Quand on est belle

As sound and dialog came to films the Broadway stage became more and more a source for movie properties even if they had to go back considerable ways for material. The Easiest Way was a play written by James Walter and produced by that eminent showman David Belasco first in 1909. It was most typical of the Edwardian era morality works that Belasco so favored.

It could never be done today, in fact it was barely acceptable in 1931 for its incredibly anti-feminist stand. According to the character played by Marjorie Rambeau men rule, make said rules, and women just have to deal with it. Submit cheerfully to being wives and mothers with some occasional outside work if you can fit it in.

Constance Bennett with her small job in a department store doesn't think this is all that's for her. She help supports her parents J. Farrell MacDonald and Clara Blandick and a couple of small brothers. Sister Anita Page is getting ready to marry honest laundry man Clark Gable who has some most chauvinistic views about women, but also about the value of honesty and hard work.

So when advertising executive Adolphe Menjou suggest to Bennett that they shack up, she's ready to take The Easiest Way and go for a life of luxury. That is until she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery who's ready to marry her once he gets back from a long assignment in Argentina.

Without going into details Bennett makes a holy hash of her life and those tried and true standards of the time for women serve as a lesson to her and all in the audience. Be good wives and mothers and don't take The Easiest Way to prosperity.

The original play only had six characters and so it was expanded considerably at MGM and updated to Depression times where such lessons were not completely appreciated. Still this cast did manage to put it over.

The Easiest Way was the first film at MGM for Clark Gable who was billed eighth down in the cast. By the end of the decade Gable was acknowledged King of Hollywood before Elvis was known as the King. Nearly all the players billed above him would be below him in cast lists in the future. His appeal on the screen was immediately discernible and in the end of this film, he's given a bit of humanity and shown as not the blue nose stinker you might originally have thought him to be.

The Easiest Way is way old fashioned for today, I doubt too many stock companies do the original play today. Still some will find it a curiosity and Gable is always good to watch.

"This life isn't a romance for girls like us. It's a game with the men holding all the trumps. They like to look upon us as some animal they're proud to own."

This is a pre-Code film, but it's a mixed bag relative to moralistic messaging, and that was a little frustrating. Its premise is born out of the Depression, and it being tough for working families to make ends meet. In a common theme from the era, a sudden event promises a change in fortune: the meeting of a rich man. It comes at a cost, however, and "the easiest way" out of one's problems is soon shown to be the hard way.

We initially meet a large family in an early morning scene that was sharp and full of life. Kids of all ages sharing beds are being awakened by their mother and sent on errands or called to get their breakfast. The father announces he is tired of the physical strain of working as a longshoreman and wants to rely on his kids, so he would like his adolescent son to drop out of school so that he can get a job at a construction site catching red-hot rivets thrown by workers in a pail. Yikes. We're not in 2023 here, we're in 1931 - although in light of Iowa and other state legislatures moving forward with loosening child labor laws with little ability to hold businesses accountable in the event of injury or death, hey, perhaps we're also looking at the future here! But I digress. One of his adult daughters (Anita Page) is soon to marry a hard-working blue-collar guy (Clark Gable). The other (Constance Bennett) is a sensible saleswoman, but after being discovered as a modelling prospect, becomes the lover of the top boss (Adolphe Menjou). Her sugar daddy allows her to live a life of luxury and support her family, but the immorality of the relationship (as seen in the eyes of the era) causes her to be ostracized by her mother and brother-in-law, and she's conflicted when she meets someone she truly loves (Robert Montgomery).

It's a fantastic cast with all five of those actors, and these were early roles for Montgomery and Gable, which is a bonus. Director Jack Conway keeps things moving along with great pace as well, and occasionally there are some fine shots, such as the one of Bennett and Montgomery talking at a mountain lake, their backs turned to the camera and the reflection of the trees in the water in the background. We never really see any passion between Bennett and Menjou so it's decidedly tame for a pre-Code film, and that's almost certainly due to censors taking exception to Bennett's life being shown as too alluring before eventually getting to its message and hacking it up at a local level, as Mark Viera describes in Forbidden Hollywood. The film also vacillates melodramatically as it plays out. I liked that part of this showed the position Bennett's character was in, between a rock and a hard place, with her friend saying that the men "held all the trumps," but wish it had taken more of a stand on this hypocrisy.

