AFTER OFFICE HOURS (1935)

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