CLARK GABLE

Is there a concomitant screening at MoMA or FF, Morbs?

Also did you catch No Man of Her Own a while back at Film Forum?

No, I think I have seen that one.

I watched Manhattan Melodrama at home today.

Need to watch Nothing Sacred again soon.

Think I've seen all of three--the two most famous, and the last. No sense of him at all.

from the quotes, he was relatively humble about his talents, chalked up to Everymanness.

jeezus clem, the ones with Harlow are ESSENTIAL.

Need to see those too, my bad.

Night Nurse was fun, young Clark playing a proto-nazi before nazis were even known (well sorta, ofcourse, eh)

A Nazi? Gable was playing a chauffeur, and wearing the traditional uniform of that period.

Not among the poll options: The Secret Six (1931). Apart from Gable, Harlow, and (personal favorite of mine) John Mack Brown, it features a very young Ralph Bellamy...as a badass.

The best Fletcher Christian.

But the fourth best Jessica Fletcher.

http://thiswastv.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/jessica_fletcher_2.png

"From now on, they'll spell mutiny with my name."

sorry j.lu, I didn't remember anything about The Secret Six.

I've seen two and maybe all 3 films Gable did w/ Spencer Tracy -- San Francisco, Test Pilot, and Boom Town -- and they are fun high-wattage vehicles. Tracy got very morose on the set of It's A Mad Mad World when Marilyn Monroe died, and said to Sid Caesar, "Gable made MGM a fortune and they didn't even pause shooting when he died."

Errol Flynn played F Christian in his debut 2 years EARLIER in Australia -- In the Wake of the Bounty -- but I've never seen it.

A Nazi? Gable was playing a chauffeur, and wearing the traditional uniform of that period.

you're ruining my imagination with facts! :P

San Francisco is sort of a precursor to disaster films, but it doesn't stink enough for me to recommend it to Eric.

I saw it years ago and expected something more than Spencer Tracy as a kindly Irish priest fighting over Dolette MacDonald

It's a lot of movie to sit through for five spectacular minutes.

Still voted for it.

doesn't GWTW have enough kink, melodrama and big fires for you? Leigh and Gable really make the movie.

Teacher's Pet was a great favorite of my mom's. I like Gable's relaxed homo panic when Gig Young's in the room.

China Seas, No Man of Her Own, It Happened One Night, Mannhattan Melodrama, Forsaking All Others (which I don't see on this list) and Red Dust are my favorites. It's kind of hard to watch him after Lombard died and kind of amusing to watch him in GWTW, considering how little he liked the picture. I'd have to go with Red Dust.

me too! I also find his accumulated wear and iconic status very compelling in The Misfits.

Manhattan Melodrama is quite amusing. Agree with P. Kael about W vs. S though:

What makes it so fundamentally dull is that Jean Harlow, who's the central character, is cast as a nice hardworking girl. Harlow talks nasal baby talk, her voice rises to a high rasp when she means to show stress, and she walks with a sexual swagger, but she's supposed to be the hyper-efficient executive secretary to Gable, a millionaire publisher. He's in love with his adoring wife, Myrna Loy, who is misled into thinking that he's having an affair with the secretary. Gable overacts rather fatuously and makes the publisher seem very stupid; Loy's role gives her no chance to do anything but fret graciously; and James Stewart, who plays the secretary's poor-boy fiancé, is a high-minded type, who wants her to quit her glamorous job when they get married.

Doesn't he tell W. Powell at the end of Manhattan Melodrama that he looks like he could use the drink more than he could himself?

a kindly Irish priest fighting over Dolette MacDonald

http://imvdb.com/assets/img/n/dolette-mcdonald-music-videos.jpg

"Fellas, fellas, cut it out or I'm going back to Colorado."

I had to double check the singer-actress' name 10 minutes ago to avoid exactly that!

yep. I kept wanting Powell and Loy to escape into a Thin Man movie. It's basically MGM doing what WB had (and would) do with more grit and spark. Prologue is fascinating and risible for putting kiddie Gable (Mickey Rooney!) and Powell through losing their parents in the General Slocum boat fire... and THEN their adoptive Jewish father gets run over by a police horse after speaking out for America at a socialist rally!
xxp

yeah i barely remember W v S cuz Harlow is not "bad" xxxp

I've only seen five or six of these. Of those, I'd vote for The Misfits, a talky, stagey, awkward movie, but hypnotic ... the weathered old Gable inspires more sympathy than the jumpy, shouty young Gable of, say, Test Pilot. It seems like a lot of his early characters (like the one in W vs. S) are annoyingly stupid.

you're ruining my imagination with facts! :P

What, plotting against children and their mother isn't reprehensible enough for you? (And I love how the friendly neighborhood gangster, upon hearing about the plot immediately volunteers to have Gable taken for a ride.)

not much of a fan of this guy. 'it happened one night' is good.

kind of amusing to watch him in GWTW, considering how little he liked the picture.

I thought his disdain was only for Cukor? Who, legend has it, knew that Clark had tricked with one of GC's buddies in his pre-star days.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i just saw Strange Cargo, a heavyhanded Christian-fable prison break adventure in which Gable's highlight is jokingly trying to seduce Joan Crawford's prostitute with The Song of Solomon. Studio-era Frank Borzage, also with a queer couple among the escapees.

It's an odd film -- Borzage seems unable to make boilerplate without infusing it with affecting undertones when I least expect it.

by studio i meant "bigger than Columbia or Fox Pictures"

there's a nice scene where the two guys sneak up on Eduardo Ciannelli, the knife-wielding holy roller, in the jungle to kill him. Mist rising gently from the swamp.

^^^ that's the image I remember most after Crawford's eyebrows

or lack of lipstick

yeah Gable wore more.

I watched the '32 film of Strange Interlude last night, which O'Neill understandably hated for the censorship, tho it's still got a love child given as an act of purported "scientific" charity, and Norma Shearer's mother-in-law encouraging her adultery for such breeding... Gable still comes off most forcefully despite miscasting. Ralph Morgan (bro of WizOz brother Frank), as Norma Shearer's ever-standby queer admirer, has the funniest and most hyperventilating "thought" voiceovers.

Bordwell wrote about its voiceover innovation here:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/03/08/1932-mgm-invents-the-future-part-1/

def the best shot in it:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Str-Int-1-500.jpg

the story of Loretta Young's daughter via Gable, and date rape:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/loretta-young#.hsQE54g8Y

Good lord, Adventure (1945) with Greer Garson is a terrible film. Avoid. And it was a substantial hit plus Gable’s first film since WWII service (maybe the two are related). Gable is completely obnoxious. Garson is completely inexplicable. This junk was directed by Victor Fleming no less.