Movie of the Month: Hold Your Man (1933)

Probably the least-known of Clark and Jean Harlow’s pairings, Hold Your Man is a scandulous pre-code with a pretty good melodrama in its center.

Gable is Eddie Hall, a small-time con man on the run from the cops when he bursts into Ruby Adams’ (Jean Harlow) apartment and finds her in the bathtub. Ruby and Eddie quickly realize they are two peas in a pod: she is somewhat of a con artist herself, seducing and manipulating men to get what she wants. This is definitely pre-production code stuff, as the film offers no innuendo to cover up the fact that Eddie and Ruby are sleeping together. One of Eddie’s cons goes bad and he ends up in jail. Ruby is waiting for him upon his release and they quickly hatch a plan to con money out of one of Ruby’s suitors. It turns sour when Eddie becomes jealous and accidently kills the man. When the cops arrive, Ruby and Eddie are on their way back from getting a marriage license. Ruby gets lost in the crowd and nabbed by the cops, while Eddie escapes. She is sentenced to two years in a women’s reformatory. Soon after arriving there, she realizes she is pregnant. When Eddie learns of her pregnancy, he rushes to be by her side. Ruby’s fellow inmates help hide him and orchestrate a wedding for them in the campus chapel, after Eddie pleads for the priest to marry them so his kid can have a chance and not be illegitimate. Just after they are pronounced man and wife, Eddie is hauled away by the cops and Ruby is left alone, crying. Time passes and the film ends with Eddie being reunited with Ruby and their small tow-headed son at the train station.

Although they are both crooks, the love between them is just so sweet. And if it had been made just a year or two later, we would miss out on them eating breakfast together after an evening, ahem…together, Clark’s former lover retrieving her face cream from the bathroom in his apartment and such lines from Clark as, “Don’t be so hard to get—I’m the fellow that saw you in the bathtub!” Seems like tame stuff now, but not so much for the Legion of Decency!

Both Clark and Jean have some great comedic moments. Jean is excellent as a sassy chiseler and Clark…well, can you beat Clark, naked in a bathtub, face full of soap, shrieking, “Close the door! There’s a draft!”

Also Jean really steps up to the plate as a dramatic actress. She has a very poignant scene when she realizes she is pregnant while in the womens reformatory. And the scene where they are torn apart immediately after their wedding is heartwrenching.

I have a special fondness for this film. Most people would list “China Seas” or “Red Dust” as their favorite Clark & Jean pairing. But not me.  I remember the first time I saw it; I had taped it off TCM and it had sat there on my Tivo marinating for a while. It was probably on there a month before I got to it. I thought, “Oh, another Clark and Jean film, I’ll watch it later.” I was blown away by how good it turned out to be and I ended up watching it two nights in a row.

They are just so in sync in this film. And the story does get a bit sappy and yes, Clark’s tears in the wedding scene are a bit forced, but all I know is I had tears streaming down my face the first time I saw it and it is one of the few Gable films that I find myself re-watching every year.

Hold Your Man is not available on DVD, unfortunately.

Find more info here and see pics from the film here.