Clark Gable's (1901-1960) two great partnerships of the Thirties : Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford proved just how varied the actual movies of the strongest love teams could be. Gable and Crawford turned out melodramas like Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) and down the line - musicals, as was the case with 1933's Dancing Lady. Production-line screwball comedies, why sure those too. Following the success of Gable vis-a- vis the unstoppable Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934), Gable reunited with Crawford when they would star in Love on the Run (1936), in which they went through the motions of the earlier movies' main plot points, but this time on European turf. Each star in a love team had a basic appeal ; each movie was a separate product and the effect of the love team was to bolster the pulling power of the words on the cinema billboard and to aggrandize the standing of the valuable star.
The unusual screen warmth between Gable and Harlow was helped by timing. Red Dust (1932) emerged before the Hays Code could do any such bridling of their passions. They had previously starred in The Secret Six in 1931, a standout gangster film in which they supported Wallace Beery, and subsequently made various assorted dramas of tropical passion on land and on sea, not uncommonly the Orient ;they even made a soap opera set in a publisher's office called Wife vs Secretary (1936) in which Gable essentially ignores Harlow's attractions and the otherwise brute virility is sequestered under a conventional, furthermore stuffy character. In the bedroom scene Harlow's most physical act consists of removing Gable's shoes from his feet.