La chiave della città

This is a very entertaining film with two great actors, Clark Gable, (Steve Fisk) and Loretta Young,(Clarissa Standish) who performed like magic together in this film. These two actors made this film a great success with lots of laughs, romance and drama. In real life, Clark Gable and Loretta Young had a baby and kept it a secret until many years later. This warm feeling between these two actors made this film even more enjoyable. Frank Morgan, (Fire Chief Duggan) gave a great supporting role and lots of comic fun to this film along with Marilyn Maxwell, (Sheila) who played a sexy role as a platinum blonde who did a balloon dance with the balloons all being exploded. Raymond Burr, (Les Taggart) plays a rough and tough longshoreman who gets into a big fight with Steve Fisk. There is nice old scenes from San Francisco and this is truly a great film classic from 1950.

Clark Gable and Loretta Young star in "Key to the City," a 1950 film featuring Frank Morgan, Marilyn Maxwell, and Raymond Burr.

Young plays Clarissa Standish, a somewhat uptight small-town mayor who attends a gubernatorial convention in San Francisco and runs into the somewhat wilder Mayor of Puget Sound, Steve Fisk (Gable). Before you know it, the two are innocently involved in one scandal after another, the first when a night club they are in is raided, and the second when they're both wearing Halloween costumes and a policeman thinks Fisk is trying to force himself on a young girl, Clarissa being in a little girl costume. Despite Clarissa's exasperation with Fisk, she falls for him.

This is a cute, predictable comedy starring two of the most attractive people from Hollywood's golden era, both of whom still look great, but who are now forced into inferior fare. Films were competing with television, so they were trying to be more like television, right down to the black and white film. This was the type of film producers gave older actresses: Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Young; all but Colbert and Crawford would go on to have tremendous success in television.

One bad section: the fight between Gable and Burr. The doubles for them were horrendous,looking nothing like them, making the scene ridiculous.

Mildly enjoyable, with the performances by Gable, Young, and Morgan elevating it.

This movie is pretty good but falls into a period of Glark Gable's career when many of his films just looked like they were quickly churned out and could have been a lot better if they had a little bit better writing and if there was more energy to the film itself. In other words, Clark Gable and cast seem more like they are going through the motions to get a paycheck and this film offers nothing particularly new or exciting. In fact, the film is a step back because the plot seems even more trivial and forgettable than most of his films of the day. You would think that with Loretta Young and Clark Gable you'd get a film that is more than just a time-passer--particularly when you think of how marvelous they were together in CALL OF THE WILD. This film is for fans of Gable or Young but is pretty skipable for others.

Key to the City (1950)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Coming fifteen years after teaming up for THE CALL OF THE WILD, Clark Gable and Loretta Young finally made another film together even though both had remained at MGM over the course of time. Their love child from the making of that 1935 film might have had something to do with this but in this film they play Mayors who meet at a convention in San Francisco. At first, naturally, they can't stand one another but soon they begin to fall in love even though Gable is facing some heat in his political job. When you know the troubled history that Gable and Young went through it's somewhat amazing that MGM would force them into this film but what's even more amazing is that they turn in such fine performances and the charm that's on display here is the same that was seen in that 1935 film (which I highly recommend). That's certainly the sign of great actors but it's a shame that the studio, knowing the trouble, wouldn't deliver a better screenplay. This is certainly another example of great actors having to work their tails off to make material seem a lot better than it actually is. This certainly isn't a bad movie because it does have several good moments but with these two stars you'll be hoping there was more here. What does work is naturally Gable and Young, both extremely charming and making the film fun to watch. The two work perfectly well together as both make you believe their characters and makes you believe everything they do. The supporting cast is also quite good with Raymond Burr as Gable's political rival, Frank Morgan (in his final film; he died before this was released) sweet as the fire chief and Lewis Stone. The screenplay makes a few bad mistakes including the silly political stuff that ends with a pretty over the top sequence inside of Gable's office at the end. This political stuff also keeps Gable and Young away from one another, which is another mistake as it's them carrying the film. Fans of the two stars will certainly want to check this out but others will find much better films from the two.

Ordinary comedy of note more for its cast than any special quality the film itself possesses. Gable and Loretta Young are reunited for the only time after their torrid affair on the set of Call of the Wild resulted in a secret child who was one of Hollywood's most notorious open secrets. This was also Frank Morgan's final completed film, he started work on the disastrous Judy Garland version of Annie Get Your Gun but suffered a heart attack and passed away before the film was restarted with Betty Hutton. As for this picture's story its a bunch of silly nonsense of misunderstandings but the cast give it a game reading and Gable and Young have a good on screen rapport.