Brilliant and touching

Best movie ever!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This film is famous for being known as the film Jean Harlow was working on when she died suddenly, and was replaced for long shots, back of head shots and side shots by a stand-in. The material they have of Harlow is wonderful, but sadly, it noticeably changes 3/4 way through the film.The story is about an American girl (Harlow) coming back from Europe with a hoity toity British accent (like Ginger Rogers did in several films) engaged to race track enthusiast Walter Pidgeon but slowly falling in love with bookie Clark Gable whom she initially can't stand. Gable held a note from her late father (Otto Kruger) for gambling debts, so Harlow initially resents him. But Gable & Harlow are TNT, and Pidgeon, here in the unfortunate Ralph Bellamy role, can't win. Frank Morgan plays "Harriet Hale", the cold-cream queen, whose wife (Una Merkel) is a flirtatious "old acquaintance" of Gable's. He begins to think there's hanky panky going on between the two & conspires with Harlow against Gable at the racetrack.The major highlight is "The Horse with the Dreamy Eyes", a song started by Cliff "Ukeilele Ike" Edwards on the train ride to Saratoga that soon gets everybody singing. The biggest surprise is how the passengers urge black maid Hattie McDaniels to sing a verse, and she lights up with those rolling eyes as she warbles. Having sung the year before in "Show Boat", she was known for her singing talent, but this is her in modern times practically an equal long before civil rights came along. McDaniels may be playing a maid, but its obvious that she is doing it on HER terms. Her heart glows through those eyes, making her a total scene-stealer in this film. Also worth mentioning is the scene where future "Wizard" and future "Witch" Frank Morgan and Margaret Hamilton meet with Merkel and Gable. While they had worked together in an RKO film called "By Your Leave", they did not appear together in "The Wizard of Oz", so this being easier to find than "By Your Leave", it is a delight to see them together in a very funny scene. I found Lionel Barrymore's performance to be a bit overacted as Harlow's grandfather. Sadly, "Saratoga" shows a slight weakness towards the end as Harlow is obviously replaced by her stand-in. Only the back of her head is shown, and the voice meant to sound like her is a pale imitation. It isn't the fault of the actress, simply unfortunate circumstances. The scene where Harlow starts coughing profusely in character is really an unfortunate moment considering what would happen only a few months later.

Although Saratoga is a lighthearted comedy about the horse racing game set in that former pleasure town of the rich and famous with the death of Jean Harlow while filming this movie it carries an aura of sadness that at least for me is impossible to overcome.It's an average film and not anything close to what I believe Harlow's best work on screen in such items as Libeled Lady, The Girl From Missouri, Dinner At Eight, and Red Dust. Still her final film was with her most frequent screen partner and one whom she had great chemistry with.Clark Gable plays a bookmaker who has some big IOUs from Jean's father Jonathan Hale who dies and passes those on to his daughter. Jean has an easy out if she marries wealthy Walter Pidgeon who's panting hot and heavy for her. But she eventually sees Gable is the one for her.What is also sad is that Harlow for whatever reason kept going when it is obviously apparent she's suffering from the undiagnosed uremic poisoning that eventually killed her. That's a separate issue from the legendary story that her mother's Christian Science beliefs prevented her from seeking the medical treatment that would have saved her life. Maybe she should have been replaced and the film re-shot, who can know about these things? Jean Harlow was the subject of a couple of lurid films based on Irving Schulman's book about her life that came out in the Sixties. By all accounts I've read about her from her contemporaries, Jean Harlow was a kind and gracious woman who was generous to a fault and always willing to help a newcomer. I would recommend reading Rosalind Russell's autobiography Life Is A Banquet where she talks about how Jean helped Russell the rookie on the set of China Seas.So this review is dedicated to Jean Harlow and for all the great performances she had in her that we were never destined to see.

Corny? Sure. Dated? A big part of this movie's charm. Of course, the fact that this was Harlow's last movie makes it worth watching for this reason alone but the fascinating repartee between Gable and her throughout the film is hugely entertaining. For racing fans, the scenes of old Hialeah and Saratoga race tracks shows the days when having a bet on a horse race was the only legal way to gamble. In those days, next to baseball, horse racing was the most popular sport in America and the scenes of huge crowds are a testimonial to that fact. In fact, this movie is a chronicle of American sporting history and unlike the recent horse racing films, "Seabiscuit" and "Secretariat", it is able to show the real glory of horse racing and the elite who were able to own and breed these most noble of animals.

