Product Details

• Actors: Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Burgess, Muriel Kirkland
• Directors: Sam Wood
• Writers: Anita Loos, Howard Emmett Rogers
• Producers: Sam Wood, Bernard H. Hyman
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302605113
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,188 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Until it gets all sappy at the end, this is a crackerjack melodrama written by Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and starring Clark Gable as Eddie, another colorful addition to his rogue's gallery. Eddie's a Depression-era hustler. When his latest scam goes awry, he hightails it into a nearby building and into the apartment of Ruby (legendary platinum blonde bombshell Jean Harlow, who teamed memorably with Gable in Red Dust and China Seas). She's a "swell kid" who shields his presence. Ruby's been around. "I got two rules," she states. "Keep away from couches and stay on your feet." Rules were made to be broken. Jail time and a false murder rap for poor Ruby threaten to keep the couple apart until the happy fade-out. Before his character's rehabilitation, Gable sparks the movie with his twinkly-eyed bravado. "I like your nerve," Ruby tells him. "That ain't all you're gonna like," he promises. --Donald Liebenson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty meaty stuff from the Pre-Code days, January 2, 2003

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hold Your Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Jean Harlow and Clark Gable try to capitalize on their onscreen heat from "Red Dust", in this comedy-gone-melodrama about a couple conjoined in crime during the desperate years of the Great Depression. The stark depictation of life in a women's jail (or a "boarding house," as they call it...) is pretty amazing, and pretty raw. Plus, Gable and Harlow had great chemistry together... definitely worth checking out!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Truly Unique Comedy, February 25, 2003

By 

Julian S. Brown (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hold Your Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a different kind of comedy, somehow absolutely fresh after 70 years. The characters are all unique and very believable. One bizarre aspect of this terrific comedy is that there a black character in the movie that actually has personality. She is one of Jean Harlow's cellmates and is quite charming -- not like the typical 30s and 40s Hollywood black character that is either fodder for jokes or a happy domestic, is an extra in the background, or is a submissive caricature of the Old South. This movie is surprising in may ways. It's hard to believe that Loos, the screenwriter, had very few other big movies to her credit. Maybe she was too different.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tough girl Harlow and con-man Gable fall hard for each other, February 27, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hold Your Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Hold Your Man" (1933) is the second of five films that Jean Harlow and Clark Gable made together before her premature death in 1937. The couple made "Red Dust" with its infamous scene with Harlow taking a bath in a rain barrel the year before. This time Gable is slick confidence man Eddie Nugent while Harlow is tough girl Ruby Adams; she tells him that even his smile is crooked. Along with Eddie's pal Slim (Gary Owen), Eddie and Ruby tried to play a scam on Mitchell (Paul Hurst), the owner of a laundry. Things go wrong when Eddie sees Ruby struggling with Mitchell and kills the old man. Eddie flees, leaving Ruby to talk the fall only to learn that she is going to have a baby.

The small time hustles are fairly interesting but the chief attraction here are the sparks between Harlow and Gable. Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers did the screenplay from her original story and the wisecracking romance works well overall. It is just that the sudden shifts to sentimentality seem force (and rather unexpected in a pre-code film that has more than its hare of off-color dialogue). When they are both free the two characters are equally cheeky, but slap one of them in jail or reform school and they get sappy. Overall, "Hold Your Man" like "Red Dust" has its moments, where the chemistry between the two characters overcomes the limitations of the plot.