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| Clark Gable and William Powell in Manhattan Meldodrama |
This is the movie that John Dillinger saw before he was shot down outside the theater. It's the one in which Mickey Rooney grows up to be Clark Gable. It's the first film to team William Powell and Myrna Loy, months before they became Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (with the same director, W.S. Van Dyke). It's the one in which Shirley Ross sings Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon" with Hart's original lyrics, "The Bad in Every Man." It was made before the Production Code took effect, so there's no dodging the implication that Eleanor (Loy) is Blackie Gallagher's (Gable) mistress before she marries Jim Wade (Powell), leading to a crucial plot point. Manhattan Melodrama is, to say the least, of historical interest even if it's not really a very good movie. It can pass for one, however, because of Gable and Powell and Loy, James Wong Howe's cinematography, and some clever lines. It won an Oscar for Arthur Caesar's story, though what it really deserved was some kind of award for truth in labeling: In melodrama, characters do things in service of the plot, and not in the way real human beings behave. We are asked to believe that two very different boys, one a hedonistic rascal, the other studious and virtuous, would become close friends and remain so even after the former grows up to be a gangster and the latter a district attorney with high political ambitions. And that they would remain close friends after the gangster's mistress leaves him and marries the D.A. And that the gangster would sacrifice himself, going blithely to the electric chair after his old friend has convicted him of murder. Life may not be like that, but Manhattan Melodrama certainly is.
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