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Libeled Lady is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Jack Conway and starring Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy. The screenplay was written by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, and George Oppenheimer, from a story by Wallace Sullivan. This was the fifth of fourteen films in which Powell and Loy were teamed, inspired by their success in the Thin Man series.
Libeled Lady was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was remake in 1946 as Easy to Wed with Esther Williams, Van Johnson, and Lucille Ball.
Bill arranges to return to the United States from England on the same ocean liner as Connie and her father J. B. He pays some men to pose as reporters and harass Connie at the dock, so that he can "rescue" her and become acquainted. On the voyage, Connie initially treats him with contempt, assuming that he is just the latest in a long line of fortune hunters after her money, but Bill gradually overcomes her suspicions.
Complications arise when Connie and Bill actually fall in love. They get married, but Gladys decides that she prefers Bill to a marriage-averse newspaperman and interrupts their honeymoon to reclaim her husband. Bill reveals that he found out that Gladys was married before and that her Yucatán divorce was invalid, thus rendering their own marriage invalid. But Gladys reveals she obtained a second divorce in Reno, so she and Bill are legally husband and wife. Connie and Bill manage to show Gladys that she really loves Warren.
Hattie McDaniel, who frequently played maids, makes an uncredited appearance as a hotel cleaner.
Harlow and Powell were an off-screen couple, and Harlow wanted to play Connie Allenbury, so that her character and Powell's wound up together. MGM insisted, however, that the film be another William Powell-Myrna Loy vehicle, as they originally intended. Harlow had already signed on to do the film but had to settle for the role of Gladys Benton. Nevertheless, as Gladys, top-billed Harlow got to play a wedding scene with Powell. During filming, Harlow changed her legal name from Harlean Carpenter McGrew Bern Rosson to Jean Harlow. She made only two more films before dying at the age of 26 in 1937.
Tracy had previously been enamoured with Loy, who was newly married to Arthur Hornblow Jr. at the time of this production.Anderson, Christopher. An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. New York: Morrow, 1997, pp. 85-86 Loy’s autobiography recounted the humorous atmosphere on the set.Myrna Loy, “Being and Becoming: A Memoir”, Alfred A. Knopf Press, 1987, pp.190-191 For example, Tracy set up an "I hate Hornblow" table in the studio commissary, reserved for men who claimed to have been romantically rejected by Loy.
Two passenger liners made cameos as the ship in the film, the SS Queen Anne: Cunard's RMS Berengaria (in the pierside view) and France's SS Normandie in an aerial shot.
It received an Academy Awards nomination for 1936 Best Picture.
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