937. Angel City Press, 2011, p. 179.
“Miss Gaynor Regrets She’s Unable to Follow Jean Harlow in Role.” Variety, vol. 120, no. 7, 30 Oct. 1935, p. 3.
“Small Town Girl (1936).” AFI Catalog, www.catalog.afi.com/Film/4864-SMALL-TOWNGIRL. Accessed 10 June 2024.
Landazuri, Margarita. “Small Town Girl (1936).” TCM, 19 Nov. 2004, www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1170/small-town-girl. Accessed 10 June 2024.
Thompson, Frank T. William A. Wellman. Metuchen, N.J., & London, Scarecrow Press, 1983, pp. 160–161.
Nugent, Frank S. “Four New Films, Including “Small Town Girl,” at the Capitol, Join the Easter Parade.” The New York Times, 11 Apr. 1936.
“Love on the Run (1936).” AFI Catalog, www.catalog.afi.com/Film/7869-LOVE-ON-THE-RUN. Accessed 10 June 2024.
Stenn, David. Bombshell. Doubleday Books, 1993, p. 204.
Parsons, Louella O. ““New Mexico” Set as First Film at Fairbanks Studio.” Evening Courier [Camden], 22 July 1936, p. 11.
Rogers St. Johns, Adela. “Now It Can Be Told! The Jean Harlow Story Hollywood Suppressed.” Photoplay, vol. 51, no. 8, Aug. 1937, p. 126.
Rooney, Darrell, and Mark A. Vieira. Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937. Angel City Press, 2011, p. 226.