Hal C F Astell - Hal and Dee at the Movies

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Clark Gable

When I started my IMDb Project I knew I had plenty to learn about the history of film and I knew I had plenty of people to discover, both in front of the camera and behind it. I discovered when watching Gone With the Wind for that project that one of the most glaring gaps in my cinematic knowledge was the King of Hollywood, Clark Gable.

I've really enjoyed catching up with his work and I'm now over fifty Gable films in so I'm far from the novice I was. His most notable part as Rhett Butler was my first experience of his work and while I can't say I became a huge fan until much later, he was certainly the best thing about the film to me. Now I've seen enough to find plenty of favourites from each of the many recognisable periods in his career.

He made an abortive early attempt to break into Hollywood in the silent era, appearing in twelve films between 1924 and 1926, though I couldn't even find him in the only one I've seen thus far, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. He came back for another try in 1931 after sound had taken over and made no less than thirteen films that first year, including his breakthrough role as a bad guy slapping Norma Shearer in A Free Soul.

He helped to change the face of the romantic male lead by losing the vulnerability and adding a serious sense of danger. From then on he could do little wrong, progressing quickly to roles opposite people of the stature of Greta Garbo in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise.

His most notable obvious precode came a year later with the sultry Red Dust, featuring some great sultry scenes with both Mary Astor and regular leading lady Jean Harlow. There were other regulars in his films too, such as Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy and Lana Turner.

His next absolute classic though was the film that swept the Oscars in 1934, It Happened One Night, including one for Gable. From then on he was the man for at least the rest of the decade. The ones to watch first are probably Manhattan Melodrama, Mutiny on the Bounty, San Francisco, Test Pilot, Gone With the Wind and Honky Tonk. There are plenty of sixes and sevens on this list to work through after that to keep you busy for quite some time. Most of these films could be described as romantic comedies, with a few that are one without the other. As well as Gable could play a fast talking reporter, he almost always had to be the romantic lead too.

There are a few movies to avoid unless you're aiming to be a completist. The worst of the worst is Strange Interlude, possibly the worst film from the first half of the century I've seen thus far. It works with the concept that we hear the thoughts of the characters while they look pensively off at an angle. It's a failed concept and it's as awful as it sounds. Parnell suffers from horrendous miscasting as well as having almost nothing to do with the character it purports to be the biography of. Chained and Somewhere I'll Find You are also notable failures, and there are a whole bunch of merely OK films in this list too.

I'm missing Gable's later movies more than any other period except his silents. However he certainly tended towards more serious roles by the late forties and except for a stunningly average couple of years in the early fifties, everything postwar is worth seeing. Finally his last movie saw him hold his own against such heavyweight actors as Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and a scene stealing Marilyn Monroe. Both The Misfits and his performance in it were a worthy finale to his career.

