Dance, Fools, Dance

Bonnie and Rodney Jordan (Joan Crawford, William Bakewell) lose everything in the stock market crash. First their father dies of a heart attack and then they discover why: he lost his entire fortune in the crash. Now broke for the first time, Bonnie and Rodney must go to work. Bonnie gets a job as a reporter. Rodney goes to work for bootlegger Jake Luva (Clark Gable). The two being on opposite sides of the law leads to inevitable conflict.

Middle-of-the-road crime drama will appeal most to fans of Crawford and Gable. It's hardly the best work of either, though. It's a pre-Code film, which sometimes is all you have to say to get some classic film fans interested in a movie. Personally I didn't see anything all that risqué in this one. An early scene of a bunch of people in their underwear going for a swim seems to get the most talk but it's pretty tame despite the description. The story is something that was done many times and better over the years, in one variation or another. The insipid romance between Joan and Lester Vail leaves a lot to be desired.

The opening scenes of Dance, Fools, Dance paint a picture of spoiled rich kids Joan Crawford and her brother William Bakewell. Neither has apparently completed school or ever done anything worthwhile. Their father—who worked his own way up to wealth from the bottom—is worried. Joan smokes before breakfast; her brother buys liquor by the suitcase. The height of adventure and success for Joan is a yacht party where she boldly talks everyone into skinny dipping (well, stripping down to their underwear) out on the ocean.

The father dies and it turns out he's broke; the picture turns to chapter two, or, How will the spoiled kids survive? –Well, the brother finds work with a bootlegging mob, and Joan gets a job as a cub reporter. (Influential friend of the family helps her out, apparently...no, she's not remotely qualified, but shows a knack for the work right away!) Rather quickly, the brother finds himself over his head in the sordid business of bootlegging...and Joan, eager for a real story instead of the tea parties she's initially assigned to, takes on....you guessed it, the mob.

There's more to it than that, including Joan's sometime boyfriend (Lester Vail), who half-heartedly offers to marry her when her fortune goes kaput and hangs around when she sets off to make her own success; and Cliff Edwards as the veteran reporter who mentors Joan at the paper but hears too much for his own good at a speakeasy.

Clark Gable is riveting as boss gangster Jake Luva; pre-mustache, the swagger is already there. His first scene features a cigarette-lighting routine with girlfriend Natalie Moorhead (excellent in a tiny role as the soon-to-be discarded moll): he blows smoke in her face, she blows out his lighter, and they hold a stare for a lingering shot that speaks more about their characters' relationship than any of their dialog even attempts.

Midway through the story you have a pretty clear idea of where the plot is going to go….but the second half of the picture is still livelier than the first: at least the characters have some purpose in the second half. Crawford is especially good: she is always at the center as the picture revolves through her relationships with the various men in her life—lover, brother, mentor, gangster.

Joan also gets in one good dance—undercover as a chorus girl, she sees her former rich kid friends in the audience and really puts on a number.

No classic as far as plot goes, or dialog…but worth seeing for Crawford's performance.

Research question: How would a 1931 movie audience have been impressed by spoiled rich girl Crawford flashing an electric hair dryer?

OK, this is far-fetched fiction but it's still frightening to think that this reflected the way things actually were. It's a crazily convoluted story but you can't help but thinking that such choices wouldn't be put into fiction if they weren't even slightly possible. When The Crash came destroying lives, what did people with no training and no work experience do? Organised crime was one easy option: it paid the bills, it kept you from starving, it kept you alive....for a while anyway.

The other option for employment seemingly was to become a journalist - perhaps not such an easy option but unlike her brother's unwise career plan, that's what Joan Crawford's Bonnie does when they become broke. Incidentally, women journalists and women writers, especially in Hollywood, although the exception were not that uncommon. Indeed the writer of this film, Aurania Rouverol, was a noted female playwright.

As a work of fiction, this is perhaps Miss Rouverl's greatest achievement. The plot is quite nonsensical but in the magical hands of Irving Thalberg's team at MGM, you're swept along with this stupid story, accepting it all as perfectly normal.

MGM was the last of the studios to make the switch from silents to sound and as such talking pictures were still a novelty to the studio when this was made. This is very much evident with this. The most sophisticated and classiest silent films were often from MGM and they couldn't abandon that style they'd built up over all those years so easily. Like in the 20s, in this film, faces and expressions are used to tell the story and nobody was better at that than Joan Crawford. The story allows her to really develop her character and her experience one of the leading silent stars ensures first rate acting.

