Red Dust | |
---|---|
Directed by | Victor Fleming |
Written by | Donald Ogden Stewart (uncredited) |
Screenplay by | John Mahin |
Based on | Red Dust 1928 play by Wilson Collison |
Produced by | Hunt Stromberg (uncredited) Irving Thalberg (uncredited) |
Starring | Clark Gable Jean Harlow Mary Astor Gene Raymond |
Cinematography | Harold Rosson Arthur Edeson |
Edited by | Blanche Sewell |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
|
Running time | 83 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $408,000 [1] |
Box office | $1.2 million [1] |
Red Dust is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Victor Fleming, and starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Mary Astor. [2] It is based on the 1928 play of the same name by Wilson Collison, and was adapted for the screen by John Mahin. [2] [3] Red Dust is the second of six movies Gable and Harlow made together. More than 20 years later, Gable starred in a remake, Mogambo (1953), with Ava Gardner starring in a variation on the role Harlow played and Grace Kelly playing a part similar to one portrayed by Astor in Red Dust.
The film, set on a rubber plantation in French Indochina (present-day Vietnam), provides a view into the French colonial rubber business. It includes scenes of rubber trees being tapped for sap, the process of coagulating the rubber with acid, native workers being rousted, gales that can blow the roof off a hut and are difficult to walk in, the spartan living quarters, the supply boat that arrives periodically, a rainy spell that lasts weeks, and tigers prowling the jungle. The film's title is derived from the large quantities of dust stirred up by storms.
In 2006, Red Dust was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
On a rubber plantation in French Indochina during the monsoon season, the plantation's owner/manager Dennis Carson (Gable), a prostitute named Vantine (Harlow), and Barbara Willis (Astor), the wife of engineer Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) are involved in a love triangle. Dennis abandons an informal relationship with Vantine to pursue Barbara, but has a change of heart and returns to Vantine. This all unspools against the backdrop of racial and labor tension with local workers ("coolies"), overseer Guidon's drunkenness, a roaming tiger, frequent wind and rain, and servant Hoy (Fung) providing comic relief.
Vantine arrives at the plantation first, on the lam from the authorities in Saigon. She shows an easy comfort in the plantation's harsh environment, wisecracks continually, and begins playfully teasing Dennis as soon as she meets him, including byplay over the merits of Roquefort vs. Gorgonzola cheese. He resists her charms at first, but soon gives in, and they quickly develop a friendly, casual relationship where they tease each other and pretend to be too tough for affection. They call each other "Fred" and "Lily", as though neither can be bothered to remember the other's name.
However, Dennis loses interest in Vantine when the Willises arrive. Gary Willis is a young, inexperienced engineer, and his wife Barbara a classy, ladylike beauty. Dennis is immediately attracted to Barbara, and, after sending Gary on a lengthy surveying trip, he spends the next week seducing Barbara as Vantine watches jealously. He successfully persuades Barbara to leave Gary, but recants after visiting Gary in the swamp and learning how deeply he loves Barbara. Dennis has also seen that Barbara is unsuited for the plantation's primitive conditions, as is Gary, and has a painful memory of his own mother's death on the plantation when he was a boy. He decides to send both of them back to more civilized surroundings.
At the story's climax, Dennis turns Barbara's feelings against him by pretending he never loved her, at which point she shoots him. This provides a cover for Vantine and Dennis to save Barbara's marriage and reputation by insisting to Gary that Barbara rejected Dennis's advances. Gary says he would have shot Dennis if his wife hadn't. The film ends after Dennis has sent the Willises away, with Vantine reading bedtime stories to him as he recuperates from the gunshot wound, as he playfully tries to fondle her, and wisecracks, "Roquefort or Gorgonzola?" before Hoy pokes his head into the room, titters, and has a pillow thrown at him.
According to John Lee Mahin, the original director was meant to be Jacques Feyder and the original stars were supposed to be John Gilbert and Jean Harlow. Mahin says he suggested Clark Gable play the lead instead of Gilbert to Hunt Stromberg, who agreed. The budget was increased and Feyder was removed from the film. [4]
One of the movie's most memorable scenes has Harlow taking a bath in a rain barrel. The scene is referenced in another Harlow film, Bombshell , where the set from this movie is replicated. According to legend, during the scene's filming, a topless Harlow stood up in the barrel and proclaimed, "Here's one for the boys in the lab!" [5]
Red Dust (1932), a pre-Code Hollywood film, was allowed to show actress Jean Harlow taking a bath, while actor Clark Gable is pulling her hair. A provocative publicity photograph showed Gable embracing Harlow with his hands just below her bosom.
Variety gave the film a lukewarm reception, stating: "Familiar plot stuff, but done so expertly it almost overcomes the basic script shortcomings and the familiar hot-love-in-the-isolated-tropics theme (from the play by Wilson Collison)." [6] Unimpressed with Mary Astor's performance, the reviewer wrote: "Astor is ok in the passive virtuous moments, but falls down badly on the clinches, sustained only by Gable." [7] However, they were complimentary towards Gable's performance, and liked Jean Harlow's portrayal of Vantine: "She plays the light lady to the limit, however, not overdoing anything." [7]
Modern reviewers are more favorably disposed to the movie. Ozus' World Movie Reviews reported: "Great performances from the stars make you forget that Gable played a sexist and that the melodrama bordered on being camp." [8] Ken Hanke of the Mountain Xpress wrote: "Red Dust (1932) is something of an anomaly in that it's everything you don't expect from that most conservative of studios Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is rough, brief, to the point, and gleefully trashy." [9] Three Movie Buffs Movie Reviews wrote: "Clark Gable and Jean Harlow made six movies together, of which Red Dust was their second. With his man's man persona and her sexy, brassy personality, they made a great onscreen couple. Their scenes together are the best parts of an already good movie." [10]
According to MGM records, the film earned $781,000 in the US and Canada, and $442,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $399,000. [1]
In 2002, the film was nominated for the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Passions" list. [11]
Red Dust was remade by director John Ford in 1953 as Mogambo , this time set in Africa rather than Indochina, and shot on location in color, with Ava Gardner playing Harlow's role and Grace Kelly in Astor's part. Clark Gable returned to play the same character he portrayed twenty-one years earlier. Ford used African tribal music as the film's score.
