“Riffraff” a Vital Drama of Waterfront
BRUNETTE JEAN HARLOW STARS WITH TRACY (Regent: Screening To-day.) Down-to-earth drama of vital Human emotion in a setting as robust as it is new. Miss Harlow as a brunette for tbe first time since her celebrated portrayal of “RedHeaded Woman.” A supporting east headed by the screen’s first-ranking comedienne, Una Merkel, and Joseph Galicia of “Public Enemy” fame. A group of outstanding players, including Victor Kilian, Mickey Rooney, J. Farrell MacDonald, Juanita Quigley, Paul Hurst, Vince Harnett, Dorothy Appleby and Judith Wood. Directed by J. Walter Ruben from a powerful screen story by Frances Marion, with screen play by Miss Marion, H. W. Honemann and Anita Loos. That is a quick summary of “Riffraff.” It is a story of elemental, earthly people. They live and work on the waterfront, and that is their world. What they lack in book education they mako up in wisdom taught in the world’s greatest school—the streets. Hattio is the belie of the waterfront, a wise-cracking, hard-talking, soft-heart-ed, bluntly vital girl who has her own strict standard of morals and her own uniquo method of retaining them. That’s Harlow. Dutch Miller is a bombastic, egotistical fellow, who thinks the world is his oyster and that all women in his world were created especially for him. He regards himself as a leader of men, and doesn’t know that his associates respect him for his brute strength, and not, as he believes, for his superior intelligence. That’s Tracy. These two people fall in love. And when they fall in love the fireworks begin. Harlow, knowing intuitively that it would make Tracy impossible, has to conceal from him the fact that she is blindly, dumbly, madly in love with him. She masks this adoration by fighting with him every time she feels herself “going soft,” and the emotional depths reached are outstanding.
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Bibliographic details
Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 231, 30 September 1936, Page 11
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310“Riffraff” a Vital Drama of Waterfront Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 231, 30 September 1936, Page 11
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