Movie of the Week: Too Hot to Handle (1938)

This week, Clark Gable is a rogue newsreel reporter and Myrna Loy is a determined aviatrix in Too Hot to Handle (1938).

This film is an interesting look behind the scenes at the now-extinct-thanks-to-television-and-internet newsreel business. Gable is Chris Hunter, a newsreel cameraman who is always in the middle of the action. Walter Pidgeon is Bill Dennis, a rival newsreel cameraman who is constantly trying to out-scoop Chris. Both of them are bored in Shanghai since they can’t get anywhere near the action of the Chinese-Japanese war. When his boss (Walter Connolly) starts demanding action shots of the war, Chris obliges by making up fake shots using toy airplanes and sending them in. This angers Bill who decides to get even by sending his girlfriend, Alma (Myrna Loy) to fly in and he tricks Chris into thinking she is delivering vaccines so he’ll get an action shot. Chris’ driver ends up accidentally causing Alma’s plane to crash while trying to get the shot and Chris rescues her from the blaze. Chris and Alma soon fall for each other, much to Bill’s chagrin. The two men constantly try to outdo each other, until binding together (somewhat) to help Alma find her brother, who is held captive by voodoo bushmen in the South American jungle.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Being a classic film fan as I am, I hate to use this sentence, but it’s true: this film feels dated. Mainly because nowadays news is instant–on the television, on the computer, on the phone in the palm of your hand. Reporters are live on the scene in every country and video is available instantly in many formats. So it’s a little funny to see Clark’s boss saying he’s waited two weeks for news footage from Shanghai, and to see how the newsreels are flown over in big planes and then processed strand by strand. Although I suppose the idea of newsmen trying to out-scoop each other will never be dated!

Clark and Myrna were re-teamed after the success of Test Pilot, which I feel is definitely the superior film of the two. I’ve always felt Myrna is rather wasted in this film; she just kind of puts around worrying about her lost brother. She agreed with me, later saying: “[Too Hot to Handle] wasn’t really much of a part, rather routine. It really was mostly Gable. He’s wonderful, very comical, as the newsreel reporter who fakes stories. The whole thing was fun though, and a bit hazardous.”

Walter Pidgeon’s here playing second fiddle to Clark again, just as he had in the previous year’s Saratoga. And yet again he loses the girl to Clark’s charms. Poor Pidgeon.

I do love Walter Connolly. He always plays the boss or the father, and is always sputtering and screaming. He’s a riot. He memorably played Claudette Colbert’s father in It Happened One Night. As his boss, he’s constantly yelling at Clark in this one.

I very much enjoy the first half of this film,with Clark and Walter trying to outdo each other and Clark  (as usual) smirking and winking his way out of trouble. When they go on their exotic adventure to South America, it starts to drag for me. In films of this era, the vast majority of audiences hadn’t been to these far flung locales (and likely never would) so these kind of escapades were considered very thrilling and interesting, whereas nowadays it comes across as fake and in this case, ugh, rather racist.

Contrary to what I’ve seen people write on the internet, Too Hot to Handle was not filmed on location in South America; it was filmed entirely on the MGM backlot. In fact, Clark trampled through the same man-made jungle years earlier for Red Dust.

Full review is here

Nutshell review is here

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