Clark Gable, in one of his very first roles is only swaggering around for about twenty minutes but he makes quite an impact. Although he is a one-dimensional nasty piece of work, he has an electrifying presence. His on-screen (and subsequent off-screen) romance with Miss Crawford also gives this film an authentic undercurrent of sexual tension. This and the overall high standard of acting (much better than in some other offerings from 1931) again helps to keep this crazy plot seem real. Even so, as a motion picture, it doesn't quite hit the mark but is nevertheless still entertaining.

Joan Crawford got to display some of her dancing talents which brought her to films in the first place in Dance Fools Dance. She also was paired for the first time with Clark Gable. Although Gable was sixth down on the billing the impression he made assured that he and Crawford would work together again.

In fact when Dance Fools Dance came out Crawford was already shooting another film, Laughing Sinners with Neil Hamilton and Johnny Mack Brown as her leads. The reviews Gable got made Louis B. Mayer scrap all the footage that had been shot with Brown and Gable was immediately recast in that picture.

Crawford and William Bakewell play a couple of rich kids whose father William Holden loses everything in the Crash of 29 and dies from the shock of it. And I mean he lost everything as the mansion and its furnishings are auctioned off to pay all the debts the estate owes. Both of them have to go to work, Bakewell not all pleased with that prospect.

Joan goes to work for a newspaper, writing sob sister stuff and she proves she has a knack for it. Bakewell on the other hand gets a job with your friendly bootlegger and his boss who is Clark Gable.

At this point the film makes use of the real life incidents of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and the murder of reporter Jake Lingle in Chicago who covered the gangland beat. Cliff Edwards who plays the reporter does an excellent job, possibly the best acted part next to Gable.

Playing opposite Crawford as her ever faithful boyfriend from the good old rich days is Broadway actor Lester Vail. I looked Vail up on the Broadway Database and he had considerable stage career. He did not do too many films and truth be told he did not register well as a screen presence. No wonder all the talk was about the few scenes Gable and Crawford had together when she went undercover to investigate the murder of her friend and colleague Edwards.

Though it goes over the top in the melodrama toward the end Dance Fools Dance was a significant milestone in the careers of two screen legends.

The story is simple, but Joan Crawford is one of those empowering roles that are such a feature of the pre-Code era, and you get Clark Gable in just his 3rd film as well. The setup is that a rich family living it up in the roaring 20's go bust with the stock market crash. Not only do they lose everything but the father dies on the exchange floor, leaving behind two kids (Joan Crawford and William Bakewell) who have never held jobs or gotten an education. While the son can't fathom working and would prefer to sit around getting drunk (a nice little critique of the spoiled rich), he eventually gets involved with bootleggers. The daughter, on the other hand, is a plucky young woman who turns down a marriage proposal that would have made her rich, and goes out and becomes a newspaper reporter instead.

You can probably guess what I love about Crawford's character. She's a modern woman who looks great out on the dance floor, believes in "trying love out on approval" (a scene which clearly signals pre-marital sex), and would rather work and be independent than settle for the traditional role of wife. Her brother is incredulous, leading to this exchange:

Bonnie (Crawford): "I'm not going to do any of those stupid, silly, conventional things. You'd be surprised what a girl can earn when she sets her mind to it. I'm no dud." Rodney (Bakewell): "You've got the looks, kid. Trade on 'em. Open up a beauty parlor. ..." Bonnie: "That's your idea of me, huh? Beautiful but dumb. All right, I'll show you. I'm going out to get a man-sized job."

That second dance she does when she's working undercover in the gangster's nightclub to get a story is delightful and evokes the flapper era, but to me the feminism in the film is what makes it a solid film, despite its basic plot. Crawford is not known for her on-screen charm, but she summons it here, and does well in the various aspects of her role - society woman, flapper, newspaper reporter, and love interest (hey, the complete woman). Gable is suitably tough as the gang leader, and he and Crawford have great chemistry together. I didn't care for the contrived confrontation which occurs and how the film ends though, which was really unfortunate, and kept it from a higher rating.

Another quote, from Gable to Crawford after her dance: "You got me going, sister." "Can I depend on it?" "In a big way."