Reviews | AL - Apocalypse Later | IP - The IMDb Project | CR - Capsule Reviews


Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb	Review	Leading Lady
Fighting Blood	1923			Malcolm St Clair	IMDb		(unknown)
White Man	1924			Louis J Gasnier	IMDb		Alice Joyce
Forbidden Paradise	1924			Ernst Lubitsch	IMDb		Pola Negri
The Pacemakers	1925			Wesley Ruggles	IMDb		(unknown)
Declassée	1925			Robert G Vignola	IMDb		(unknown)
The Merry Kiddo	1925			Wesley Ruggles	IMDb		(unknown)
What Price Gloria?	1925			Wesley Ruggles	IMDb		(unknown)
The Merry Widow	1925			Erich von Stroheim	IMDb		Mae Murray
The Plastic Age	1925			Wesley Ruggless	IMDb		Clara Bow
North Star	1925			Paul Powell	IMDb		Virginia Lee Corbin
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ	1925	7		Fred Niblo	IMDb
The Johnstown Flood	1925			Irving Cummings	IMDb		Florence Gilbert
One Minute to Play	1926			Sam Wood	IMDb		Mary McAllister
Du Barry, Woman of Passion	1930			Sam Taylor	IMDb		Norma Talmadge
The Painted Desert	1931			Howard Higgin	IMDb		Helen Twelvetrees
The Easiest Way	1931	5		Jack Conway	IMDb		Constance Bennett
Dance, Fools, Dance	1931	5		Harry Beaumont	IMDb		Joan Crawford
The Front Page	1931	6		Lewis Milestone	IMDb	CR	Mary Brian
The Secret Six	1931	4		George Hill	IMDb		Jean Harlow
The Finger Points	1931	3		John Francis Dillon	IMDb	AL	Fay Wray
Laughing Sinners	1931			Harry Beaumont	IMDb		Joan Crawford
A Free Soul	1931	7		Clarence Brown	IMDb		Norma Shearer
Night Nurse	1931	4	4	William A Wellman	IMDb	CR	Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell
Sporting Blood	1931	6		Charles Brabin	IMDb		Madge Evans
Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise	1931	4		Robert Z Leonard	IMDb		Greta Garbo
Possessed	1931	6		Clarence Brown	IMDb		Joan Crawford
Hell Divers	1931			George W Hill	IMDb		Dorothy Jordan
Polly of the Circus	1932			Alfred Santell	IMDb		Marion Davies
Red Dust	1932	6	6	Victor Fleming	IMDb		Jean Harlow, Mary Astor
Strange Interlude	1932	1	1	Robert Z Leonard	IMDb		Norma Shearer
No Man of Her Own	1932	5	5	Wesley Ruggles	IMDb	AL	Carole Lombard
The White Sister	1933	4		Victor Fleming	IMDb		Helen Hayes
Hold Your Man	1933	5		Sam Wood	IMDb	CR	Jean Harlow
Night Flight	1933			Clarence Brown	IMDb		Helen Hayes
Dancing Lady	1933	4		Robert Z Leonard	IMDb	CR	Joan Crawford
It Happened One Night	1934	7	7	Frank Capra	IMDb		Claudette Colbert
Men in White	1934	4		Richard Boleslawski	IMDb		Myrna Loy
Manhattan Melodrama	1934	7		W S Van Dyke	IMDb		Myrna Loy
Chained	1934	3		Clarence Brown	IMDb	CR	Joan Crawford
Forsaking All Others	1934	4		W S Van Dyke	IMDb		Joan Crawford
After Office Hours	1935	6	6	Robert Z Leonard	IMDb		Constance Bennett
The Call of the Wild	1935			William A Wellman	IMDb		Loretta Young
China Seas	1935	6		Tay Garnett	IMDb		Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell
Mutiny on the Bounty	1935	7	7	Frank Lloyd	IMDb		Movita
Wife vs Secretary	1936	6		Clarence Brown	IMDb		Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy
San Francisco	1936	6		W S Van Dyke	IMDb		Jeanette MacDonald
Cain and Mabel	1936	4		Lloyd Bacon	IMDb	AL	Marion Davies
Love on the Run	1936	5		W S Van Dyke	IMDb		Joan Crawford
Parnell	1937	2		John M Stahl	IMDb	CR	Myrna Loy
Saratoga	1937	7		Jack Conway	IMDb		Jean Harlow
Test Pilot	1938	7		Victor Fleming	IMDb		Myrna Loy
Too Hot to Handle	1938	6		Jack Conway	IMDb		Myrna Loy
Idiot's Delight	1939	5		Clarence Brown	IMDb		Norma Shearer
Gone With the Wind	1939	6	6	Victor Fleming	IMDb	IP	Vivien Leigh
Strange Cargo	1940	5	4	Frank Borzage	IMDb	AL	Joan Crawford
Boom Town	1940	6		Jack Conway	IMDb		Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr
Comrade X	1940	4		King Vidor	IMDb		Hedy Lamarr
They Met in Bombay	1941	6	7	Clarence Brown	IMDb		Rosalind Russell
Honky Tonk	1941	7		Jack Conway	IMDb		Lana Turner
Somewhere I'll Find You	1942	3		Wesley Ruggles	IMDb	CR	Lana Turner
Adventure	1945	3		Victor Fleming	IMDb		Greer Garson
The Hucksters	1947	6		Jack Conway	IMDb		Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner
Homecoming	1948	6		Mervyn LeRoy	IMDb	CR	Lana Turner, Anne Baxter
Command Decision	1948	6		Sam Wood	IMDb	CR	(none)
Any Number Can Play	1949	6		Mervyn LeRoy	IMDb		Alexis Smith
Key to the City	1950	5		George Sidney	IMDb	CR	Loretta Young
To Please a Lady	1950	5		Clarence Brown	IMDb	AL	Barbara Stanwyck
Across the Wide Missouri	1951	4	5	William A Wellman	IMDb	CR	María Elena Marqués
Callaway Went Thataway	1951	4		Norman Panama & Melvin Frank	IMDb	CR	Dorothy McGuire
Lone Star	1952	4		Vincent Sherman	IMDb		Ava Gardner
Never Let Me Go	1953	5		Delmer Daves	IMDb		Gene Tierney
Mogambo	1953	6		John Ford	IMDb		Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly
Betrayed	1954	6		Gottfried Reinhardt	IMDb		Lana Turner
Soldier of Fortune	1955			Edward Dmytryk	IMDb		Susan Hayward
The Tall Men	1955			Raoul Walsh	IMDb		Jane Russell
The King and Four Queens	1956	6	6	Raoul Walsh	IMDb		Eleanor Parker
Band of Angels	1957	5	4	Raoul Walsh	IMDb	CR	Yvonne de Carlo
Run Silent, Run Deep	1958	6		Robert Wise	IMDb		Mary LaRoche
Teacher's Pet	1958	6		George Seaton	IMDb	AL	Doris Day
But Not for Me	1959			Walter Lang	IMDb		Carroll Baker
It Started in Naples	1960	5		Melville Shavelson	IMDb	AL	Sophia Loren
The Misfits	1961	7		John Huston	IMDb		Marilyn Monroe

Totals

Hal - Rated (60) Average (5.22)
Dee - Rated (13) Average (5.23)

Last updated: 21 Dec 2008

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