'Saratoga' was one of Hollywood's biggest box-office hits of 1937, but an explanation is in order. The film was scheduled to star MGM's popular team of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, but Harlow died suddenly (of uraemia, aged only 26) while 'Saratoga' was in production. Her fans demanded that MGM honour Harlow's memory by completing the movie; when it was released, hordes went to see 'Saratoga' and bid farewell to their platinum blonde. Ironically, this movie made far more money (on the strength of Harlow's death) than it would have been likely to earn had she lived to complete it.'Saratoga' is a comedy, yet a weird morbidity hovers over this film. Harlow's character's father is played by Jonathan Hale, who later committed suicide. Gable has a bizarre scene in a racehorses' cemetery, appropriately spooky. (Although the gravestones are too close together.) The scenes left unfilmed at Harlow's death were completed with three different actresses doubling for her: a body double, a face double, and a voice double dubbing her dialogue. The doubling is laughably inept, even by 1937 standards.Several film critics have claimed that we'll never know how great 'Saratoga' would have been had Harlow completed it. That's rubbish, that is. For the first two-thirds of the film -- with the possible exception of one shot in which she pushes her way through a crowd of punters, with her back to the camera -- it's clear that Harlow did all of her own scenes. By the two-thirds mark, 'Saratoga' has failed to register as a classic on the level of 'Red Dust' or 'Dinner at Eight'. There's nothing in the film's first five reels to indicate that this movie would have attained greatness if only Harlow had completed it. This is just one more Gable/Harlow comedy: an enjoyable one, but nowhere near so good as 'Red Dust' or even 'Bombshell'.I find it intriguing that all of Harlow's doubled sequences are in the last one-third of the movie, as this indicates that 'Saratoga' was shot roughly in sequence. Ironically, the last line that Harlow speaks on screen (two-thirds into this movie) is 'Good-bye'. From here to the last reel, her character is strangely taciturn, always holding field glasses or some other object in front of her face so that we can't get a good squizz at the unconvincing double (actress Mary Dees). Harlow's character appears to have been written out of some late scenes in which one might expect her to appear. But the very last shot of the movie reveals Harlow herself, with Gable and Una Merkel, reprising a song from earlier in the movie: 'The Horse with the Dreamy Eyes'. I wonder if this shot was repositioned from earlier in the film, in order to ensure that the movie would end with a close-up of the real Jean Harlow.I always find Una Merkel deeply annoying, and here she's worse than usual. She does a bump-and-grind routine, thrusting her pelvis towards us while glancing indignantly backwards over her shoulder, pretending that she's been shoved forward by someone standing behind her. Get some voice lessons, Merkel.Gable's character is identified as a 'bookie', which may surprise modern viewers in America. Gable is portraying what is known in Britain as a 'turf accountant'. These are independent bookmakers who lawfully take bets at a racetrack, without participating in the pari-mutuel pool. Such people no longer exist Stateside but were carefully vetted by racing commissions in the 1930s. One of the rules for their profession was that a bookie could not own shares in a racehorse. In 'Saratoga', deep-pockets Gable buys a thoroughbred as a gift for Lionel Barrymore, playing Harlow's grandfather. If a bookie had tried this in real life, there would have been legitimate protests of a conflict of interest.Gable is his usual sly rogue here, with an amusing running gag in which he keeps telling various men and women: 'I love ya.' The payoff is clever. These shots were edited into a very funny montage in 'That's Entertainment, Part Two'. 'Saratoga' benefits from MGM's usual high production standards, and an excellent supporting cast ... including Charley Foy, Margaret Hamilton, Hattie McDaniel, Frank Morgan (less annoying than usual) and MGM's stalwart character actor Cliff Edwards. I enjoyed 'Saratoga' and I'll rate it 7 out of 10 ... but it's hardly a classic, and I'm confident that it would not have been one even if Harlow had completed it.