Red Dust was first released to home media on VHS by MGM. [2] In November 2012, the Warner Archive Collection released it on manufactured-on-demand DVD. [12]
William Clark Gable was an American film actor. Often referred to as the "King of Hollywood", he had roles in more than 60 films in a variety of genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades of which was as a leading man. He was named the seventh greatest male movie star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone was an American actor, producer, and director of stage, film and television. He was a leading man in the 1930s and early 1940s, and at the height of his career was known for his gentlemanly sophisticate roles, with supporting roles by the 1950s. His acting crossed many genres including pre-Code romantic leads to noir layered roles and World War I films. He appeared as a guest star in episodes of several golden age television series, including The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour while continuing to act and produce in the theater and movies throughout the 1960s.
Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were Gone with the Wind, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director, and The Wizard of Oz. Fleming has those same two films listed in the top 10 of the American Film Institute's 2007 AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list.
Mogambo is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisting entirely of actual African tribal music recorded in the Congo, the film was adapted by John Lee Mahin from the play Red Dust by Wilson Collison. The picture is a remake of Red Dust (1932), which was set in Vietnam and also starred Gable in the same role.
Jean Harlow was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends list.
Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke, better known professionally as Mary Astor, was an American actress. Although her career spanned several decades, she may be best remembered for her performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Indochine is a 1992 French period drama film set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement. The screenplay was written by novelist Érik Orsenna, screenwriters Louis Gardel and Catherine Cohen, and director Régis Wargnier. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Pérez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards, and Deneuve was nominated for Best Actress.
Green Fire is a 1954 American CinemaScope and Eastmancolor adventure drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Andrew Marton and produced by Armand Deutsch, with original music by Miklós Rózsa. The picture stars Grace Kelly, Stewart Granger, Paul Douglas and John Ericson.
John Lee Mahin was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
Wife vs. Secretary is a 1936 American romantic comedy drama film starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow. Directed and co-produced by Clarence Brown, it was the fifth of six collaborations between Gable and Harlow and the fourth of seven between Gable and Loy. The screenplay was based on the short story of the same title by Faith Baldwin, published in Cosmopolitan magazine in May 1935. The screenplay was written by Norman Krasna, John Lee Mahin and Alice Duer Miller.
Bombshell is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic screwball comedy film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, C. Aubrey Smith, Mary Forbes and Franchot Tone. It is based on the unproduced play of the same name by Caroline Francke and Mack Crane, and was adapted for the screen by John Lee Mahin and Jules Furthman.
Hugh Ryan "Jack" Conway was an American film director and film producer, as well as an actor of many films in the first half of the 20th century.
The Secret Six is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film starring Wallace Beery as "Slaughterhouse Scorpio", a character very loosely based on Al Capone, and featuring Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau and Ralph Bellamy. The film was written by Frances Marion and directed by George W. Hill for MGM.
China Seas is a 1935 American adventure film starring Clark Gable as a brave sea captain, Jean Harlow as his brassy paramour, and Wallace Beery as a suspect character. The oceangoing epic also features Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone, Akim Tamiroff, and Hattie McDaniel, while humorist Robert Benchley portrays a character reeling drunk from one end of the film to the other.
Saratoga is a 1937 American romantic comedy film starring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow and directed by Jack Conway. The screenplay was written by Anita Loos. Lionel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Walter Pidgeon, and Una Merkel appear as featured players; Hattie McDaniel and Margaret Hamilton appear in support. It was the sixth and final film collaboration of Gable and Harlow.
Hold Your Man is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by an uncredited Sam Wood and starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, the third of their six films together. The screenplay by Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers was based on a story by Loos.
Clark Gable (1901–1960) was an American actor and producer who appeared in over 70 feature films and several short films. Gable first began acting in stage productions, before his film debut in 1924. After many minor roles, Gable landed a leading role in 1931, subsequently becoming one of the most dominant leading men in Hollywood. He often acted alongside re-occurring leading ladies: six films with Jean Harlow, seven with Myrna Loy, and eight with Joan Crawford, among many others.
Honky Tonk is a 1941 American historical western comedy drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner. The supporting cast features Claire Trevor, Frank Morgan, Marjorie Main, Albert Dekker and Chill Wills. Produced by Pandro S. Berman, the film was made and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Wilson Collison was a writer and playwright.
Jean Harlow was an American actress who made her uncredited debut in two 1928 films: Honor Bound for Fox Film; and Moran of the Marines for Paramount Pictures. While waiting for a friend at the studio in 1928, she was discovered by studio executives who gave her letters of introduction to casting agencies, where she was offered the two small roles that subsequently launched her film career. During the initial two years of her career, Harlow appeared uncredited in 16 films, including several Hal Roach productions developed for Laurel and Hardy. Her first speaking role was a bit part in the 1929 American pre-Code romantic comedy The Saturday Night Kid, starring Clara Bow and Jean Arthur. The film has since been preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.