Main Cast: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone, Pat O'Brien, C. Aubrey Smith
Release Year: 1933
Country: US
Run Time: 96 minutes
Plot
Jean Harlow is the "bombshell" of the title, a popular movie actress named Lola. Though she seemingly has everything a girl could possibly want, Lola is fed up with her sponging relatives, her "work til you drop" studio, and the nonsensical publicity campaigns conducted by press agent Lee Tracy. She tries to escape Hollywood by marrying a titled foreign nobleman, but Tracy has the poor guy arrested as an illegal alien. Finally Lola finds what she thinks is perfect love in the arms of aristocratic Franchot Tone, but she renounces Tone when his snooty father C. Aubrey Smith looks down his nose at Lola and her profession. Upon discovering that Tone and his entire family were actors hired by Tracy, Lola goes ballistic--until she realizes that Tracy, for all his bluff and chicanery, is the man who truly loves her. Allegedly based on the career of Clara Bow (who, like Lola, had a parasitic family and a duplicitous private secretary), Bombshell is a prime example of Jean Harlow at her comic best. So as not to mislead audiences into thinking this was a war picture, MGM retitled the film Blonde Bombshell for its initial run. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Movie star Lola Burns (Jean Harlow) is angry with her studio publicist E.J. "Space" Hanlon (Lee Tracy), who feeds the press with endless fake scandals about her. Lola's family (Frank Morgan plays her father, Pops Burns) and staff are another cause of distress for her, as everybody is always trying to scrape money from the actress. All she really wants is to live a normal life and prove to the public that she's not a sexy vamp but a proper lady. She tries to adopt a baby, but Hanlon, who more or less secretly loves her, thwarts all her plans.
Lola decides she can't stand any more of such a life, and flees Hollywood. Far from the movie fluff, she meets wealthy and romantic Gifford Middleton (Franchot Tone), who hates the movies and therefore has never heard about Lola and her bad press. They soon fall in love and Gifford proposes marriage. Lola is to meet her fiancée's snobby parents, but everything collapses when Hanlon together with Lola's family finds her, and tells the Middletons the truth. Lola feels hurt by the rude way Gifford and his parents dump her, and accepts Hanlon's suggestion to return to Hollywood with no regrets: it is, after all, her life. ... Little does she know that the three Middletons were all actors hired by Hanlon himself!
Bombshell is a screwball comedy, with good performances by the whole cast and witty, sharp lines. This is a Pre-Code film, so some expressions and situations deal with sex and other hot topics in a very free way. Harlow and Tracy are very good in their constant quarrelling and in their love-hate chemistry.
It is easy to see that the character of 'Lola Burns' was modelled on the real life of Jean Harlow.
As a cultural sidenote, this movie led to the creation of the phrase "Blonde Bombshell", Jean Harlow was described as the Blonde Bombshell.
