Jean Harlow Boxed Set????

I asked about Jean Harlow at the HTF Chat before last, they said there was to be a Bombshell by now. I think it may have been delayed but is most certainly coming.

My guess is that we'll have to wait until 2007 to get the Harlow box set.

Warner stated there would be Harlow titles released throughout 2006-2007 in the chat two weeks ago. "Red-Headed Woman" is to be included in the forthcoming pre-code set. I don't even know if any of the films she made with Gable will be included in his boxset this June - If someone knows, I hope they'll post it.

Warner did say in the Feb 2005 chat that the Harlow boxset would not appear until the end of 2006, so technically, they are not yet late, and are likely still on schedule. The boxset probably won't include ALL of her films since Warner likes to spread things out. Since Harlow has a limited number of films to exploit due to her untimely death, Warner couldn't milk her small catalog along the lines of Davis, Garland, Crawford, etc; I predict that we'll likely see two boxsets from Harlow. One in 2006 and the next one in 2007. With female collections of Lombard, Dietrich, & West coming from Universal on Apr 4, Warner would be missing the boat if we saw no Harlow set in 2006.

Presumably 2007 is a safe bet as it would coincide with the 70th anniversary of her death.

At least LIBELLED LADY, PUBLIC ENEMY and HELL'S ANGEL'S are amongst those films of hers already out there - but of course it's not enough - I'd love to see CHINA SEAS again - and if the posthumous SARATOGA is released (even if it is a bit of a minor title) it would be nice of it covered the ways it had to be finished without Harlow.

Well,

I don't know if the 70th anniversary of her passing would be worth celebrating imho, and her centennial isn't until 2011. If "The Secret Six" will be the only film with she and Gable in his boxset, then many of the other films she made with him will likely be surfacing in her boxset.

I do agree that Saratoga does deserve a commentary or a doc of some type since it has such an interesting history. I believe that this was the first time that anyone attempted to replace a star with a body double ala Ed Wood. This film does suffer long periods with Harlow missing replete with lame explanations from the characters for her lack of appearance. She was just so popular that fans demanded that MGM finish the film. Gable had initially refused to return, but then decided to go ahead and finish it. Saratoga became the top grossing film of 1937.

Also worth noting: "Hold Your Man" was shown only in the South with a white preacher in a scene in which she and Gable elope in jail, where as the rest of the country correctly got the black preacher. It would be nice if Warner could provide the Southern preacher scene as an alternate take. It's stuff like this which reminds you that it was the 1930's and many people back then had problems with the depictions of minorities as anything other than servants, maids or ignorant simpletons. There is a still of this Southern preacher scene in one of the Harlow Bios that I have.

I would also like to see a commentary on "Red Dust." Harlow's husband, Paul Bern, committed suicide during this films production, and MGM considered replacing her with Tallulah Bankhead. This never happened since Harlow recovered, and eventually returned to complete Red Dust.

You may be right Corey.

I do think Warner will do a splendid job with the Harlow titles. I would like to see commentray tracks on some of the essential releases like Saratoga and Red Dust. A new documentary on her is long overdue, as well as anything else Warner might discover in their vaults. She did do a few lux radio presentations, and their are probably a few vintage radio interviews with her floating around out there as well.

The documentary on the Dinner at Eight disc on Harlow is a great TCM documentary. I not sure another is needed. The documentary Warner did on William Powell on the Thin man disc is not very good, with all the films of his they own there were very few clips from films and they could have been much longer it was not worthy of such a great star.MAybe we will see a better one on the next Loy Powell Box set. Two of the stars of the 20-30's that need a good documentary is Marie Dressler & John Gilbert.

I agree with what you said about everything except (well almost!) the Harlow documentary. Though informative, Sharon Stone was very over the top, and instead of a straight single person narration, I would've like to have seen interviews with people who worked with Jean (Though I know they are becoming rare now)& who knew her, as well as some of the stars she's influenced today. I think a 90 min doc in the vein of the one found in the Flynn collection would be quite nice in which the subject is fleshed out.

I agree - The Powell documentary was dismal and far to short for a star who had such a long career. It felt really rushed and slapped together. Dressler and Gilbert do NEED docs produced for them as well. Many people today forget just how popular Dressler was in the early thrities. Harlow had stated how nervous she was just being in the same scene with Dressler.

Today would have been Jean Harlow's 99th birthday. Are we ever getting the promised centential set ?

I certainly hope so.  The fact that none of her major films have shown up in the archive yet, certainly lend credence to this still being in development.  Assuming that WB plans to release this for her centennial, we should hear something around the 4th quarter of this year.  Although, it's been an awful long time since WB has put out a boxset of pressed classics, so anything is NOT possible these days.

I am helping Mark Vieira and a few others put together a centennial exhibition for AMPAS next Spring (2011). I will be contributing first editions of Red Headed Woman (1931), Today is Tonight (the posthumously published novel she penned while on strike from MGM in 1934), and the first biography written on her after her death in 1937 called "Jean Harlow Hollywood Comet" which features a striking George Hurrell dustwrapper. All copies are in fine condition with the original dustwrappers, so should display nicely.

