Desperate to save the Evening Star, Tracy tracks down William Powell, an itinerant rascal expert at forcing women to drop libel suits through the creation of an even greater scandal. Tracy and Powell hatch up a scheme: Powell marries Harlow, then pursues Loy. Once Powell and Loy are alone together, Harlow will "catch them in the act" of cheating on her, with proof supplied by a newspaper photographer.
Of course the plan falls through. Powell falls in love with Loy and decides to shield her from scandal. This aggravates Tracy, who wants her lawsuit dropped, and Harlow, who has also fallen for the courtly Powell. One wonders how the movie will get around the Production Code, which would prefer it if Powell and Harlow remain married to each other. But that's not how a Powell-Loy movie ends: there are fourteen such pictures, and the two are an item in practically all of them.
How others will see it. Well-received from the start, Libeled Lady received a Best Picture Oscar nomination and ended up as the eighth-highest grossing movie of the year. #1 was Spencer Tracy's San Francisco, and #2 was the Powell-Loy vehicle The Great Ziegfeld, which also won Best Picture. Other big movies that year for our leads were Wife Vs. Secretary, which again made Loy and Harlow rivals for the same man, and My Man Godfrey, which has Powell pursuing his real-life ex-wife Carole Lombard.
Today at imdb.com, Libeled Lady has an underwhelming 5K user votes. The user rating of 7.9 out of 10 is high, but women over 45 grade it somewhat lower at 7.2, perhaps displeased by the treatment of Harlow as a pawn by both Tracy and Powell.
How I felt about it. One has to wonder about the quality of Spencer Tracy's newspaper. Their front page, above the fold headline is about a woman's flirtations at a party? And she is not married, not engaged, and not even related to a politician? And they have no photographs of this behavior? And she sues for five million dollars, which is a hundred million in 2015 dollars? When she has no career and is merely the idle daughter of a wealthy businessman?
It is also difficult to believe that Loy is nonplussed when she learns, after she marries Powell, that he exchanged vows with Harlow a few weeks before, and has been living with her in a luxury hotel room. In other words, he has lied to Loy throughout their entire relationship, and is in fact a con artist who makes his living by creating scandals with heiresses just like Loy.
She certainly is forgiving. And one wonders how she'll explain it all to her father. Especially the part about how the Yucatan retroactively canceled all divorces. Perhaps he'll press charges of bigamy against Powell.
Although its denouement is unconvincing, Libeled Lady is otherwise a highly entertaining romantic comedy. The script is first-rate: I actually laughed out loud when Tracy exclaimed "She may be his wife, but she's engaged to me!" The direction is also quite good. It is particularly amusing when Powell is floundering in the river and must recover his how-to-fish book before it floats downstream to the Allenburys.
We also like the cast. Perhaps only Cary Grant outperforms William Powell in romantic comedies, and Myrna Loy hardly needs a father's fortune to turn any man's head. Top-billed Jean Harlow hams it up somewhat but does well delivering a fiery so-there speech during the final reel. Spencer Tracy is the sole lead who gets through the movie without marrying anyone, but then again he is already wed to his beloved scandal rag.