And that's where most of my discontent came from, the judgment of Bennett's character, while there was absolutely none of this for Menjou's. The most visible form of this comes from Clark Gable's character, who clearly represents the film's moral compass, given the somewhat nauseating forgiveness scene, complete with Christmas trappings, at the end. Even Bennett herself feels she is wrong to be living with a man who is "not the marrying kind," and comes off as more miserable than some of the other strong pre-Code characters and the leading ladies who played them. At least she's not condemned to death so this doesn't feel completely like a post-Code film, but it's close.

Wonderful story ruined by Hays Office has fabulous Constance Bennett escaping her New York slum upbringing by becoming a model and mistress to Adolphe Menjou. All is well until she runs into reporter Robert Montgomery in Colorado Springs (the Wild West in 1931). He's off to South America and asks Bennett to be good and wait for him. Well that lasts about a month. She runs out of money and goes back to Menjou. Better than it sounds until the hack ending. Solid performances by the stars, especially Bennett, and ably supported by Anita Page, Marjorie Rambeau, Clark Gable (his first MGM film), J. Farrell MacDonald, Clara Blandick, Jack Hanlon (as the sullen brother), and Hedda Hopper. The opening tenement scene is just wonderful. Gable is dynamic is his first big part. Rambeau is always terrific. Page is quite good in a supporting role. Menjou is slimy, but Constance Bennett is front and center and mesmerizing. She was a major star of her time--too bad she's mostly forgotten now.

The Easiest Way is directed by Jack Conway and adapted to screenplay by Edith Ellis from the 1909 play of the same name written by Eugene Walter. It stars Contance Bennett, Adolphe Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Clark Gable and Anita Page.

Obviously tame by today's standards, it's still not hard to see why The Easiest Way ruffled feathers back in the day. Essentially the plot finds Bennett as Laura Murdock, a poor shop girl who grows so tired of sharing a cramped tenement home with her large family, where three to a bed is the norm, she lands herself a rich older man (Menjou) and becomes a kept mistress. This ostracises her greatly and stuck in a loveless relationship, she's in a bad place emotionally. Hope comes in the form of Jack Madison (Montgomery), and the two hit it off right away and fall in love, but can Laura leave behind the wealth for the sake of love? Just what is the easiest way?

And so it is, running at under 75 minutes, pic gets away with what it can by ensuring the taboo nature of the story centre is cunningly evident. Conway and Mescall show some deft ambition with mobile camera work and nice framing shots out in the exteriors. Performances are all credible, with Gable serving early notice of what was to come in his career, and the ending, one of many filmed as the makers searched for tonal closure, works just fine to linger as a bittersweet aftertaste.

Montgomery isn't in it nearly enough given that he is playing one of the key characters, and the big issue of women striding out for their right to challenge society's stone-age ideals is inadequately unfurled. Other than that this is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of of pre-code classic cinema. 7/10

Constance Bennett stars as a lower class girl who takes the easy way. That is, she becomes a kept women. We see her in beautiful gown, in jewels, in furs. Adolph Menjou is footing the bill.

Then she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery and wants to give it all up for true love. I won't reveal the ending. But it's not an especially happy one, and three cheers to Hollywood for not selling out.

A few comments on the perfumers: . Robert Montgomery is not someone I can imagine anyone's throwing over even a modest income for.

. Clark Gable has a fairly small role here. He plays, with of course no mustache, Bennett's proper working class and disapproving brother-in-law.

. Bennett is chic as she always is. But she isn't photographed in a faltering manner. Her profile is rather flat. She appears to have an overbite and her false eyelashes seem apparent. Maybe the director of photography and she did not get on well.

. The brilliant Marjorie Rameau turns in the earliest of her fine performances that I have seen. She plays another kept woman. When Bennett is down on her luck and asks for a loan, she sends her packing. But when her daddy dies, she comes to Bennett for money and is given it.

Her performance is in a different realm from that of any of the other players in this movie.

Bennett is a strangely forgotten star of early movies. Rambeau is a sadly underrated actress, whose career spanned several decades.