I first saw “Manhattan Melodrama” years ago, how many years I’m uncertain, but it’s been a long time. I remembered it as a good film. I was right about that, to the extent that I was right about the movie but it is more than just good. It strives for being a great film and nearly succeeds. Made in 1934, it got in just before the Hays Code cracked down. That might have had some effect–likely not a good one on this movie–but it’s not really a big deal. The code’s “No crime goes unpunished” rule is observed here even without the code.

The cast is interesting–I have always loved William Powell, an ideal of urbane sophistication, not only in the “Thin Man” series but in nearly everything he did. Myrna Loy, who played his wife in that series, was always one of my favorites too. And you couldn’t be a fan of old American movies without admiring Clark Gable. But Loy and Powell at least, I usually associated with lighter though not necessarily simple roles. Here they each get their opportunity to do what they could do with real drama. And Gable too, in fact matches their performances.

The story starts out with a true story. In 1904 the “General Slocum.” a steamboat, sank in the east River, NY. Two boys, Blackie Gallagher and Jim Wade are saved by a Roman Catholic Priest. Though offered more or less equal oportunites, the boys go their separate ways and when we meet them 30 years later, Blackie(Clark Gable) is a genial but when necessary ruthless gangster, who is still good company and likeable to his friends. Jim(William Powell)is a rising lawyer and would be politician.

Blackie has a lovely and witty girl friend in Eleanor(Myrna Loy) but she is not always in sympathy with his lifestyle. As time passes Jim is elected District Attorney and Blackie and Eleanor break up over his refusal to get married or to change his ways. You will not be surprised. I’m sure, to find that Eleanor and Jim fall in love and are married. But in the meantime, Blackie has committed murder in killing a welcher who owed him money and wouldn’t and/or couldn’t pay. Blackie knows that Jim is suspicious of him in the murder but there is no evidence so the case is allowed to drop.

>Shortly after this Jim runs for governor and a corrupt ex-employee threatens to go public with a lie that Jim intentionally let his friend off in the murder case. When Blackie learns of this he kills the ex-employee. This time there is an eye witness and Jim has no choice but to prosuecute. Blackie ends up with a death sentence.

Shortly after this Jim is elected governor, and here the movie, already fraught with romance, murder and violations of public morality, turns desperately personal and gripping. Jim feels that as a governor elected on a promise of reform and no favors, he cannot grant a commutation of the sentence to Blackie. And it is here that each of the three stars get to show us the real sleves of their characters and their real talents as actors.

Gable is a charming and heroic criminal, convicted of murder but still in good spirits, still considers the governor his friend and and expects no favors. He is willing to die to allow his old friend to continue his work as a public servant. He also does not to care to spend the rest of his life locked in prison. Gable expresses all this with a winning attitude that leaves you admiring him despite what he’s done and for what he’s trying to do. He is one of the most charming and likeable characters you’ll ever find on his way to execution in an old movie.(I don’t know if they ever come that way in real life, but it’s a great and magnificent performance.)

Powell, whom we usually think of as the heavy drinking. wise cracking, jovial and loveable rascal in the Thin Man series and other films, is quite different here too. He is a man obsessed with the idea that he cannot set aside the death sentence, obsessed with guilt that in obeying his oath he will be bringing about the death of his old friend. Caught in this cruel dilemma, he twists and turns mentally, trying, trying to find a way out or a way of making himself feel less painfully guilty. But there is no way out. He is stuck and he knows it. He will do his duty, he thinks, but he will also murder something within himself as he does it.

Eleanor as portrayed by Loy, comes to mind as Loy’s dominant persona in our memory, the beautiful, sophisticated, and usually carefree rich girl(again, the Thin Man series but other movies too)who takes on life with zest and spreads some of the zest around to her friends too. But this is another Loy, a deep, serious, and grieving woman. She is torn by the fact that her one time lover is to be executed and that her husband could but won’t save him, his old friend. Her heart is breaking and her marriage is at risk. Her whole persona(like her whole life) is collapsing Like her husband, she has no place to turn and is pulled down in despair by the whole situation, a woman trapped and cringing inside, trying to go on outwardly, but dreading the way her life has become.

Each of these three, supported by a very good cast, incidentally, make this not only suspenseful but heart rending as you hope for a different outcome than what you think is coming. You share the characters’ desire for a way out, something that will satisfy morality and honor on both sides, something that will allow Blackie to live and Jim to succeed.

This film, so far as I know, shows up on TV seldom, but it does from time to time. So I hope you get a chance to see it and therefore, I will not reveal exactly what happens. Please see it if possible–this is 1930’s era Amercan movie-making at its best, taut, tight, gripping–and merciless in its depiction of the situation to which the human condition can lead.

I will, however, give you some interesting pieces of information I ran across on Wikipedia–

This was the movie showing at the Biograph theatre in Chicago which John Dillinger and the lady in the red dress saw on the evening of July 22, 1934. Dillinger was killed as they left the theatre by a volley of fire from FBI agents who apparently were neither movie critics nor Trumpish civil servants

Myrna Loy was one of several people who expressed disgust that the studio used the above fact to promote the film

Scenes from this movie are included in the 2009 film, “Public Enemies” in which Johnny Depp played Dillinger.

George Cukor was an uncredited and likely part time behind the scenes director. In a career that would last into the 1980’s he would develop a reputation as one of the greatest of Hollywood directors in directing women

The “real” director(and likely he really did dominate the making of the film)was W S Van Dyke. He seems to have begun his carrer working for D W Griffith on “The Birth of a Nation.” He became know as “one-take-Woodie” because he usually would do only one take and settle for what he got in it. I imagine this made him popular with actors, who I would guess dislike many re-takes, and studio owners who like films that don’t go over-budget

There is a scene in the Cotton Club, a Harlem night club that catered to white customers and a few influential blacks in the 1920’s-’30’s. The performers were dominantly if not exclusively black. In this scene a female singer does a nice version of a jazz ballad, “The Bad In Every Man.” I commented to my wife that the melody sounded a whole lot like “Blue Moon.” It turns out that the singer was a white lady, Shirley Ross, in blackface, something I would never have guessed. The song was written by Lorenz Hart(first writing partner of Richard Rodgers-Hammerstein came later), who after the film was released re-wrote the lyrics–as “Blue Moon.”

The film received one academy award nomination, for best original story, which it won. It received no others which is ridiculous.–check out the 1934 Oscars on-line for more.