Best Gable movie?

[FedoraFan112390]

Same question as Bogart - what do you think is Gable's best movie besides Gone with the Wind? And what would be best to introduce a person to Gable with?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The list begins and ends with "It Happened One Night." That was the picture above all others that created the "Clark Gable" character that he played for the rest of his life.

 

[lolly_loisides]

The list begins and ends with "It Happened One Night." That was the picture above all others that created the "Clark Gable" character that he played for the rest of his life.

I liked him as a baddie in Night Nurse!

 

[Lean'n'mean]

' Mogambo ' .....Both Gable & Gardner were at the pinnacle of their art & it's a fun movie movie to watch......Safaris, hats, sexual tension, happy ending & the third most beautiful woman that has ever walked the earth, what's not to like.

My second choice would be ' Band Of Angels'......at first glance it could be mistaken as a sort of 'Gone With The Wind 2' but it is a far more complex movie than that, Gable was terrific & even showed us a glimpse of his character's vulnerability.............................the only down point was Sydney Poitier's overacting.

If you've got plenty of tissues to hand,....'The Misfits' you don't come out of that movie unscathed.

 

[Shangas]

I haven't seen too many Gable films, but one of my favourites is "San Francisco" from 1936, with Spencer Tracy.

 

[emigran]

I agree with Lean n Mean... Mogambo is a great flick to watch 'specially Ava and her outfits and snappy ways...

 

[Fading Fast]

"It Happened One Night," I'm with Lizzie on this, he replayed that character in almost all his movies, but did it best in this one. Away from that, I enjoy him in "Teacher's Pet" as it it toward the end of his career, he has turned down the volume on his acting and plays a bit-more balanced character.

 

[AdeeC]

Never been a big fan of him. His onscreen persona was always too FIGJAM for my liking. I did like him somewhat in NIGHT NURSE and in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. For me, mostly remembered for the lame MANHATTAN MELODRAMA where his part is of a repentant gangster happily going to the gallows because his childhood friend happens to be the prosecutor and is laughably unbelievable. This film became a hit because John Dillinger was shot dead after watching it. Perhaps he decided to die when watching it.

 

[Blackthorn]

Although it was very depressing, I'd say The Misfits.

 

[Worf]

"Command Decision" made just after the war. Masterful treatise on the cost of command.

"You realize that sooner or later you order men out on a mission that kills someone you know and love...."


Worf

 

[DanielJones]

Always like Test Pilot. And when I'm feeling serious, there is Homecoming.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[Peter Bowden]

How about "The Call Of The Wild" from 1935
Fabulous for lovers of vintage Outerwear

 

[JackieMatra]

Unfortunately he spent most of his career with MGM, which specialized in ultra-lavish escapist schlock, so there aren't all that many really significant films in his oeuvre.
"It Happened One Night" (1934) and "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) are his two acknowledged "classics".

Among the rest, "Red Dust" (1932) (with Jean Harlow, with whom he made six films, and Mary Astor, is the "steamy" "pre-code" original of which "Mogambo" was a remake), Wife vs. Secretary (1936) (a comedy with Harlow and Myrna Loy), San Francisco (1936) (a particularly lavish period piece with a gorgeously leggy Jeanette MacDonald and an Oscar nominated Spencer Tracy), Command Decision (1948) (from a stage play with a star-studded all-male cast), and "The Hucksters" (1949) (a personal favorite of mine, with Deborah Kerr, and sterling supporting performances from Sydney Greenstreet and Edward Arnold) make for fairly worthwhile watching.

Gable also made six films with Joan Crawford, none of which were particularly noteworthy, and the last of which, "Strange Cargo" (1940) was downright bizarre, with Peter Lorre as a character named "Pig" and Ian Hunter as, I kid you not, God. If you really want to see the two MGM mega-stars of the early 1930s, Gable and Crawford, striking sizzling sparks together in all of their youthful beauty, I would suggest trying either "Possessed" (1931) or "Dancing Lady" (1933), the former of which is the better film, but the latter of which has the unusual attraction of seeing Crawford dance, as taught by Fred Astaire, playing himself, in his first film.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Dancing Lady" is actually a pip of a picture even if you don't like Gable or Crawford. The score is really outstanding -- several of the selections were solid hits during the fall and winter of 1933-34 -- and the staging of the numbers have a lot more imagination to them than is usual in MGM musicals of the pre-Freed Unit era. It isn't as snappy as any Warner musical of the same period, but it's shooting for the same mark, which is more than you usually get from ever-bourgeois MGM.

And of course, any movie where Gable and Crawford share the screen with Ted Healy and the Three Stooges is something worth seeing at least once.

 

[JackieMatra]

Wasn't the billing "Ted Healy and his Stooges". back then?