Enjoyable, often hilarious tale of on-the-make secretary Jean Harlow who sets her sights on the boss's son. She uses sex the way some people use bribery. Relentlessly pursuing Bill, (her first prey) Harlow intends to marry up and do it fast.Considering the prudishness of most 1940's films, this 1932 offering is pretty frank. There is lots of sex outside of marriage and adultery within it; Jean's character enjoys being bad and doesn't apologize for it.Harlow steamrolls her way through men, but will she get her come uppance. Watch this little gem and find out.

Jean Harlow oozes sensuality as a woman from the wrong side of the tracks who tries to get her boss to hook up with her...and proceeds to have still MORE affairs. "Red-Headed Woman" got made before the infamous Hays Code's establishment, meaning that it contains what had to be some of the most erotic things commercially filmed by that point (which means that it's only PG in our era). Sure enough, once the Hays Code came about, the movie got pulled from circulation and wasn't shown again for years. A real pity, since it's got some really funny stuff. In the 21st century, when we can find all sorts of porn and crude humor on the Internet, it's hard to believe that there was ever a set of rules dictating what movies were allowed to show, but there was just that. As always, the moralizers prevent people from having any fun.Anyway, it's a pretty funny movie.

It's necessary to judge movies and actors the same way we have to judge athletes and their performances; that is, with regard to their eras. Therefore, rather than saying I now wouldn't walk across the street to see Red Headed Woman, I'll have to say it was worth sitting through. It's part of the industrialization applied to film entertainment as developed in Hollywood. It is history. It has that which should to be seen when following film history in general. An actress, Harlow, trying really hard in the standard role of an over ambitious girl convinced that she is the only person who matters; Chester Morris, miscast, showing why he was shifted to gangster plots; Lewis Stone doing perfectly well as a considerate father even before he was Andy Hardy's pop; Una Merkle as better, at this time, than Harlow, and I think she always was a superior performer; Henry Stapleton arriving late in the story and better than just about anyone in the film; and early Charles Boyer who seems to be someone else in profile but there he is when the director finally shoots him full-face. Speaking of director, his work is most annoying to follow because he hardly ever pays enough attention to transporting us from one place to the next. Yes, of course, the poetic art of film relies on our willingness to overlook some of what's not logical, but when it's not well done it's jarring. As a script writer, Anita Loos is also "in the process," despite the fact that she has been doing it for years. Her early work in silent shorts is reflected here as she pushes hard to draw an extreme - a woman who has no moral scruples, no heart, no regard for others, no taste, no soul, and won't grow up. Merely an insensitive juvenile delinquent at 20-plus. At the end we know that this Harlow character has yet to learn anything important about herself. Comedy, yup, but I'll differ with those who find very much humor in it. Nearly a tragedy, too, with the shooting scene after which, by the way, we have a good example of really bad transition. In addition, the writer doesn't give the director enough nuance to work with. I began with a willingness to judge this picture with its peers, and so I'll give it 7 out of 10. I'll always remember it, but not without a feeling of discomfort, having chosen it for an evening's entertainment because of "1932 Jean Harlow comedy." As for the combination of role and real life, I'm happy to find out, through her bio, that she was respected by many who knew her. It seems that she learned a little about harnessing her early excesses. And she was prettier and pretty good the next year in Dinner at Eight.

The face of Jean Harlow is her real stage and probably even overshadows her body, perhaps except her legs, and especially for those who are not sufficiently served with signs but want to proceed to their objects. In this respect, Harlow represents the complimentary opposite of Monroe, whose stage is her body, and in such a way that her face, to a certain degree, is nothing but mimicry of the body. Therefore, it is not a wonder at all, that the face of Harlow stands the make-up - the glutamate of the mimic sign-carrier -, but not the mask. Imagine Jean Harlow with a porcelain head like the one that Pasolini had modeled in "Edipo Re" for Silvana Mangano! It is Harlows's face which acts first and foremost, similar to the acting of Lugosi's eyes, and not the body like that of Monroe which leads each debauchery ad Absurdum; a face which does not communicate and is thus almost superfluous. One watches Harlow when she kisses: She does not do that with self-dissolving fervor, but with that rascal-like smiling, in which is already anticipated what comes later. In her love, there is no ardor which drags both persons down to the bottom of the maelstrom, but the Eternal Recurrence of The Same which only enables the security of the moment. Exactly because of that there is no contradiction in her appearance, either. She represents the type of woman that every man wants.