Movie of the Month: The Secret Six (1931)
The centennial of Jean Harlow’s birth is coming up in March 2011. To celebrate, the next five movies featured will be all of Clark’s movies with the legendary Miss Harlow. (But wait! You are saying–they starred in six movies together! True, but we’ve already featured Wife vs. Secretary as Movie of the Month in July)
So to start with, here’s the very first of their pairings…
The Secret Six, from 1931
Clark, not yet a star, was still playing second fiddle. Billed seventh, he is lagging behind Wallace Beery, Johnny Mack Brown and Lewis Stone for screen time. Not for long, as just a few months after the release of The Secret Six came A Free Soul and from then on Clark was a household name.
Clark and Johnny are rival newspapermen and although they are always competing for both stories and Jean’s affections, they are friendly. Johnny is more the central character of the story, until Wally Beery’s gang decides they’ve had enough of him ratting them out and do him in. Then Clark jumps to the occaison, for the greater good and to venge Johnny’s death. And down comes Wally’s gang, into a crumbling heap. I get the feeling that Wally’s character, a down-on-his-luck simpleton thrown into a gang war before he knows what happens, is supposed to be the character we relate to. Maybe at first, but quickly it is Johnny, then Clark who holds the viewer’s attention.
Clark doesn’t have much to do other than jab at Johnny and make eyes at Jean, but it is an interesting chapter in his early career. He was beginning to emerge out of the cocoon of rough and tumble characters and his comedic and romantic capabilities were starting to show. Clark was offered a contract with MGM after this film–a relationship that would last over 20 years. Jean, too, loaned from Warner Brothers for this role, soon became a star in MGM’s roster. MGM producer Irving Thalberg definitely took notice of Clark and Jean’s natural chemistry. As a result, Red Dust would premiere less than a year later and so a legendary film pair was born. Clark and “the Baby” who he affectionately called “Sis”, became close friends and remained so until her untimely death in 1937.
As Clark’s star was rising, Johnny’s was fading. Having been a star in silent films, he suffered the fate of many of his contemporaries–his acting just wasn’t translating to the talkies. Clark even replaced him in a film later the same year, Laughing Sinners, when audiences laughed at Johnny’s love scenes with Joan Crawford at a preview. His career at MGM soon ended and he was relegated to “B” Westerns at lesser studios.
Certainly The Secret Six is not one of Clark’s better films, but I like it because it displays the beginnings of Clark’s onscreen chemistry with Jean. And I see shadings of It Happened One Night’s Peter Warne in Clark’s newspaperman here. Especially in the last scene where he declares he is done with journalism but is lured back by a juicy story!
The Secret Six is not out yet on DVD.