Pour plaire à sa belle

I couldn't care less about the story line, though it's not too bad to sit through. But the authentic open-wheel midget and Indy-car racing footage is worth every minute of Clark and Barbara's banal banter. There's even a montage of a racing engine being machined and assembled, some nice race car closeups, and pit stop action. To top it all off, there is a couple of minutes of what looks to be authentic footage of Joie Chitwood's famous stunt car show. This is a real sleeper and highly recommended for vintage race fans.

Gable and Stanwyck did one other film together at the beginning of talking pictures. It was called Night Nurse and Barbara was the lead and Gable an up and coming supporting player.

A generation later and they're both screen legends. I would have hoped that MGM would have given them something better. It's not that it's a bad film, the racing sequences are quite good and exciting. But To Please A Lady was definitely a B picture.

I have a theory that Gable wanted to do this for pleasure. After World War II, Gable and Stanwyck's husband Robert Taylor both took up racing; motorbikes, automobiles, you name it. MGM put a stop to it, not wanting to have two of its most expensive properties out risking their necks for fun. That's why we have stunt men. It took the decline of the studio system before a newer generation of stars like James Garner, Paul Newman and most of all Steve McQueen could pursue racing without studio interference.

Gable is the race car driver and Barbara Stanwyck is the Dorothy Thompson type columnist who at first dislikes him and then falls for him big time. Lots of similarities in their relationship to Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. No comedic moments in this one though.

Both Gable and Stanwyck deserved something more memorable than To Please A Lady.

To Please a Lady (1950)

Amazingly, this is from post-war America. It feels like a movie from the 1930s, both technically and the way the story is told. Even the stars, though both obviously alive and still working, are better known for their earlier work.

I'm speaking of Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck. And they have a certain degree of good chemistry on screen, though the story is so "constructed" (I'm avoiding the better word "contrived") you don't always feel what they are feeling, as characters. The one scene that does this best is an extended dinner at a club where a string orchestra is playing and they fall in love and then seem to fall out of love quickly. It's really beautiful and romantic (and the strings are as lush as any string section has sounded, and I mean it).

Because of all these things this ends up being both a great fun movie and a bit of a throwback that doesn't quite take off. The director, Clarence Brown, is also known best for much earlier movies (like the award winning pre-code "A Free Soul" which is fabulous). He's good, the acting is good, and the story is, well, pretty good. It's serviceable, but a little too packaged and somewhat thin going.

Another factor here is the racing itself, the Indianapolis 500. Some of the footage is clearly from real races (probably the 1949 or 1950 race...this movie was released in the fall of 1950). There are lots of scenes--too many, unless you are car racing fan--of cars zooming around the track. Credit goes to the cinematographer, Harold Rosson, who is a bit legendary because he helped with "Wizard of Oz" and did several other classics like "Asphalt Jungle" and "The Bad Seed." The photography matters more than usual here because it's "just" car racing, and it's made exciting and visually intense. Closeups of Gable in the car are of course constructed in the studio, but seemalessly. Great visuals throughout.

See this? You bet, but remember it's really an entertainment, and it has little complexity or depth, and it has lots and lots of race track stuff that doesn't propel the plot, just the immediate energy. It's no classic, but it has classic qualities and faces, for sure, and I liked it. And in the end, without giving a thing away, the woman (Stanwyck) stays strong and keeps her independence, a rare thing in 1950s movies.

I've gotta be honest. I never cared for racing films till I saw Cornel Wilde's "Devil's Hairpin" at a Saturday matinée a long time ago. It seemed like the start of 'modern' racing to me, where cars looked like cars and not bathtubs on wheels, and guys like Newman and Garner and McQueen were behind the wheel. Stuff made before that seemed too old and dated and creaky. So it was with some trepidation that I stayed up to watch this Gable/Stanwyck vehicle race around my TV screen for the first time. God knows it had to be creaky. They were making it while I was being conceived, and showing it in theaters while I was learning about baby formula! Yeah, there's a similar theme of drivers killing drivers like in "Devil's Hairpin", but there's Stanwyck going from being too hard-nose to sappy in love just a little too fast, Gable knocks her over way too quickly with no reason shown why he's even attracted to her, and the stars of the film look like they should have made this movie ten years earlier. But then, these stars were at the top of their game. When Stanwyck's assistant swoons over Clark Gable, she should. He's still the king! There were still plenty of women in the audience who would. And let's face it, Gable just had to dig Stanwyck because she was the best tough cookie with a soft center to come out of Hollywood ever. Gable slapping her, and some lines of dialogue stand out, especially Stanwyck saying, "You're nobody till somebody loves you," which had to predate Dean Martin's first recording of that by five years! There are lots of scenes of auto racing history for fans who appreciate that sort of thing to enjoy, but there's also the stars themselves to enjoy. Unlike today, there was a time when faces and personalities meant more to a film than the story itself, and it's watching these two stars go through the motions that really make this film worth watching even after all these years have passed.

Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck star in "To Please a Lady," a 1950 film directed by Clarence Brown. Adolphe Menjou also stars.

It took Gable's career a while to get back on track - excuse the pun - after World War II. He was older than the other matinée idols, he was a grieving widower when he returned from the war, and the indelible image he had created as Rhett Butler would haunt him. It wasn't until the mid-fifties that he really found his groove with some very good films.

This is one of the ordinary type films Gable made during this period, and here he's joined by Barbara Stanwyck as a sharp columnist. She is critical of midget car racer Gable when, during a race, another driver is killed, and he was part of the collision. She basically destroys his career in midget car racing. After some stunt driving, he earns enough to buy a car to enter the big car races. Feeling at first guilty about hurting his career, Stanwyck seeks him out while he's stunt driving; they fall for one another, but she can't get past his ruthlessness in competition.

Both stars are very good. Stanwyck did these cold businesswomen well. She's moving here into older women roles, her wonderful figure intact.

There is a lot of speedway racing in this film.

This movie is pleasant enough, but it would have been nice if stars of this stature could have been given a really top-notch script and production values.