Saratoga

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Saratoga (1937) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A bookie (Clark Gable) takes a horse ranch from a friend who eventually dies but the man's daughter (Jean Harlow) does what she can to get it back. The troubled history of this film is certainly a lot more interesting than the actual film. Harlow died before the film was completed and apparently MGM was just going to put the film on the shelf but fans wanted it released so the unfinished scenes were eventually shot with a double who most of the time has her back to the camera. The scenes with the double come off pretty badly and they're rather obvious especially with the voice double. It's also rather eerie that there's a running joke in the film about Harlow being sick. As for the actual film, it's pretty disappointing due to the wonderful cast yet it still manages to be slightly entertaining. Both Gable and Harlow are good in their roles but neither do the best work of their career. The film really belongs to Lionel Barrymore who plays Harlow's uncle. He gives a wonderful comic performance and gives the film all of its laughs. Frank Morgan, Walter Pidgeon and George Zucco round out the cast.

This film is famous for being known as the film Jean Harlow was working on when she died suddenly, and was replaced for long shots, back of head shots and side shots by a stand-in. The material they have of Harlow is wonderful, but sadly, it noticeably changes 3/4 way through the film. The story is about an American girl (Harlow) coming back from Europe with a hoity toity British accent (like Ginger Rogers did in several films) engaged to race track enthusiast Walter Pidgeon but slowly falling in love with bookie Clark Gable whom she initially can't stand. Gable held a note from her late father (Otto Kruger) for gambling debts, so Harlow initially resents him. But Gable & Harlow are TNT, and Pidgeon, here in the unfortunate Ralph Bellamy role, can't win. Frank Morgan plays "Harriet Hale", the cold-cream queen, whose wife (Una Merkel) is a flirtatious "old acquaintance" of Gable's. He begins to think there's hanky panky going on between the two & conspires with Harlow against Gable at the racetrack. The major highlight is "The Horse with the Dreamy Eyes", a song started by Cliff "Ukeilele Ike" Edwards on the train ride to Saratoga that soon gets everybody singing. The biggest surprise is how the passengers urge black maid Hattie McDaniels to sing a verse, and she lights up with those rolling eyes as she warbles. Having sung the year before in "Show Boat", she was known for her singing talent, but this is her in modern times practically an equal long before civil rights came along. McDaniels may be playing a maid, but its obvious that she is doing it on HER terms. Her heart glows through those eyes, making her a total scene-stealer in this film. Also worth mentioning is the scene where future "Wizard" and future "Witch" Frank Morgan and Margaret Hamilton meet with Merkel and Gable. While they had worked together in an RKO film called "By Your Leave", they did not appear together in "The Wizard of Oz", so this being easier to find than "By Your Leave", it is a delight to see them together in a very funny scene. I found Lionel Barrymore's performance to be a bit overacted as Harlow's grandfather. Sadly, "Saratoga" shows a slight weakness towards the end as Harlow is obviously replaced by her stand-in. Only the back of her head is shown, and the voice meant to sound like her is a pale imitation. It isn't the fault of the actress, simply unfortunate circumstances. The scene where Harlow starts coughing profusely in character is really an unfortunate moment considering what would happen only a few months later.

