Movie of the Week
-
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…
-
Movie of the Week: To Please a Lady (1950)
This week’s movie is To Please a Lady (1950). Clark Gable is Mike Brannon, a decorated war hero and a ruthless race car driver who will do anything to win. Stanwyck is feisty Regina “Reggie” Forbes, who writes a no-holds-barred weekly syndicated newspaper column. She sets her sights to rip apart Brannon after he runs another racer off the track into a fatal crash. She confronts him about the crash following a race and is put off by his blasé attitude. Furious by his indifference, she writes a scathing column about how heartless he is. After that, Brannon is suspended from auto racing and can’t find a job racing anywhere;…
-
Movie of the Week: Somewhere I’ll Find You (1942)
The Movie of the Week this week is Somewhere I’ll Find You (1942). This is one of the few Clark Gable films that when I sat down to re-watch it, I realized I have only seen it maybe three times total. After watching it, I determined that is because, well, I don’t like it very much. Let’s not beat around the bush: it’s not very good. Clark and Lana Turner were hyped up as “The Team That Makes Steam” so it seems strange to me that MGM would thrust them into this plodding war correspondent story. Lana isn’t really given the opportunity to be the sex goddess she was known…
-
Movie of the Week: Night Nurse (1931)
As I said yesterday, for the next year I will be featuring a movie a week (some lumped together for time’s sake). I’ll be doing a write-up of each film (yes, I am re-watching all these) and posting photos and trivia. These posts will not be in chronological order, so for no particular reason other than the fact that I recently re-watched it, I bring you Night Nurse! Night Nurse is a rather racy pre-code film. You’ve got every pre-code box checked: Half naked girls, men throwing women around, sexual innuendo, heck you even got children being neglected and murdered. What starts out as the story of poor, orphaned and…