Race Car Love- Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable’s “To Please A Lady”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

To Please A Lady, Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable, MGM, 1950

Yes, everybody loved, or should have loved, Barbara Stanwyck as the devious femme fatale scheming up a plot to kill her husband along with convenient insurance salesman-lover Fred MacMurray in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and other 1940s film vehicles including some nicely done screwball comedies. And yes, every woman, femme fatale or not, and maybe a few guys too, loved, or should have loved romantic, dreamy and whatever Clark Gable any number of films, including famously Gone With The Wind and not a few screwball comedies as well. But nobody should love this combo in this film under review, To Please A Lady, a film that only goes to prove once again that not every actor made the right script choices in their careers since this one is leaden to say the least. Apparently film actors will take on films because they need the dough, need to see themselves on screen, need to fill up some time or need to, oh well, fill in the blanks. And one of those reasons must have impelled these two established stars on this one.

Here’s the plot- line quickly. Clark is nothing but a king hell race- car driver. No not the big Indy racers, not at first anyway, although he dreams dreams of such success (having previously, pre-war, pre-World War II if you are asking, failed to make the grade at Indy) but midget racers, racers in the racing realm that are just above those box-car racers from our childhoods. But more, much more, dangerous. At least dangerous when fame-hungry Clark gets on the track and willingly creates all kinds of mayhem to win, win prize money to front for an Indy-type racer and glory. But fellow racers (and fans for a while) do not like wreck-less and crazy drivers who get other drivers killed by their maneuvers and that is where Barbara, Barbara as a powerful nationally syndicated columnist with enough weight to make or break a man (or woman) comes into the picture when she, looking for a story, goes out to the race-track one day.         

So that is how they met and how after Barbara sees Clark maneuver a fellow driver to his death aimed to destroy his career (and his dreams. Then it is curtains for Clark and his dreams. Well almost but roguish, manly Clark gets under Barbara’s skin, you know what I mean, right. Thereafter, even though theirs is not a match made in heaven, the two are a pair, a pair right up to the big-time race at Indy. Of course the problem for us with this romantic comedy is that the cooing is too gluey for our times (and probably for theirs as well) and the plot line cannot sustain the drizzle. See what I mean. Watch these two in their better stuff not this one.