Although Saratoga is a lighthearted comedy about the horse racing game set in that former pleasure town of the rich and famous with the death of Jean Harlow while filming this movie it carries an aura of sadness that at least for me is impossible to overcome. It's an average film and not anything close to what I believe Harlow's best work on screen in such items as Libeled Lady, The Girl From Missouri, Dinner At Eight, and Red Dust. Still her final film was with her most frequent screen partner and one whom she had great chemistry with. Clark Gable plays a bookmaker who has some big IOUs from Jean's father Jonathan Hale who dies and passes those on to his daughter. Jean has an easy out if she marries wealthy Walter Pidgeon who's panting hot and heavy for her. But she eventually sees Gable is the one for her. What is also sad is that Harlow for whatever reason kept going when it is obviously apparent she's suffering from the undiagnosed uremic poisoning that eventually killed her. That's a separate issue from the legendary story that her mother's Christian Science beliefs prevented her from seeking the medical treatment that would have saved her life. Maybe she should have been replaced and the film re-shot, who can know about these things? Jean Harlow was the subject of a couple of lurid films based on Irving Schulman's book about her life that came out in the Sixties. By all accounts I've read about her from her contemporaries, Jean Harlow was a kind and gracious woman who was generous to a fault and always willing to help a newcomer. I would recommend reading Rosalind Russell's autobiography Life Is A Banquet where she talks about how Jean helped Russell the rookie on the set of China Seas. So this review is dedicated to Jean Harlow and for all the great performances she had in her that we were never destined to see.

Ordinary comedy would have been a cinematic footnote and a stop gap for Gable and Harlow before their next scheduled pairing on loan to Fox for the much more worthwhile In Old Chicago if not for Jean's sudden death. Instead it ended up becoming the second most profitable film of 1937 and a notorious cash grab for Metro. Not really a bad film but hardly the best film on any of the actors resumes. Other than the ghoulish, rather easy, game of spotting the scenes filmed after Jean's passing with a stand-in the film is packed with great character actors and actresses doing good work. Of particular note is Una Merkel, sassy and smart as an old crony of Gable's. Jean's part is one that's far away from her more famous early persona as a brassy good time girl but in line with the more refined lady-like roles Mayer was moving her towards after Irving Thalberg's death and which she had been transitioning to nicely. Considering the fact that it's an incomplete performance she is fine in her role, she looks weary and a bit bloated throughout not surprisingly since unbeknownst to all her kidneys were failing. Her death actually caused great upheaval in many films that were in development at the time changing the course of many careers. She and Gable were to head over to Fox for In Old Chicago which proved a boon to Alice Faye and Tyrone Power. For their services Shirley Temple was to be loaned to MGM for the Wizard of Oz, when that fell through of course Judy Garland was cast pulling her out and Ann Rutherford in to the small part of Carreen in GWTW. Also among many other planned projects Maisie, originally planned as an A production but moved to the B unit after the loss of Jean, was allocated to Ann Sothern so successfully that it started her on a series that ran, between other films, almost ten years.

"Saratoga" (1937) directed by Jack Conway, where Jean Harlow in a scene is putting face powder during a break at the horses race on Churchill Downs and she is enough interesting as character seen from her back as style and ritual of acting, as repetitive gesture of the women in instinctive standing before society with nothing to do after the end of a given race. A trip by train and sleeping at night after talking, it is another scene of anthology from the thirties or also another, where all people around approaching, inside a saloon near the room of her, listening by the radio transmission which it seems a match of baseball, but it is a race horsing for gamblers broadcast from the stadium, interrupting their domestic activities for hearing the results of the winning horse, each time screaming as little boys. Both scenes for instance were moments of social conviviality, among bosses and employees in this comedy of happiness, waiting for the next as though nothing happened out of racing horses, except the mental health of this young woman, daughter of a land owner with horses for races. The sense of a reasonable attitude is at stake, when the daughter of the owner of racing horses refuses to take medication, before the diagnostic made by the physician in her room after a break in her health. Refusing even the recommendation of staying alone on the bed, without too much light in the room by day, because her lack of sleeping when anguish and the turmoil of her own life are surrounded by friends of these quality and glamor, by whom they care after all for her better health. It is quite instructive knowing, how it is possible after such a last derby, what of either horses won really at the place of the other ; because, at first sight, it's impossible by the line of departure directly from the stadium itself during the race. The scene where is projecting a documentary, in a special session and where the viewers were a group of friends from the horses racing, with the main characters of this fiction movie there : it is almost unbelievable of happiness for the time, with smiles in every figure and particularly of the daughter of the horses farmer, for racing in such derbies and it works well as satisfactory behavior among them, when they discovered the small difference between the winner and the second place, by the slow motion at least on the last seconds, frame by frame on the screen projection with Moon Ray in second place, viewed by them in a special room aside the stadium, like a kind of referees from this distinguished people belonging to high society.

