Red-Headed Woman was written by Anita Loos (after F.Scott Fitzgerald's script was deemed inadequate) based on Katherine Brush's novel, and Jean Harlow, playing Lil Andrews, tears through it as a secretary trying to break into high society. The first scene in the film shows Lil trying on a dress and asking "can you see through this?" When the answer is "I'm afraid you can" she says she'll take it.
Director Jack Conway started directing in 1917 and gradually became a bland house director for MGM, following the script and coming in under budget. In Red-Headed Woman Jean Harlow is a force of nature that Conway makes little attempt to control and she is even occasionally sympathetic in her attempts to use her sexuality to break into society. When Lil seduces her boss Bill Legendre Jr. (the square-jawed Chester Morris) his society wife Ilene (Leila Hyams) discovers them together and files for divorce. Bill and Lil get married but Lil is annoyed that Bill won't involve her is his social circle and they have a big fight; Bill slaps her and Lil says, "Do it again, I like it! Do it again!"
Next Lil seduces Bill's business associate Charles Gaerste (Henry Stephenson), who doesn't know Lil is married to Bill; she also is having an affair with Gaerste's chauffer Albert (Charles Boyer). Although Lil is doing well financially she still is not socially acceptable to Bill's friends and goes out of her way to denounce them when they leave her party to visit Ilene. If there's any doubt that this is a pre-Code film: at the end of the film Lil shoots Bill when he drives off with Ilene, she gets away with it because Bill survives and won't press charges and Lil ends up in Paris with an older man with a long beard and Albert as their chauffer!
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