Movie of the Week: Cain and Mabel (1936)
This week, Clark is a mechanic-turned boxer who hates-loves-then-hates-again Marion Davies’ waitress-turned Broadway star in Cain and Mabel (1936).
Clark Gable is Larry Cain, a heavyweight boxer, whose publicity team cooks up a fake romance with Mabel O’Dare (Davies), an aspiring musical star, for publicity. .Clark wins the heavyweight title but his fights aren’t popular enough to earn much of a profit. Marion gets a starring role on Broadway but her shows are hardly sell-outs. “The ushers are quitting because they’re scared of being alone in the dark!” her employer scoffs.So his support team and her support team decide that if they throw them together in a romance, the newspapers will eat it up and it will help both careers. Although both Marion and Clark are unwilling participants, the plan works–her shows are sell-outs and his fights are more popular than ever. Oh, but what happens when they actually DO fall in love?…
Produced by Marion Davies’ longtime paramour William Randolph Hearst’s production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures, it is no surprise that Clark is billed second and doesn’t appear for 16 minutes into the film. Marion is the star here, people.
Clark Gable is wasted, wasted, wasted in this role. He is second fiddle to Marion, whose tedious musical numbers take up most of the running time. I enjoy 1930’s musicals a great deal, love Busby Berkeley pictures and Fred & Ginger, but the numbers in this film stink. Marion is a great comedienne, but not very impressive as a dancer, certainly not enough to merit such long musical interludes. She doesn’t sing, either, she’s just sung to, which at times seems awkward. But when one of the richest men in the world is in love with you and is producing the movie, you get to be a musical star.
(Please tell me this wedding dress was not the epitome of mid-1930’s bridal gown fashion! You could turn too fast and take your groom’s eye out with that headdress!)
The romance here is really eyeroll-inducing. They spend the entire film hating each other, hurling bad dialogue insulting each other back and forth. Then of course they just up and fall in love out of nowhere, while cooking porkchops in her kitchen, deciding they’ll get married about five minutes after their first kiss. She is going to quit her lucrative musical career to be a waitress again and he’s going to quit his prizewinning boxing career to be a mechanic. Gee, how romantic.
And Jiminy Crickets, this script is terribly corny.
They first meet in a hotel because her tap dancing in the room above him is keeping him awake the night before he has a fight.
“Listen lady, I can’t sleep.”
“What am I supposed to do, make you warm milk?”
“But I got a fight tomorrow night!”
“Well you won’t have to wait till tomorrow night if you don’t stop disturbing me!”
“Disturbing you? Hey listen, you’re making my room sound like a pool hall on Saturday night!”
“Well that ought to make you feel at home!”
“When I came up here the thing I wanted most in the world was sleep, now it’s to put you to sleep!”
Ugh. It gets worse as it goes on, too.
She coos: “There’s something about you that’s very familiar. Oh yes, I remember: I had tripe for dinner!”
He replies: “I had ham, looks like I’m going to have some more.”
She slaps him across the face. “Oh dear, what a smack!”
“Yeah, a wet smack!” he retorts as he pours water over her head.
“If you’re a dancer, I’m all wet!” he says.
“That’s right!” she yells as she pours water over his head.
Clark at this point had grown fond of his signature mustache and was not amused when Marion specifically requested him for the part–but demanded he shave off his facial hair, claiming she was “allergic” to mustaches. He does look rather hunky though.
Full review is here
Nutshell review is here
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