“The Hollywood press agent: scourge of the stars and henchman for the studios. He is the impetus behind the gossip columnist's scope and the box office's insurance that a bijou idol never falls too far from the limelight, nor victim to a besmirched reputation, before it is time. Space Halon (Lee Tracy), PR man de rigueur, is the thorn in the side of Lola Burns (Jean Harlow), a glamour queen sequestered in her Beverly Hills mansion - and fuming. Bombshell is their story, a hilarious battle of wits and will where Lola essays to call her life her own, but is thwarted at every turn by a fast-talking, ingenious Space. She becomes engaged to a marquis, only to have this romantic illusion abruptly terminated when Space has her fiancé hauled off to jail as an illegal alien. When Lola next decides to indulge a maternal yearning by adopting a child, Space sees to it that she is deemed a most unfitting mother. Disgusted and frustrated, she steals off to Palm Springs for solitude and reflection only to fall in love with Gifford Middleton (Franchot Tone), seemingly a man of means and the answer to her dreams. Alas! Even this intimate moment belongs unequivocally to that crafty rogue, Space.
“Of the films within the Hollywood-on-Hollywood subgenre, comedies are among the most memorable. Implicit in this comic form is a vindictive delight in exposing the ruthlessness of an otherwise sacrosanct institution. Harlow as the privacy-starved star and Tracy as her nemesis engage in a verbal sparring rarely matched. The vernacular quips and the velocity of their delivery make Bombshell one viperishly funny tirade against Hollywood's tyranny.” --L.A. Thielen