Cheap Reckless (Video) (Victor Fleming) Price

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Customer Reviews of Reckless

Painful to watch, for a variety of reasons
This picture seems especially designed to torture Jean Harlow, and to a lesser extent, her fans. <
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>Her character Mona Leslie marries unstable alcoholic playboy Bob Harrsion (disturbingly well played by Franchot Tone - he's like "The Lost Weekend" without the happy ending), whose "sadness goes so deep I couldn't make him happy," and he shoots himself in the head while Mona and her friend/manager Ned (William Powell) are in the next room. <
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>Whoever had the idea to put Harlow in such a role shortly after the suicide by gunshot of her husband Paul Bern must have been extraordinarily cruel, or stupid, or both (David O. Selznick, I'm looking in your direction). Mona is left alone to struggle for custody of, then to raise, her son by Harrison; in real life, all of Jean's pregnancies were teminated at her mother's insistence. <
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>In another kind of irony, Ned is secretly in love with Mona and proposes to her at the end of the movie; in real life, Harlow and Powell were lovers and she was desparate to marry him, but he strung her along until her death, unwilling to commit. <
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>The musical numbers of the film inadvertantly become another harsh treatment of Harlow, as it become painfully obvious that she can neither sing (it's dubbed, and it's not even close to Harlow's real voice) nor dance (despite attempts at trick photography, the double is easy to spot), and to Jean's credit, she seems to know it, seeming very stiff and uncomfortable during these parts of the film. <
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>I guess my knowledge of Harlow's life (via David Stenn's biography) made this movie seem so depressing to me; perhaps someone who's a fan of Harlow's but doesn't know much about her personally would enjoy it more. I doubt it, though; its only saving grace is some of the amusing banter between Ned and Mona's Granny (May Robson).

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MEDIOCRE THIRTIES FLICK.
A bizarre film which was obviously (and rather cruelly) modeled - at least in part - after a tragedy in Harlow's own personal life. For his first picture with Jean Harlow - with whom he was then involved romantically in real life - Bill Powell plays Ned Riley, an aristocrat who marries a "Broadway Baby" (Harlow, natch); tragic melodrama ensues. Harlow was angry at MGM for being forced to do this rather tasteless (for personal reasons) picture which obviously capitalised on the suicide of Paul Bern - Harlow's second husband - whose mysterious death became a notoriously hot scandal sheet subject for the press in 1932. Harlow tries hard to improve her acting in this, but the tension and inner strain is evident in several scenes (no wonder, considering the autobiographical nuances and overtones insinuated by the screen writers!) The Powell-Harlow chemistry ONSCREEN isn't much to mull over in this rather poorly constructed film with carelessly motivated characterisations. Catch LIBELED LADY - a delicious 1936 comedy with Spencer Tracy and Myrna Loy co-starring for a much more satisfying look at the duo at work!

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The STARS are the STANDOUT in this Moving Melodrama!
I have to disagree with Mr. Maltin's review. The superb charm and talent of Mr. William Powell and Jean Harlow are definitely enough to pull you through the so called "phony and tired plotline". It' a pure joy to watch them, they'll make you laugh one minute, and tear your heart out at the next. This film was an unexpected delight. Once you manage to sit through the first and overly long opening musical number, sit back and enjoy. Yes, Jean plays Mona, a stage star, William is Ned, the man responsible for her career, and the man that is secretly in love with her. Enter the drink loving millionaire playboy Bob (Franchot Tone), who Mona falls fall, add one drunken night, and they're married. Of course Bob is already regretting his hasty marriage. However, they return to Bob's aristocratic home town, and the snobbish unacceptance of Bob's father and townsfolk, largely due to the fact that Bob had been engaged to a town favourite (A young Rossalind Russell), when he married Mona...Drama and tragedy ensue, forcing Mona to return to Broadway to support herself and Bob's child. However, a vicious campaign is launched against Mona by the judgemental aristocratic circle that believe the worst about her. All the while, Mona's friends, feisty grandmother and ever faithful Ned, rally around her to the very moving finale, when an almost broken, tearful Mona faces a callous, jeering audience with great style and dignity... I particularly enjoyed Ned's warm, funny, teasing relationship with Mona and especially, her grandmother, the definite highlight of the film. No one plays the charming, comedic tipsy-drunk better than William Powell! Now I can say his dramtic skills are just as good! Finally, I would like to add the corney comment that Ned was truely the wind beneath Mona's wings! Touching and funnily so, without being too sappy!