Bombshell

Jean Harlow is wonderful in this comedy about the excesses of Hollywood. She plays a big movie star, an airhead supporting a family of moochers, subject to wild enthusiasms that typically last about ten minutes. When she decides to adopt a child she approaches it the same way she did when she bought her goldfish or her three bumbling English sheepdogs, cared for by her long-suffering black maid. Her brash and shameless publicist and her favorite director are both in love with her, always fighting. When she decides she “wants to be alone” and leave it all behind, she meets a twit of a blueblood from back east, and it’s hilarious, and not what you think at all. The rug was neatly pulled out from under me at the end, and I loved it. The dialogue is about eight wisecracks a minute, in the way only ‘30s and ‘40s writers could get away with.