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Dance, Fools, Dance (Forbidden Hollywood) |
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Dance, Fools, Dance (Forbidden Hollywood)
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by MGM (Warner)
Sales Rank: 11979
Price: $19.98
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Joan Crawford plays a flapper queen whose rich father commits suicide after the stock market crash. Rather than whining in victimhood she gets a job as a newspaper reporter and attempts to crack the case of a gangland killing of another reporter (Cliff Edwards). Clark Gable, she learns, is the gang leader and her brother (William Bakewell) has been duped into committing the murder. The picture is a nifty and tough crime drama, and both Crawford and Gable, who weren't stars yet, make it plain why they would be in just a short time. The acting is somewhat stiff and stagy, due to the primitive sound-camera technology of the day, but the principals overcome this shortcoming better than most actors could at the time. Still worth a watch.
Viewer Reviews
This film is actually about 3.5/5. Not great, but good enough to keep your interest. As others have already mentioned it is historical for being the initial teaming of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, although Gable is sixth or seventh billed at this point. Don't expect Gable the gallant cad in this one - here he is pure cad.
The film is an unremarkable morality tale about the follies of the very wealthy spoiling their children even into adulthood to the point where they complain about having to "get up in the middle of the night (9 AM) to eat breakfast." When Wall Street crashes, dad dies from the shock and Bonnie Jordan (Joan Crawford) and her brother are left penniless. Bonnie chooses to break into newspaper reporting, but her brother chooses a less honest option which brings him into contact with Gable the gangster. After her close friend, reporter Bert Scranton (Cliff Edwards), is shot to death, Bonnie decides to go undercover as a dancer at Gable's nightclub to try to get to the bottom of the murder. She solves the crime, but at great personal cost.
The best parts of this film are watching Joan Crawford in a dance number and watching the great chemistry Crawford and Gable have together. You get bigger doses of Crawford and Gable together in "Possessed", which was made later this same year - 1931. I also recommend that film for hardcore fans of the precodes and of Crawford. As for Clark Gable, he has to wait until he manhandles Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul" before he catapults to true stardom.
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Dance, Fools, Dance (Forbidden Hollywood)
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