Liebe mit 100 PS

This movie is an obvious re-working of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and is a couple steps below it in quality. However, considering that Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone do such a good job with the material, it's still an excellent film. That's because despite the familiarity of the material, the movie is so much fun to watch. The dialog is snappy and the pacing is great. And, despite the film being pretty predictable (as most were of the era), I didn't mind and felt myself being caught up in the movie.

Joan is a runaway bride and Gable is the cad pretending to help her but he's got a secret agenda. In the end, they are head-over-heels and the movie closes. Sounds familiar? Of course, but who cares--it's still lovely to watch.

A runaway bride (Joan Crawford) gets tangled up with a reporter (Clark Gable) and the two travel together, eventually falling love. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Obviously inspired by It Happened One Night, it's not a remake or a direct ripoff. Just a cash-in like Hollywood has always done. Still, it's actually a pretty nice movie.

Funny, silly, with wonderful chemistry between Gable and Crawford. There's a great scene early on where the two climb into a plane. Gable looks at all the plane's gauges and says "I wonder what all those gadgets are for?" What follows is one of the funniest airplane takeoffs I've ever seen on film. Franchot Tone also stars as Gable's friend and rival reporter. Donald Meek has a brief but memorable part as well. It's a fun movie with snappy dialogue and a great cast. Gable is especially good. It's not without flaws but give it a shot and I'm sure you'll find something to like about it.

Everything about LOVE ON THE RUN is derivative. It seems like a reincarnation of Gable's role in "It Happened One Night" with him as a newspaper reporter passing himself off as a friend to runaway heiress JOAN CRAWFORD.

It's a bumpy ride most of the way, but there is one exceptionally funny scene in the palace at Fontainbleu involving a batty caretaker (DONALD MEEK) who thinks Gable and Crawford are ghosts and wants to give Gable a tip on his minuet style. He joins forces with Crawford for a charming bit of physical comedy--and then sadly disappears from much of the plot.

CLARK GABLE and JOAN CRAWFORD both exhibit comic ability, with Gable especially amusing in that minuet sequence. FRANCHOT TONE is Gable's rival reporter, always falling for Gable's con man tricks. But their material is thin--and rehashed from dozens of other films the two made either apart or together. Crawford is a harder, edgier version of the runaway gal Claudette Colbert played in "It Happened One Night".

Crawford looks at the peak of her photogenic charm and her chemistry with both stars is excellent.

But overall, it's just another screwball comedy about a runaway heiress and her vexation over being deceived by newspaper reporters.

Enjoyable piece as society dame falls for reporter in disguise. Road trip is a tad contrived, something about spies and secret plans, but who cares - this movie is powered by the sparks flying between Crawford and Gable. Sidekick Tone is great as the wisecracking nuisance.

Love On The Run is yet another example of Louis B. Mayer trying to cash in on the success that eluded him when he 'punished' Clark Gable by sending him to Columbia Pictures for a minor comedy that turned out to be It Happened One Night. For the rest of the decade Hollywood saturated the American public with madcap heiress stories.

When you've got one of the leading players under contract to you however it's a bit easier. Gable is given a rival reporter to contend with in Love On The Run in the person of Joan Crawford's real life husband, Franchot Tone. These two room together, but are ready to do everything short of cutting each other's throats to scoop the other.

Two stories that they are both assigned to cover, heiress Joan Crawford's wedding to a prince, Ivan Lebedeff, and a trans-European flight by Baron Reginald Owen get mixed up together as Crawford gets cold feet and Owen turns out to be an international spy.

Gable and Crawford have done it all before, especially Gable. But I kind of feel sorry for Franchot Tone. If he wasn't in a dinner jacket in his MGM parts he was in a film like this, essentially playing the Ralph Bellamy role. It's a very one sided rivalry Gable and Tone have. It's like the Yankees and Red Sox of the last century with the Yankees constantly coming out on top. No wonder Tone left MGM to try for better acting roles. At MGM he showed what he could do in films like Mutiny on the Bounty and Three Comrades, but even these were in support of bigger stars.

There's some nice performances in the cast from Mona Barrie as Owen's wife, Donald Meek as a most eccentric caretaker and William Demarest as Gable's editor. But no new ground was broken here.