Platinum Blonde

Frank Capra tale about a newspaperman stymied by a fair-haired heiress who wants to put the kibosh on the investigation of her brother’s breach of promise lawsuit., Jean Harlow may have been under contract to MGM, but it was at lowly Columbia Pictures that she played the title role in the aptly titled Platinum Blonde. Director Frank Capra always claimed that he and screenwriter Robert Riskin “stole” the plot from The Front Page, but beyond their mutual “newspaper” backgrounds there is no real resemblance between the two films. Robert Williams, a comic actor who died in 1932, plays a wisecracking, easily distracted reporter who manages to insult wealthy socialite Harlow (playing an uncharacteristically unsympathetic character). As retaliation, the girl inveigles Williams into marrying her, which not only shocks his news-hound buddies but sends his erstwhile sweetheart, sob sister Loretta Young, into an emotional tailspin — though she won’t let him know that. Williams tries to remain his old down-to-earth self, but soon his head has been turned 180 degrees by Harlow and her society chums, whereupon he gives up journalism to become an artsy-fartsy playwright. Finally brought to his senses, Williams gives Harlow the ozone and returns to his old job — and to Young, who has never stopped loving the big lug. Many of the elements prevalent in Platinum Blonde were echoed in Capra’s later films, notably the hero’s preoccupation with such trivial pursuit as a pocket-sized puzzle and his tendency to settle arguments with stuffed shirts by punching them out., Frank Capra’s romantic comedy stars Robert Williams as Stew Smith, a star newspaper reporter who falls for and marries society girl Anne Schuyler. But after being ejected from the marital home following a wild party, Stew falls straight into the arms of fellow reporter Gallagher, the girl he should have married all along. Harlow is stunning as the callous society girl but Williams wasn’t to share in the film’s success – he died after an operation for appendicitis weeks after it opened.