Movie of the Week: A Free Soul (1931)

This week is Clark Gable’s breakout role as a ruthless mongrel in A Free Soul.

Clark Gable is Ace Wilfong (perfect bad boy name, I’d say), a gangster on trial for murder who is represented by upper class defense attorney Stephan Ashe (Lionel Barrymore). Stephan, while successful as an attorney, is an alcoholic who is frequently an embarrassment to his family, including his high spirited daughter, Jan (Norma Shearer), who catches Ace’s eye at their first meeting. Stephan gets Ace cleared of the charges and Ace starts pursuing Jan once he is free, much to the chagrin of Jan’s stuffy fiancé, Dwight (Leslie Howard). Jan is quickly swept up into a passionate affair with Ace, excited by his dangerous lifestyle. When Ace tells Stephan he wants to marry Jan, Stephan is furious. Jan makes a deal with her father that if he agrees to give up drinking, she will give up Ace. Ace doesn’t take this well and Jan finds that she can’t untangle herself from him so easily.

This one checks every box in the pre-code, rather creaky early 1930’s romance checklist: A good for nothing gangster throws around our heroine, she gives him her virtue, there’s illegal liquor and gambling, drunks and our heroine strutting around half naked.

Norma’s Shearer’s character is first seen in silhouette, naked in the bathroom and asking her father to hand her her lingerie. She struts around in top-of-the-line 30’s fashion: from calf-length skirts with matching tight sweaters and belts with distinctive cloche hats, to slinky negligees slit up her thigh that obviously don’t have undergarments.

Clark is a stereotypical gangster–all slick and brutish, at first so charming and powerful.

Of course as the film goes on and we are supposed to believe he is truly a bad boy and not good enough for our lady-above-the-title, his hair becomes disheveled, his necktie askew and his voice more of a bear growl.

Norma, bless her, is stuck in silent-era acting here–slapping her father dramatically and then instantly covering her face, making her eyes as wide as they can go and throwing her hand over her mouth when she is shocked; her crying fits quite an extravaganza. But that was the fashion, so who are we to judge, as she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for this film.

Leslie Howard is here as the wimpy. vanilla, cookie-cutter fiancé, wearing entirely too much stage makeup and an omnipresent look of inner turmoil. His name is even dripping with pretension: Dwight Winthrop!

As is the case in these films, Clark’s character must meet his comeuppance. And so he is shot by Leslie with one shot (no blood or gore or any evidence of even where he was shot). Poor little Ace.

It’s no surprise to me that women of the period drooled over bad boy Clark and were dissatisfied with an ending where Clark met his end and Norma declared her undying love for syrupy Leslie. Who would pick Leslie over Clark? (Well, Vivien Leigh did until the end of Gone with the Wind…but I digress…)

The end of the film, with the trial of Leslie for shooting Clark, seems unnecessary. The whole courtroom erupts in shock when Jan admits that she “went to Ace’s place and stayed there” and that she is not “fit to marry anyone!” Oh my, my. It really ages the film badly.

Lionel Barrymore spent the entire film a careless drunk, so he must meet his comeuppance as well, and he does, by falling down dead after a 14 minute monologue to defend his daughter’s honor and her jilted fiancé’s life. He won an Academy Award for his performance.

Clark Gable’s career was launched from his portrayal as Ace Wilfong.  The mountain of fan mail Clark received after this film and the desperate letters sent to fan magazines cheering for Clark’s bad boy swung the pendulum from Valentino-Fairbanks swashbuckling, poetic leading men to rough-and-tumble, take-it-and-like-it man’s men. Welcome to stardom, Mr. Gable.

You can read my full review here.

Nutshell review is here.