“Heigh Ho, the gang’s all here. Let’s have pretzels and let’s have beer.”
Dancing Lady features Clark Gable and screen legend Joan Crawford team together. However, the big claim to fame is the debut of a hoofer named Fred Astaire.
Janie Barlow (Joan Crawford) is performing in a vaudeville show doing the “striptease” (which in the 30s is a lot of tease and very little strip). The place is raided and Janie and company are off to night court to be tried for their indecent exposure. Unknown to Janie, Tod Newton (Franchot Tone) and his society buddies were slumming and caught the burlesque and have taken an instant liking to Janie.
Janie blows up in front of the judge because she was making a living the only way she knows how – dancing. The judge sentences her to pay a $30 fine or spend 30 days in jail. She doesn’t have the $30 so it’s going to be the 30 days. Tod decides to bail her out and pays the $30 for her. He’s pursuing her with romance on the mind, but Janie is determined to make it as a dancer and wants to get out of burlesque and go uptown and into a legitimate musical.
To this end, she starts stalking Patch Gallagher (Clark Gable), the director of one such uptown musical. She finally gets an audition thanks to Tod’s influence with the musical’s producer. Patch is ready to give her the “blow off” but his assistant Steve (Ted Healy) sees talent and wants to audition her. Patch watches her audition and also sees talent and casts her in the show. Janie and Patch appear to hate one another so we know it will be love by the end of the film. Patch feels that Janie has the talent and moves her to the top spot in the show.
Crawford and Gable
After rehearing her heart out, the show’s producer decides to back out and the show shuts down. Janie then goes to Cuba with Tod. However, Patch decides to bankroll the show and replace Janie in the top spot. Will Janie get her big chance back or will she marry Tod? What was really behind the producer closing the show? Will Patch and Janie get together?
Dancing Lady is your typical 1930s Busby Berkley-like “let’s put on a show” musical film. However, there are several things which make it stand out amongst its brethren. The first is the presence of Gable and Crawford. Crawford had asked for Gable to co-star with her in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) and the public ate him up. He would win the Oscar for his film following this one, It Happened One Night (1934). Crawford had won acclaim the year before for Grand Hotel (1932).
Nelson Eddy also appears as a singer in the big musical finale. Also look for Larry, Moe and Curly (the Three Stooges to youse) as Ted Healy’s “assistants.” Robert Benchley also shows up as comic relief as a columnist who’s lacking a writing utensil to write his stories. The rest of the movie is pretty standard for this type of movie. However, you wonder what everyone sees in Crawford’s dancing since its not very good in my opinion and looks especially bad next to Astaire. The print has moments of looking very good, but there were several times when it looked like a frame was missing.
Dancing Lady is presented in fullscreen as it was originally show. Special features include the film’s theatrical trailer and two vintage shorts. The first is 19 minutes and is called “Plane Nuts.” It features Ted Healy and his stooges (Moe, Larry, Curly, and Bonny). It has Ted trying to sing and getting interrupted at points by the Stooges.
There are also several musical numbers, the final one actually featuring planes. The second is 16 minutes and called “Roast Beef and Movies” and features a Greek restaurant owner trying to break into filmmaking. He has a very politically incorrect accent and even worse is incomprehensible, also one of his assistants is Curly Howard. Unlike “Plane Nuts” this feature is in color.
Crawford and a fellow called Astaire
Dancing Lady features Gable and Crawford teaming up, but its real claim to fame is Astaire’s feature debut. I think all parties would go onto greater films, but check this one out if you want to see some early work by them.
Dancing Lady is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information. The film is also part of The Clark Gable Signature Collection set now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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