Clark Gable, Jean Harlow (and Jean's double), also Cliff "J. Cricket/Ukulele Ike" Edwards, singing with a familiar voice.
Eighty-two years ago, M-G-M released Saratoga, a racetrack movie starring Clark Gable (America's heartthrob) and Jean Harlow (America's reigning sex goddess).
Sadly, Ms. Harlow had gone out of the movie star/sex goddess business a month and a half prior to the film's release, when she had gone home sick and soon died, taken at age 26 due to uremic poisoning from damaged kidneys. (No penicillin in those days, also no dialysis machines, so Ms Harlow ended up a goner.)
Production on "Saratoga" had begun on April 22, 1937. Gable, Ms. Harlow, and Walter Pidgeon top-lined. A few rungs down the cast list, singer and character actor Cliff Edwards portrayed Gable's sidekick "Tip". Ninety percent of the movie had been shot when, on May 29th, Harlow collapsed on set, never to return.
At the time, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow were two of the biggest stars on the planet. Cliff Edwards, a Metro contract player (he had originally been hired by Irving Thalberg in 1929) was a 1920s singing star on the downslope of his career. Cliff had starred on Broadway and created a boxload of hit records, but he went through record royalties, stage and movie salaries as quickly as he got his hands on the cash. Also, his third (and final) marriage had recently broken up and alimony payments weren't cheap. Edwards would do more character parts, and the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, but his big-money days were behind him. He would die broke and alone in the early 1970s.
As for the near-completed Saratoga, Metro considered reshooting the film with another actress, but a torrent of letters from anguished fans convinced the studio to finish the picture with voice and body doubles. (In the clips above, Mr. Gable and Mr. Edwards are mostly playing to Mary Dees, the late Ms. Harlow's double, thoughn the final scene, Cliff and Clark sing and laugh with the actual Jean Harlow.)
Saratoga, despite the unevenness of the final result, went on to be one of M-G-M's big hits of 1937. Audiences, apparently, were happy to put up with voice and body doubles to see Jean Harlow one last time.
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