In Hold Your Man (1933), Clark Gable plays a con artist who begins a relationship with the unscrupulous Ruby (Jean Harlow), only to meet abject failure.

For a long time the film is an abrasive farce with dandy, mostly Harlow-delivered wisecracks.  Indeed, if there was any personal vision here, the movie would be misanthropic.  Eventually, though, it all becomes more solemn, but in Anita Loos‘s screenplay there is no proper blending of comedy and drama.  Scenes in a women’s reformatory take over and, for my part, I was soon ready for the film to end.  The good cast and Sam Wood‘s direction were not about to save it.