VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

classicsoncall Back when talkie movies were just getting under way in the early Thirties, it seems to me that they would have offered up a lot of story ideas that would be original for audiences of the era. Even with that, it seems to me you could have seen where this film was going from a mile away; you couldn't have telegraphed it any better. That would have been OK here if the principals had even an ounce of charisma between them. I had to look up Clark Gable's film credits to see how many movies he made before this one, (and they were considerable), because it seems like he was giving a rookie performance. As for Marion Davies, this was my first look at her in any picture, and though adequate, there wasn't anything really inspiring in her performance.The treat for this viewer had to do with some quickie references to characters that would be essentially unrecognizable today, especially to younger movie fans. The first had to do with that sideshow in which the Smith Brothers of cough drop fame happened to show up. Back when I was a kid taking them for a sore throat I never gave it a second thought that the Smiths might have been a real pair of brothers. So that was cool.There was also a remark made by Larry Cain's (Gable) manager Pop Walters (William Collier Sr.) after the newspaper headlines began touting the Cain/Mabel romance. He said that Cain was 'so wild Frank Buck couldn't bring him back'. That would have been a neat reference to big game hunter Frank Buck who's trademark motto was 'Bring 'em Back Alive'. So again, a nifty reminder of one of my childhood memories.The thing that floored me though was how elaborate that set was for the romantic stage number featuring a 'Thousand Love Songs'. It even had a canal with a boat floating around on it! For what looked like a fairly slap-dash put together picture, that seemed to be quite the expensive proposition. Earlier, the Coney Island dance routine between Mabel O'Dare (Davies) and Sammy White looked pretty entertaining with some unusual moves. I'll give them credit for that.Nominally a boxing picture, given that Gable's character was the World Heavyweight Champion, the story didn't venture much into the ring until the final reel. When it did, I couldn't believe they'd have Larry Cain lose the belt in such an awkward manner, even for the sake of true love. I guess it was about the time Dodo Allen Jenkins threw in the towel that I did the same.

calvinnme I really loved Marion Davies in her silent films, but I've never liked her talking pictures that much as a whole. In this case, the plot is plucked from about a half dozen other 30's films that came before it, but the film does have Clark Gable going for it as well as those terrific contract Warner Brothers players.The premise is rather unbelievable. Waitress Mabel O'Dare is fired from her job for feeding a hungry unemployed publicist. He decides to help Mabel out by getting her a job in a Broadway show. The leading man pretends to be the show's producer as a gag, and tells Mabel she has the lead without even auditioning her. Unbelievable point number one - Mabel believes him. Unbelievable point number two - when she shows up and finds out she has no job, not even a spot in the chorus, the leading man and the producer feel so bad for her they do give her the lead, even though she's never danced or sung professionally before.All of this I could live with, but then you have prizefighter Larry Cain (Clark Gable) and Mabel hating each other throughout two-thirds of the film for a multitude of mutual insults and injuries to one another. However, a single home-cooked pork chop by Mabel and her revelation to Larry that she used to be a waitress has him proposing inside of ten minutes? This is too much to swallow even for one of the screwball comedies of the thirties.Finally there is the most tiresome part of the film, and that is the musical portion. There are two numbers that try to copy Busby Berkeley to some extent, but dance director Bobby Connelly doesn't seem to understand that you can't top Berkeley simply by building a taller set and a larger crane. Your numbers have to have some substance. The whole thing is haunted by the ghosts of the largely failed musical films of the late 20's and very early 30's with tableaux and spectacles that are just plain boring.I'd say it's almost a toss of a coin as to whether or not this one is worth your time. I gave it a 6/10 mainly because I'm such a sucker for those Warner Brothers films of the 1930s.

bkoganbing Louis B. Mayer got some good currency lending his number one star Clark Gable out to Columbia for It Happened One Night, to 20th Century Fox for Call of the Wild and now to Warner Brothers for Cain and Mabel. Sad to say though this one doesn't measure up to the other two.It's a musical and musicals back in the day had some truly ridiculous plots, but this one kind of defied belief. Davies is a waitress who becomes a Broadway musical star, but after a while she yearns for the simple life. Gable as he describes himself is just a gas jockey with a good punch who becomes heavyweight champion. They get thrown together for publicity's sake due to press agent Roscoe Karns. But of course they get serious for real as it always goes in these films.For myself I could not swallow that these two people just want to get back to their former nonentity existences. I think that would have been a bit much for Thirties theater audiences as well.Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote two songs for the film, I'll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs and Coney Island, both of which get a semi Busby Berkeley treatment by dance director Bobby Connolly. My guess is that Berkeley probably passed on Cain and Mabel himself.Look for good performances from Walter Catlett as the Broadway producer and the aforementioned Roscoe Karns. Robert Paige is in this also under the name David Carlyle and he takes care of the vocal department as Davies leading man and a pretty sappy one at that. Then again he's supposed to not get her.Davies was very good as a light comedienne, but this material is too much for her.

psteier The picture seems to be put together from a lot of other pictures (musicals, boxing, backstage on Broadway, romance), but the pieces are of little interest in themselves and don't fit well together.To me, the many quick jokes are the best part of the picture. Also good are a dance number (in which Marion Davies is clearly outmatched), Roscoe Karns as a PR man, and Allen Jenkins as Clark Gable's boxing trainer.