A marvelous cast of actors are allowed to romp about in their echt--thirties characters (“the ones,” writes Pauline Kael, “they'd invented some years earlier; almost nothing seems to be happening for the first time”). But, if you like Jean Harlow shrill on the outside and steadfast on the inside; William Powell as a suave manipulator of adoring ladies; Spencer Tracy as a clumsy, distracted manipulator of the same, not-so-adoring ladies; and Myrna Loy very very rich, you'll have no trouble with Libeled Lady. For all are given as many funny lines as they can comfortably spew out, and the film moves at an enjoyably raucous pace through the story of newspaper editor Tracy's attempt to stave off a libel suit by putting playgirl Loy in yet another compromising position. The original New York Times review pegged Libeled Lady as a “holiday for gag-writers. Material swings from one extreme to another, with dialogue that crackles and sparkles on one end and situations that reek with lowdown slapstick at the other. None of the hoke seems forced; to the contrary, it fits in patly with the proceedings.”