As a practicing Catholic, a title like Too Hot to Handle (1938) gives me pause.  This is, of course, a result of me living in the twenty-first century and not 1938.  Such a phrase had a different connotation the better part of ninety years ago.  These days, it is a reality show on Netflix, beginning in 2020 and still being filmed.  It is a sign of how far we have drifted from God in nearly a century that the twist in this contestant driven nonsense is that the five men and women who live together on an island paradise for four weeks cannot have any sexual contact.  I do not wish to dismiss the difficulty of celibacy, but the reason this poses a “challenge” is the same reason this form of “entertainment” has been renewed for six seasons: our mores on sex have been eroded.  In today’s film, there is scandal, hence the title.  Yet, it is of such a comparatively benign topic as to be laughable when put side-by-side.  Keep this in mind as you read today’s review.

In the newsreel business, anything that is considered Too Hot to Handle needs to be on camera.  However, instead of covering promiscuous young adults lounging on beaches, there is a war in China to capture on film.  This is where Union Newsreel crack journalist Christopher “Chris” Hunter (Clark Gable) is assigned.  Unfortunately, the material he is sending back to Arthur “Gabby” MacArthur (Walter Connolly), Chris’ boss in New York, are not of bombs leveling Chinese villages.  Gabby is under the constant pressure of scooping his crosstown rivals, the Atlas Newsreel Company.  Atlas, too, is having trouble getting good footage from their lead man, William O. “Bill” Dennis (Walter Pidgeon).  With competitors Bill and Chris not being able to do their job properly due to the whims of the Japanese army, Chris decides to fake a shot of villages being attacked by enemy airplanes.  Mostly because he had not thought of it first, Bill angrily vows revenge. Spreading news of a cholera outbreak Bill invents, he asks his old friend and aviator, Alma Harding (Myrna Loy), to pretend to fly in a batch of medicine.  This brings Chris and Joselito “José” Estanza (Leo Carrillo) to the airstrip. Unfortunately, José’s car gets too close to the runway, causing Alma to crash.  She is unhurt, but she must admit that the mission had been a farse, which will be harmful to her reputation.  Not helping the situation is the fact that Chris has his cameras rolling and picks up the audio from this exchange.  He is also attracted to her, but as yet unwilling to let the story go to protect her from bad publicity.  Knowing Chris as he does, Bill tries to tell Alma that the Union man is just after her for the story.  To show his “honesty,” Chris puts the film can in front of an x-ray machine, destroying its contents.  Secretly, he had swapped it out for something else, but Bill makes sure to steal the genuine article.  As yet unaware of the theft, Chris also has Gabby feign firing the reporter in order to get Alma in Union’s good graces.  When she hears of Chris’ dismissal, she demands to fly with him to New York City to have him restored to his position.  The charade continues once they are back in the United States, even after it works, but Atlas reveals that Bill has brought back Chris’ work and is threatening to release it.  Gabby convinces Atlas to sit on the film for a while as Alma and Chris fly out to the site of a burning ammunition ship just off the coast, getting footage of it as it explodes.  It looks to be a triumph for Alma, Chris, and Union, not to mention the beginning of a romance, when Atlas decides to go back on their agreement in anger for being scooped once more.  At the planned unveiling of the ship explosion reel, Atlas butts in and shows what happened in China.  Alma is disgraced.  To make up for it, Bill and Chris pawn their equipment to raise the money to send Alma to South America to search for her missing brother, Harry Harding (George Lynn).  He is a fellow pilot, and he has been missing since his plane went down in the Amazon.  The situation has received some international notoriety, but everyone presumes him dead.  Everyone, that is, except for Alma.  Chris arranges for José to pose as a native of the area in which the crash is supposed to have happened, presenting a check for the money she needs to continue the search. Once she accepts it, Chris gets his job back with Union and re-purchases his equipment, heading south without telling Bill.  Once Bill finds out about another double-crossing, he beats Chris to South America and Alma.  Alma and Bill are there to greet Chris when he gets off the boat, and Chris eventually admits to all the sneaky things he did in the name of success.  Still, he protests that he cares about her, suggesting that they not follow the strange voodoo man who shows up with Harry’s watch.  Because José speaks the language, he believes that they want Alma to sacrifice her with Harry.  While Alma goes up in a plane to scout the land with Bill, Chris and José head down river in a canoe and visit the village where Harry is being held.  Chris and José arrive just as they are planning to harm Harry, and use their film projectors to make the villagers believe they are gods.  However, they are unable to get away when José is incapacitated, forcing them to wait for Alma to spot Harry’s plane and make a landing.  As Alma and Bill make their way down, Chris and José hide themselves in order to film the rescue.  They are successful just as the voodoo people realize they have been tricked.  Alma and Bill escape, but Chris and José have to row back to civilization.  Still, Chris and José are able to make it to New York before Alma’s party, and have already begun spreading the word of Alma’s heroics.  With her reputation restored, Alma finds Chris working once more, cameras rolling on a shoot-out with the police.  As the bullets fly, they make amends and the film ends.

I was glad to see a happy conclusion to Too Hot to Handle, though I cannot say I was the biggest fan of Chris.  He gets somewhat of a pass because he is doing his job, and he does realize how slimy it can be at times.  Yet, in the end, he is back in the thick of being the first on the scene with a camera.  Put differently, he is profiting from the suffering of others, and I am not sure that is Christian behavior despite his employment.  Alma says it best when she wonders aloud why people want to look at such things.  She is the one, though, that deserves the praise.  A Christian does for others out of selflessness.  Indeed, the Catechism defines love for another as seeking their good.  Granted, the first time we see her, she is taking part in a scam, but it is at least to help a friend and not purely motivated by any gain on her part.  From then on, whenever she gets a chance, she is thinking about searching for her brother.  Any kind of publicity she gets, it is the result of others thrusting the attention upon her instead of her seeking it.  Further, when she signs on to Union, ditching Atlas for a more lucrative deal, it is with her desire to continue looking for Harry in mind.  Such examples do not preclude helping oneself.  As with Galatians 6:5, we must acknowledge that we all have our own loads to carry.  A person who is overburdened, be it emotional or physical, is not likely to be of the best assistance.  In a sense, this is what Chris must come to understand.  While he has a nonchalant attitude about most things, he learns that he cannot act the same way with Alma.  She reinforces this when she makes the claim that men must be tender with women.  One can make the argument that this is part of the latent sexism of the day.  My only response for that is to recall that God made men and women differently, but equal.  In this sense, when they come together in marriage, though we do not see Alma and Chris get to that point, they figure out how to shoulder each other’s burdens.

One other burden in Too Hot to Handle is the voodoo village, which is mildly racist.  It is a portrayal of a supposedly primitive people being outwitted by the white man, which is not good on any level.  The rest of the film is fine, though these parts are hard to get around.  Make of this what you will.