[5]

Jean Harlow plays such a nasty little character in Red-Headed Woman, sleeping her way to the top of the workforce while ending marriages left and right. She’s so cold and calculating, I almost wish the movie would have been like most others of its kind and punished the slut for her wicked ways. But this time, the slut gets away with it all. I guess that has to count for something. Chester Morris is so-so as the male lead (but his nose is so tiny, it’s jarring to see him in profile with the leading ladies, both of whom have much bigger noses than him). Weird nose aside, I just didn’t care that much about anyone in this movie, whereas in films like Baby Face or the first Waterloo Bridge, I empathized with all the characters, even when they were ‘bad’. Red-Headed Woman is still fun to watch as an anomaly, though, released before the Hays Code became strictly enforced, banishing all the bad girl characters and any immoral behavior from the silver screen for many years to come.