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YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

mmallon4 The opening credits of Libeled Lady are not your typical list of screen names, instead we get footage of the four main stars walking arm in arm very happily as their names come on screen one by one. Four heavy weights in roles which play to their strengths, giving some of the best dialogue the screwball comedy has to offer. Libeled Lady is my favourite newspaper comedy, a world in which journalistic ethics are nonexistent and people struggle to make relationships and careers in journalism mix. Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) is so preoccupied with his job as the managing editor of a paper he has missed his own wedding several times, so no surprise Jean Harlow gives a very comically angry performance throughout most of the film.William Powell's Bill Chandler has such cool and confidence, he even draws his own contract which will bring him back to the paper he was sacked from as he knows Warren Haggerty will come looking for him following a scandal. Powell gets the chance to show the full range of his comic abilities, not only as a master of words but also gets showcase slapstick comedy similar in vain to Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin during the film's fishing scene. The subplot of Bill Chandler learning to fish would be the basis of Howard Hawk's comedy Mans' Favorite Sport?. Despite how incredibly fast he picks up the ability to fish like an expert it doesn't feel contrived. A portion of the story is spent trying to find William Powell with telephone, telegraph and radio as their means of communication. Outdated aspects like in old movies always intrigues me and makes me ponder if stories like this could be told today. With the internet and other modern communication devices they could have been able to recall those newspapers at the start of the film. Likewise publications today are no less obsessed with covering the escapades of socialites and people famous for being famous; but Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) is not a typical socialite. She is down to Earth, has an image distorted by the media and can even outwit the paper. It's appropriate this role would be played by Myrna Loy; the so called only good girl in Hollywood.

classicsoncall I've never seen this before, the picture was nominated for exactly one award, and that was for a Best Picture Oscar in 1937. Though it didn't win, MGM, along with William Powell and Myrna Loy couldn't have felt too bad. They all had a hand in that year's winner, "The Great Ziegfeld".The premise here was just ripe for a screwball comedy and the principals delivered. Powell, Loy and Jean Harlow were all established comedy players at the time, but this was new territory for Spencer Tracy who had only appeared in dramas prior. With his performance here, his range was established as an all around actor and set him up for all those great Katherine Hepburn team-ups in years to come.The picture moves along at a pretty fast pace and you have to be as quick as the players to keep up with the dialog. You also have to accept the premise of Powell's character Bill Chandler marrying someone else's fiancée in order to stop a libel suit against the New York Evening Star. It's the kind of situation that lends itself to constant back and forth maneuvering between the players who jockey for position in order to come out on top.I would never have figured Bill Powell for such a physical actor, but when he hit the trout stream I couldn't believe all the pratfalls he took in service to the story. Coming up with the most elusive trout in Glen Arden was the icing on the cake. I fully expected old Wall Eye to slip away from that net but son of a gun, he wound up on a dinner plate after all.So anyway, Nick and Nora fans ought to be happy with the finale here, as Chandler and Connie Allenbury (Loy) wound up tying the knot at the end of the story. In real life, Powell was courting Jean Harlow at the time and was set to marry her following this picture until her untimely death shortly later. It put Powell into a deep funk for a long time before returning to the screen to begin the sequels to the Thin Man series.

AaronCapenBanner Jack Conway directed this high society comedy that stars Spencer Tracy as Warren Haggerty, a big city newspaper editor who has been hit by a multi-million dollar libel suit by Connie Allenbury(played by Myrna Loy) when she is accused of being a marriage breaker. Haggerty then gets the idea to counter this by recruiting noted heel Bill Chandler(played by William Powell) and his frustrated fiancée Gladys(played by Jean Harlow) to pose as a married couple so that Connie can be enticed to fall for Bill, thus proving she is what the paper claimed. Naturally things don't go as planned... OK comedy has four big stars to put over an unlikely premise. Reasonably funny, though that's all.

rbrb This movie is over 70 years old but is far better than what mostly comes out of the film industry these days. The picture is genuinely funny and all the performers are excellent. In brief a newspaper who have libeled a lady need to get her legal action against them stopped to prevent the newspaper going out of business so they devise a plot to set up their victim. There are all sorts of comical twists and turns and plenty of good gags and amusing moments. The movie is very well directed, has an excellent script and the voters here on IMDb have got the high mark exactly right. Well done to Turner Classic Movies for showing this on their channel:8/10