This movie has quite an incredible cast: Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Franchot Tone, and Rosalind Russell. Unfortunately, Rosalind Russell has hardly any dialog except for a schmaltzy speech near the end. She probably spoke more words in the first two minutes of "His Girl Friday" than she did in this entire movie.

Myrna Loy loves playboy Walter Pidgeon, but he marries industrial heiress Rosalind Russell instead. Myrna doesn't give up and Walter's head is easily turned. Platonic family friend Franchot Tone would be a better match, and so it (eventually) goes. It gets a little maudlin in the last act.

Test Pilot with Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy. Directed by Victor Fleming and written by Howard Hawks.  Also with Lionel Barrymore and some Marjorie Main. Nominated for Best Picture.

I had understandably high expectations for this movie and unfortunately I was disappointed.  It starts out as a romantic comedy but turns into a dark study of how the lives of Tracy and Loy are spent in misery because of their love for Gable and his insistence on risking his life flying dangerous test missions.  I found the flow of the movie to be very jumpy.  Spencer Tracy had a great performance, but despite several bright spots I didn't care for Gable or Loy on the whole.

Too Hot To Handle, starring Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.  It also has Walter Pidgeon and Marjorie Main (Ma Kettle).  Gable and Pidgeon play rival newsreel reporters.  Gable in particular is not above creating his own news in order to get a good scoop.  Myrna Loy plays an Amelia Earhart-esque aviatrix who is first a newsreel subject and then an employee of the newsreel company.  Gable gets caught in too many lies and he loses the girl.  Later, when she needs to be rescued from the Amazon, he gets her back.


Clark Gable and Myrna Loy had just enjoyed great success with an earlier movie named Test Pilot (also from 1938) and MGM was trying to keep the ball rolling.

One interesting thing:  the movie is about newsreel reporters and in one scene they film a munitions ship that is on fire and eventually explodes.  When later talking about this incident, the name of the ship is overdubbed in the dialog.  What they end up saying (verified by closed captioning) is "Ilgrem Krest" as the name of the ship.  I don't know what they originally said (Pilgrim's Crest?) but my guess is they changed the name to avoid a name that sounded too much like a real disaster.  I can't turn up what this might have been.  Nobody talking about this movie on the web seems to mention it.  Frustrating.