Darrell Rooney (a Disney director/animator and HUGE Harlow collector) has asked me about contacting Warner, so if they are reading this, please contact one of us! (We all live in Los Angeles, and I would think that Mark Vieira wouldn't be difficult for them to contact since he worked with them on the Garbo set).

As far as the boxset goes, I am purely in "believe it when I see it mode" on this. After several years of waiting, anything is most certainly not possible. I would never have thought that Red Dust and Bombshell would be so overlooked, or that most of her films would be MIA some 13 years into the DVD formats history. WHV has certainly released titles far less popular than these. I hope this all changes.

 

Happy 99th "Baby" Jean!

For those in the New York City area the Film Forum will be showing a double feature of Red Dust and Bombshell on Friday and Saturday March 5 and 6, 2010 as the opening program of a 2 week Victor Fleming Festival.

http://www.filmforum.org/films/fleming.html

As has been said neither film is on DVD .

Been eyeing this since Film Forum's new calendar came out...looking forward to seeing these on 35mm.

I recorded Red Dust off of TCM recently and was close to watching it, but thought as soon as I did, the DVD would be announced.  Maybe I need to use some reverse psychology and just watch it.  I'll take one for the team if that's what it takes.

Dvdtimes has an interesting article on Warner boxsets that should've been:

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content/id/72274/ten-warner-bros-box-sets-that-should-have-been.html

Fritz Lang and Nick Ray sets would've been great.

Also, I wasn't aware that WHV had stopped the Film Noir and Forbidden Hollywood collections cold. I was under the impression that these sold well?
 

I am not sure that they have stopped the Film Noir and Forbidden Hollywood collections.  I still hear about another Film Noir 10 picture set coming this year.  Forbidden Hollywood is in cooperation with TCM so there might be another couple released in the next two or three years. 

In reading the article, it only offers suggestions for more box sets.  The lack of Jean Harlow in the WA leads me to believe that there will be a box set of her films.  After all just about every early Clark Gable film has been released through WA except for Red Dust and Saratoga.  Warners has repeatedly discussed the The Big Parade and other well know silents will be releases on standard DVD's.

But all of this speculation and this Tuesday they announce them all for the WA.

Hopefully Warner will simply release most of her major remaining films in the boxset:

Red Dust, Bombshell, Hold Your Man, Girl From Missouri, Reckless, Riff-Raff & Saratoga. I believe this would be the most marketable proposition since three of the films feature Gable and one features Spencer Tracy. Bombshell is one of Victor Fleming's best, period. I don't really care for Reckless (Why Thalberg/Selznick shoved Harlow into a musical remains a head sctratcher), but it's a Victor Fleming production and also features Harlow's lover, William Powell.

The Secret Six (would've been great in a gangster set), Personal Property (with Robert Taylor) & Suzy (with Cary Grant) can go into the archives. Speaking realistically, I don't think there are enough solid Harlow titles to make a second box-set marketable, so Warner will have to do what they did with the Garbo set - give us a very stellar single set.

Given their history, Red Dust and Saratoga should at least have commentaries. Saratoga is a text book study of what to do when your A-list star dies during production: Hire a body double (Mary Dees) & conceal the doubles face behind large floppy hats and long shots.

I would think this is a strong possibility since she has not been represented in the archive collections yet.  Also her films with Clark Gable have not appeared and just about every Gable film not on pressed DVD's has make it to the archives.

This is one collection I am looking forward to.  I agree with you on Red Dust and Saratoga, that they need commentaries and even a featurette or two.

I liked the suggestion in the article for  a Warren William Forbidden Hollywood collection.  While unknown to the general public, he is very well known to classic film buffs and pre-code buffs in particular.   It's a shame that outside of 3 on a Match his films will likely never grace the FH sets. 

One of the interesting things I noticed about Saratoga is that at one point the characters mention that Harlow is not there because her character has a cold. You think this must have been filmed after she died and this is just done to explain her absence. Later you do see Harlow in bed recovering from a cold. It may very well be that the earlier scene was filmed after she died but it was interesting that a reason for her not being there was already filmed. It would be most interested to get a list of which scenes were filmed before and after she died.

All of Harlow's doubled sequences are in the last one-third of the movie, as this indicates that 'Saratoga' was shot roughly in sequence. Ironically, the last line that Harlow speaks on screen (two-thirds into this movie) is 'Good-bye'. From here to the last reel, her character is always holding field glasses or some other object in front of her face so that we can't get a good view at the unconvincing double (actress Mary Dees). Harlow's character appears to have been written out of some late scenes in which one might expect her to appear. But the very last shot of the movie reveals Harlow herself, with Gable and Una Merkel, reprising a song from earlier in the movie: 'The Horse with the Dreamy Eyes'. I have always wondered if this shot was moved from earlier in the film, in order to ensure that the movie would end with a close-up of the real Jean Harlow.

I remember a lot of ackward moments in the final portions of the film -- Voice doubles doing Harlow imitations while Mary Dees hides behind hats and Una Merkel telling Gable, "Carol's not here because she knew *you'd* be here.  But if she were here, she'd tell you blah, blah, blah."

I never could stay focused on the story because I was so drawn to all the hoops they had to go through to get a finished film out of the footage they had.