Big stars/short running time (72"), a dead giveaway that this society murder/newspaper dramedy is a ‘holding action’ between better assignments for top-billed but slipping Constance Bennett and recently Oscar-crowned, yet still rising Clark Gable. She’s a society dame with enough connections to get a column on the paper he edits. He fires her (she was hired behind his back by its rich publisher), but soon regrets his decision for two reasons: ONE - instant chemistry upon meeting her and TWO - because she knows all the dirt on the suspects and victim of a fresh unsolved murder among her crowd. Scoop meets Social Set Networking. Standard ‘30s stuff (newspaper slang & upper crust entitlement), stiffly directed by Robert Z. Leonard, but enlivened by screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, still in a honeymoon period at M-G-M after leaving Paramount. (Mank would slip hard & fast before hitting bottom and writing CITIZEN KANE/’41 to earn his Oscar.*) Classy lenser Charles Rosher gives it a posh look (surprisingly dark for Metro), and there are enough quirky characters to zest things up (Billie Burke a perfect mother for Bennett), with Mank only really dropping the ball right at the end with that most tiresome of copouts, the one where the sex-hungry couple turn out to have secretly married before anything naughty happened. No wonder Mank took to the bottle.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Note when our stars meet at a B’way theater, the marque is for THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE. It’s a bit of M-G-M cross-plugging since while the B’way show had closed in 1932, the 1934 M-G-M film adaptation could still be found playing second-run. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-cat-and-fiddle-1934.html
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *For more on this Hollywood writing legend, see MANK/’21. (But watch with blinders on.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/mank-2020.html
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