LeonLouisRicci There is a Lot of Talk in this Early Pre-Code Talkie, but most of it is Interesting Enough to make this a Good Watch and the Star Power is there to Ogle as Well. Clark Gable does Scorch the Screen with His Dynamo of a Gangster, Norma Shear is Elegant as a Trashy Upper Crust who Likes Slumming and Slumbering with Her Macho-Man, and Lionel Barrymore is Bursting at the Seams for a Drink and More Scene Stealing."The only time I hate Democracy is when you Mongrels don't know your place. A little dirty money and a clean shirt and you cross the railroad tracks." This Famous Quote comes when Gangster Gable tells Stuffy Barrymore that He wants to Marry HIs Daughter. Leslie Howard is also on Hand to Complete the Triangle and makes the Most of a Few Important Encounters with His Rival.There is Much Pre-Code Inclusion of Alcoholism that is Unfettered and Gut-Wrenching. Some Physical Female Abuse and Premarital Sex Laid Bare are Here along with some Slinky See-Through Dresses. The Courtroom Scene at the End is Famous for its One Long Take (holds the record), but is Pure Fiction and its Motivation Severely Dated.

cbryce59 Norma is Norma, in her "free spirit" mode; she is such a stilted actor, it is like she puts on a uniform and the one she chose for this one is "free spirit" only it all seems so forced. Hard to believe she was such a big star-she is not even very photogenic, which was often half the battle back then. Yet she is so pleased with herself, that you can find a way to buy into her as you watch. She was always known for her high level of confidence.I've read a lot about Norma and she was extremely vain and body-conscious, so I am surprised she allowed herself to be photographed in that riding outfit, as she was especially concerned with her legs. She maintained a vigorous exercise schedule which was unusual for her day, when most of the actresses went in for massages, which was somehow considered the equivalent at the time.The movie has more of a theme and plot than, say "The Divorcée", as it involves a dramatic legal case, pitting her alcoholic father against her racy new lover, played by Clark. Norma's character is forced to agree not to see him anymore if her father will quit drinking forever. But she doesn't have to give him up for long...and Norma's reaction to seeing him drunk again is startlingly overacted, but kind of funny to see.Overall it is not a bad film; as much as I love watching the movies from the thirties and forties, some of the sets look so patently false, it is kind of jarring at times. And it is always fun to see Clark Gable charging around a screen.

sol **SPOILERS** It's when San Francisco defense attorney Stephen Ash, Lionel Barrymore, had his free spirited daughter Jan, Norma Shearer, come with him to the courthouse where he was in the process of arguing a murder case that things turned sour for him Jan as well as her fiancée the cultured genteel and sensitive Dwight Winthrop, Leslie Howard.Pulling a rabbit out of his hat Ash, in the O. J Simpson style it don't fit you must acquit, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his client notorious SF gangster Ace Wilfong, Clark Gable, is innocent of gunning down a man in front of some half dozen witnesses! It was the handsome and sure of himself Wilfong who stole Ash's daughter's heart and in no time at all she broke off her engagement with a heart-broken Dwight to become Wilfong's personal squeeze and gun moll.This affair between his daughter Jan and the sneering and murderous Wilfong drives Ash, who had earlier saved Wilfong's neck from the San Quentin gallows, to hit the bottle to the point where he becomes too drunk to do his job as a defense attorney! It also has both him and Jan disowned by their family the wealthy and socially registered, the cream California's elite, Ash's who want nothing to do with them. Seeing what her affair had done to both her and her now helplessly drunk father Jan makes a deal with him that if he stops boozing she'll cut Ace Wilfong out of her life forever! Taking a three month vacation in the Northern California mountains both Jan and her dad stick to their commitments until the booze, or lack of it, get to old man Ash's dried out, in lacking the stuff, brain. Hitting the bottle harder then ever Ash drops out of sight until the last 15 or so minutes of the film. And what a amazing turnaround Ash makes with what little time that he still had left! ***SPOILERS*** Jan now destroyed over her father's non stop drinking binges goes back to Wilfong who treats her like a doormat for daring to leave him. Dwight who was out of the picture all that time comes back into Jan's life trying to get her away from Wilfong who's in the process of manhandling her into marrying him. In a final effort to prevent the marriage between Jan and Wilfong from taking place Dwight make the ultimate sacrifice by putting his life on San Quentin's death row by blasting a surprised Wilfong in the San Francisco office of the illegal casino that he runs! With Ash's good friend Eddie, James Gleason,tracking him down in a skid row flophouse on he San Francisco waterfront he's sobers himself up to take the case, without him knowing about it, of the indited for first degree murder Dwight Winthrop. That despite Dwight being more then willing to die, by being hanged, for freely doing what he believed in: Killing Ace Wilfong to prevent him from marrying Jan!In what has to be one of the most electrifying courtroom performance in movie history a barley sober and on the brink of death, from what the booze did to his heart liver and kidneys, Stephen Ash in his noble attempt to save Dwight's life bares his troubled and tortured soul to a shocked jury and a packed and standing room only courtroom in how he and only he was responsible for Wilfong's death in not being the father he should have been to his daughter Jan! It took everything out of him but in the end Ash's heart-felt and tearful summation did in fact save Dwight from the gallows but the poor man, with his weak heart finally giving out from the abused of his boozing, wasn't around to see it!

laddie5 Yeah, yeah, it's Gable and Howard 8 years before Gone With the Wind, and even then the former makes the latter look like a eunuch. A number of posters seem flummoxed by this little coincidence and by the early-talkie theatricality of this movie. But for its time it really moves and breathes, particularly in the impressive scenes of Norma Shearer and Lionel Barrymore camping in the Sierras, trying and failing to leave their addictions behind and repair their broken relationship.Technically, this movie may be primitive, but in terms of content and meaning you couldn't get it made today: it's the story of a woman who uses a thug only for her own sexual pleasure, and the baffled and violent way the men in her life react. All three of them are outwardly brilliant and successful -- the lawyer, the gangster, and the rich polo player -- but have their vanity and weakness exposed when confronted with a powerful woman making her own choices. Some of the quieter moments of this movie are pretty devastating.p.s. strange how the myth that Gable "slaps" Shearer persists... are people really watching this movie? He shoves her back onto a couch twice, and that's it. The real violence is what she does to him by treating him as a boy toy.