Too Hot to Handle

8.5/10. Watched this Friday night taped off Turner Classic Movies.

In this comedy-adventure from 1938, Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon play competing newsreel cameramen who end up competing for the affections of Myrna Loy. This ambitious movie begins in China, spends its middle act in New York, and then travels to South America to wrap things up.

The writing and direction are sharp, as is the interplay between Gable and Loy -- no surprise, given that this was the umpteenth time the two had worked together. (Clarence Brown's Wife vs. Secretary is a favorite.) What did surprise me were the occasional bits of truly exhilarating action and the real gravity that seeps in during the jungle climax.

Too Hot's director, Jack Conway, made two other movies starring Loy, 1936's Libeled Lady and 1941's Love Crazy. Both feature Loy's Thin Man costar William Powell and are worth seeing.