Love on the Run

This is a very good film and I enjoyed it very much. Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone give great performances.

One of the highlights of this film is the delightful comedy cameo by that great character actor, Donald Meek as the batty caretaker at the Palace of Fontainebleu!! His scenes alone are priceless!! Don't miss this film, as it is a very good comedy--not so much a slapstick comedy, or a comedy that overdoes it with hammy performances, but it is a winner all the way!! Be sure and try to catch it next time it is on television--it is very good and you won't be disappointed from it!!

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.

This one is worth seeing for Crawford's delightful performance: she positively glows as the madcap heiress on the run. Despite the silly story and uneven performance from Gable (his legendary chemistry with Crawford is nonetheless in evidence), there is always the snappy dialogue (much of it written by John Lee Mahin of "Red Dust" and "Bombshell"), to keep the laughs coming. Crawford's then husband Franchot Tone plays Gable's fellow reporter. For anyone who wonders why she is called the ultimate movie star.

Let me tell you why this movie is good: It shows that Joan Crawford and Clark Gable were great comic actors. There is no question that if I Love Lucy had been re-casted with Crawford and Gable as Lucy and Ricky, the results would have been hilarious. Also, Franchot Tone gives one the more hilarious performances as Gable's news reporter chum and rival. Tone would have played an extremely amusing Fred Mertz. The story is so upbeat and so amusing that it is virtually impossible to find anything about it to dislike. The story has snappy dialog, farcical plot, engaging characters and excellent cinematography. Any movie that features Crawford, Gable and Tone running around France and getting into all kinds of silly trouble is a movie that will entertain.

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.