Taken as a diverting bit of fluff, "Saratoga" is a pleasant film not worthy of the talents of its cast but easy on the eyes. The plot is in the screwball vein but lacking the manic intensity of the genre; it revolves around a bookie trying to save a horse farm by luring a rich "chump" to lose racing bets & finance the endeavor. Clark Gable, looking alarmingly thin, is the bookie and he delivers his standard performance. Scenery-chewing Lionel Barrymore and blustering Frank Morgan are on hand playing characters they perfected during their careers. Also on board are Una Merkel, Walter Pidgeon, and in a bit role Dennis O'Keefe. Unfortunately all of this is secondary to the only reason this film merits attention: it is the final film of legendary Jean Harlow. The tragedy of Miss Harlow has been well documented. She was literally dying while shooting this movie and it is a difficult film to sit through knowing this. In the final 20-25 minutes her character is clearly played by a double hidden behind binoculars, a large hat, or shot from behind. Nobody wanted to finish the movie after Miss Harlow passed away but there was such an outcry from her fans that the picture was completed by a heavy- hearted studio. Ironically it was her biggest hit film largely because everyone wanted to get a final glimpse of her. Her performance is not one of her best; she is lacking her usual energy & effervescence. But it is an incredibly poignant performance knowing the terrible physical pain she must have been suffering during the shoot. By all accounts Jean Harlow was an amazing individual; beloved by all and someone who valued the happiness of others over her own. She was more concerned about letting the cast & crew of "Saratoga" down than getting help for her illness. A class act to the end.

Reason why this movie in a way is perhaps a bit of a must see is because this movie features Jean Harlow in her last role before her death. She collapsed on the set and died not much later in the hospital at the age of 26. She must have been quite ill during the entire production of this movie. Is this perhaps also a reason why her character becomes ill in the movie? Because there is no real obvious other reason I can think of as of why they put that in the movie, it had little use or value to the movie its story or her character. But I surely wish that her last movie would had been a different and more worthy one. This comedy offers little entertainment and perhaps even is a bit boring at times because of the formulaic story. As a comedy it simply ain't funny enough and as a drama it ain't powerful enough. So it's a bit of a 'pointless' movie to watch. It's an extremely average romantic movie were oh so many movies like this one had been made of already. Still the atmosphere is quite good. The movie has a kind of an almost childish innocence that lot of movies made for WW II had. During and after WW II, movie's became more serious and perhaps also more meaningful. It's obvious that this movie was made just to bring shear joy and entertainment to the people in the cinema. The whole singing in the train sequence's is perhaps the best example of the movie its innocence. Clark Gable is quite good in his role but the line's he has to deliver are simply at times just plain annoying. Also the fact that Lionel Barrymore was in this movie didn't do much good for me. As an actor I can't really stand Lionel Barrymore, he so often irritates me. Most certainly not recommendable, unless you're interested in seeing Jean Harlow in her last role. 6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

This was the last film that Jean Harlow appeared in during her brief career. You might notice I wrote "appeared in" and not "completed"--that is because she died in mid-production from a minor illness complicated by her and her mother's religious beliefs (which forbade the use of doctors or traditional medicine). So, Hollywood did what they could to both salvage the film they already shot AND capitalize on her death--they CONTINUED with the film using her stand-in. However, as she was obviously NOT Ms. Harlow, they shot her from behind--often wearing a very large hat to obscure her and having a slightly different voice. Because of this, it's fun to watch to try to spot the REAL and the FAKE Harlow. Apart from this, this is a decent MGM Harlow-Gable film. Not extraordinary but still quite good and a lot better than one of their earlier pairings in Hold On To Your Man.