In the mid-1930s, the most powerful studio in Hollywood, MGM, was eager to make a top-drawer screwball comedy featuring some of its top acting talent. Screwball comedies were becoming a popular genre to help provide escapism to Americans suffering through the trials of The Great Depression. Audiences ate up the rapid-fire squabbling couple-in-a-conundrum formula that had already spawned such classics as It Happened One Night and Twentieth Century (both 1934).

For this project, MGM came up with Libeled Lady based on a clever story by Wallace Sullivan. At the behest of studio executives, writers Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George Oppenheimer collaborated on adapting the story into a crisp and funny feature-length screenplay. Libeled Lady featured two bickering couples rather than the usual one found in most screwball comedies, which invited double the fun. It also made room for four excellent leading roles in a true ensemble piece.

To play the maniacally dedicated newspaper editor Warren Haggerty and his long suffering fiancée Gladys, the studio chose Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow. Tracy was a recent addition to the MGM family following several years at Twentieth Century-Fox during which time his star had never quite taken off. MGM, however, seemed to know how to showcase Tracy just the right way, and thanks to his role in the studio's recent huge hit San Francisco (1936), Tracy had finally entered onto the Hollywood A-list.

Jean Harlow had long been one of MGM's top female stars, having found fame playing sexy and funny wrong-side-of-the-tracks girls in films like Dinner at Eight and Bombshell (both 1933). After taking some time to try her hand at more diverse roles in films like Wife vs. Secretary and Suzy (both 1936), the public was clamoring for Harlow to return to form and play the sort of character that made them fall in love with her in the first place. Libeled Lady was just the ticket.

The pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy as the verbally sparring pair Bill Chandler and Connie Allenbury was a no-brainer for MGM. The two stars had already appeared in several films together and had made a smash hit as married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). They had an impeccable on-screen chemistry that audiences loved and were skilled at playing off each other with superb instinctive timing. Libeled Lady would give audiences the chance to enjoy watching the pair playing adversaries for a change, rather than the madly-in-love marrieds that had initially endeared them to the public.

Even though William Powell and Jean Harlow were to play a couple in name only in Libeled Lady, the attractive pair were a real-life couple off screen. They had made one other film together in 1935 called Reckless and had been together ever since, having fallen madly in love. Harlow, however, had not yet persuaded the twice-divorced Powell to marry her, though by all accounts, she desperately wanted to be his wife.

Talented director Jack Conway would be behind the camera on Libeled Lady. He had built up a string of solid hits under his capable direction including The Easiest Way (1931), Red-Headed Woman (1932) and Viva Villa! (1934). With such talent as Powell, Tracy, Harlow and Loy in front of the camera, all Conway would really need to do for the film would be to step aside and let the stars shine.

Before shooting could begin, the script for Libeled Lady had to meet the approval of the restrictive Production Code office, which had been under Joseph Breen's rigid guidance since 1934. Unfortunately, it ran into a few problems. When he saw the first draft of the screenplay, Breen reported in a memo, "Present treatment of material is, in our opinion, in violation of the Production Code. Unless changes are made... it will be our duty to reject a picture made from this script." Additionally, another high level member of Breen's office criticized the film's "general tendency to treat the institution of marriage casually and with ridicule."

Joseph Breen got his way on some of the initial objections. Certain lines of dialogue were removed that he found potentially offensive, such as one in which it is implied that Gladys has been Haggerty's mistress for a lengthy period of time. Some of the script's more racy references were also softened to placate the censors before Libeled Lady could move forward. However, once Breen's office was dutifully satisfied for the time being, production was finally scheduled to commence.

by Andrea Passafiume