Stephanie (March 2006)

Rating:   of 5

"Dancing Lady" (1933) was MGM's answer to the smash Warners musical "42nd Street" released earlier that year. Both films are backstage stories featuring a showgirl struggling to make it, a show struggling to make it, and intricately choreographed musical numbers (MGM lifting the now-famed geometric "human kaleidoscope" style directly from Busby Berkeley).

DL is also Joan at her MGM finest and most engaging, and an amalgam of her performances for the studio up to that time; not only does she get to dance and sing, as in her early "Dancing Daughter"-type roles, but she also brings to this stage a newly mature and rich acting style---recently honed in the previous year's hat trick of "Grand Hotel," "Letty Lynton," and "Rain"---as well as some powerful chemistry with co-star Clark Gable, with whom she'd previously sizzled in 1931's "Possessed."

Here Joan plays "Janie Barlow," a burlesque dancer busted by the cops and bailed out by smitten rich guy "Tod" (Joan's future husband Franchot Tone, in their second film together), who immediately tries to "improve" her with a written lecture on not saying "them things" or "can it" or "guy" and on not wearing shoes with ribbons or clothes with zippers.

After the jail-and-Tod experience, Janie decides to leave burlesque to pursue her dancing dreams with a legit Broadway show, one being directed by the notoriously hard-assed (and talented) Patch Gallagher (Gable). "I'm goin' uptown," Janie says resolutely, as the camera then cuts to a stream of subway street markers, stopping at "Times Square." (Such camera work is one of several clever touches by director Robert Z. Leonard. The next comes shortly afterwards, after Janie has gotten the heave-ho from Patch's show try-outs and then chases him around town: The camera zips along after them, shooting mainly their running feet as Patch tries to avoid her, interspersed with shots like Janie beaming at him and waving through the window of a Turkish bath, where he's gone to escape her. Very fresh and funny and fun to watch.)

After Janie's initial failed attempt to audition, Tod steps in, bribing the show's producer to force Patch to give Janie a chance. Patch is understandably reluctant, but her talent and work ethic win him over and he hires her, despite his continued misgivings about and digs at her association with the upper-crust Tod.

The Crawford/Gable chemistry is palpable (and fun) in this, their 4th film together. There aren't many (or any, really) hot-n-heavy love scenes; what's interesting is what they're not doing and how hard they're trying to find substitutes for they want to be doing! There's plenty of verbal sparring from their equally headstrong, hardscrabble, ambitious characters, as well as some physical sparring---one of the funniest (and most lightheartedly sexy) scenes is when they're working out at the gym. After Janie initially swings across the room and kicks Patch in the rear, the two eventually start tossing a medicine ball harder and harder at each other. Patch keeps hitting her with the ball, then apologetically rubbing her where it hurts---first her hand, then her shoulder...At the end of the scene, he purposely throws the ball at her butt, then advances...at which Janie cutely sits down and scoots away, laughing "Oh no you don't!" Though Janie and Patch do eventually get to kiss, their playfulness (as well as feigned gruffness) with each other throughout the film is just as erotic (and much more erotic than Tod's overt protestations of love) as the final clinch.

Joan's husband-to-be Tone is appropriately smooth and charming (and relatively sincere) in this film---no match for the more natural, rougher-hewn Gable onscreen, but still attractive. The supporting characters are also engaging---May Robson as Tod's crusty Nana; Ted Healy's Stooges (later to break away to become the famed "Three Stooges") providing slapstick shenanigans during Janie's audition; Winnie Lightner as Janie's wisecracking roomie and fellow showgirl; the high-strung "Pinky" and horny producer's son "Junior" adding more amusing goofiness. (Check out also Eve Arden in an uncredited brief appearance early in the film as she unsuccessfully auditions for Patch's show.) And of course there's Fred Astaire, in his film debut, hoofin' it and singing "Heigh Ho" and "Let's Go Bavarian" with Joan in the film's final big production number.

I didn't see a kitchen sink anywhere in the proceedings, but MGM nonetheless outdid itself in providing everything else but. What might have become a mere hodge-podge turned out to be a highly entertaining blend of romance, humor, and pure show-biz pizazz (as well as one of Joan's highest grossing pictures---at $750,000, topped only by "Grand Hotel," which made $950,000), easily held together by Joan and Gable's charm and depth, and Leonard's sure and inventive direction (as well as some clever writing). A real treat and one of my favorite Joan films.

Memorable Lines:

Janie to Tod as she's dumping him for Patch: "I love to say 'can it' and I love shoes with ribbons on 'em and I got a perfect passion for zippers."
Tod: "You can put zippers on your sables if you like."

Janie: "No, I'm afraid 'them things' won't mix with those things."

Patch to Janie at end of film: "What is this you're dishing out?"

Janie to Patch, just before final big clinch: "Can't you take it?"