Red Dust (1932) Director: Victor Fleming
“Let me tell you this, I’m not a one woman man and I never have been and I never will be.
If you want to take your turn…”
★★☆☆☆
Red Dust is an amusingly scandalous pre-code Hollywood film. Based on a 1928 play of the same name by John Mahin, Victor Fleming’s Red Dust stars the cinematic royal trifecta of Clark Gable (“The King of Hollywood”), Jean Harlow, and Mary Astor. Set in French Indochina at a rubber plantation production facility, Jean Harlow plays a stranded prostitute named Vantine Jefferson who engages in a scandalous relationship with the plantation owner, Dennis Carson (Clark Gable), but he actually falls for another woman –a married woman– named Barbara Willis (Mary Astor). Unsurprisingly, this causes tension with Barbara’s husband as the love triangle nearly collapses. The climax occurs when Dennis turns against Barbara and she shoots him (but does not kill him), and in the end Dennis and Vantine are reunited –he has apparently chosen the prostitute over the married woman.
This film is mostly notable for its scandalous nature, including some choice lines from Jean Harlow and the famous scene of her publicly bathing in a tub while Gable pulls her hair. In this respect, Red Dust is a pre-Code Hollywood cult classic. Otherwise Red Dust is a bit of a forgettable film if I’m being perfectly honest.
Credits:
- Director: Victor Fleming
- Written by: Donald Ogden Stewart (uncredited)
- Screenplay by: John Mahin
- Based on: “Red Dust,” a 1928 play by Wilson Collison
- Produced by: Hunt Stromberg (uncredited) and Irving Thalberg (uncredited)
- Starring:
- Clark Gable…..Dennis Carson
- Jean Harlow…..Vantine Jefferson
- Mary Astor…..Barbara Willis
- Gene Raymond…..Gary Willis
- Cinematography: Harold Rosson and Arthur Edeson
- Edited by: Blanche Sewell
- Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Other Notes:
- John Ford’s 1953 version of this story entitled Mogambo also starred Clark Gable alongside Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. It was set in Vietnam.