Cain and Mabel (1936)

Since Clark Gable became famous for punching women in films (notably Barbara Stanwyck in Night Nurse), it is worthy to note that Marion Davies gives HIM the black eye! Cain and Mabel has a cute premise: a boxer and an actress get together for the sake of publicity but secretly despise each other! Unfortunately there isn’t much spark here.

Davies is serviceable in the reluctant golddigger role with platinum hair and impossibly blue eyes that seem to have no iris at all, but she doesn’t seem particularly committed. Gable also phones it in as a one-note brute — almost a parody of his many other roles. The subplot that they’d both rather stay home and eat pork chops than act out their romance for the audiences, seems a little too real. This is one of those films that pairs up two huge stars in a mediocre script, hoping
sparks will fly with arguments and overturned ice buckets, but mostly it fizzles.

The one stunning exception comes in the third reel when Davies performs in the finale of her Broadway show. It is a jaw-dropping tableau of romantic imagery in huge puffy sleeves and fluffy white feathers. From Louis XVI wigs, to Venice canals, to flying angels, to a choir arranged to look like a pipe organ. Curving staircases, ornate bridges, miles of drapery, and a princess double-cone hat with cascading tulle…, and it just keeps coming. Thematically it steals — I mean, pays homage to half-a-dozen depression era musicals like Shall We Dance, and even borrows the violin song from Gold Diggers of 1933. At the center of it all Davies struggles to keep a relaxed smile, like a bride statuette on a vast wedding cake so ornately decorated with white icing there is no room left for the groom!