Manhattan Melodrama **** (1934, Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jimmy Butler, Mickey Rooney, Leo Carrillo, Isabel Jewell) – Classic Movie Review 2,261

MGM’s famed 1934 crime film Manhattan Melodrama is the definitive version of an oft-told tale about two ghetto orphan kids (Jimmy Butler, Mickey Rooney) maturing into adult buddies (William Powell and Clark Gable) on opposite sides of the law.

Director W S Van Dyke II’s famed 1934 MGM crime melodrama film Manhattan Melodrama is the definitive version of an oft-told tale about two ghetto orphan kids Jim Wade and Blackie Gallagher (Jimmy Butler, Mickey Rooney) maturing into adult buddies (William Powell and Clark Gable) on opposite sides of the law as the DA and mobster. Myrna Loy plays Eleanor, the woman in the middle.

Arthur Caesar won an Oscar for his best original story, Three Men. But it is the three vibrant adult stars who should have been honoured, as well as the director Van Dyke, who puts his foot on the accelerator throughout, and cinematographer James Wong Howe, who makes it look so stylish.

Manhattan Melodrama is still great after all these years. OK, it is an odd idea to think of Rooney growing up into Gable, but it works anyway.

Whatever its merits, it will go down in history for ever as the film that the gangster bank robber John Dillinger had just seen before he was gunned down in front of the Biograph Theatre in Chicago the night the FBI killed him on July 22 1934. As far as cinema is concerned, it is memorable as the first of 14 pairings of Powell and Loy, as well as the first of three movies they made together in 1934.

Also in the cast are Leo Carrillo, Isabel Jewell, Thomas E Jackson, Nat Pendleton, George Sidney, Muriel Evans, Isabelle Keith [Claudelle Kaye], Frank Conroy, Noel Madison, Shirley Ross, Landers Stevens, Harry Seymour, Thomas Jackson, John Marston, Lew Harvey and Bill Arnold.

George Cukor directed additional scenes after the preview showing on 14 April 1934 as Van Dyke had already started on his next movie, The Thin Man (1934), also with Powell and Loy.

Manhattan Melodrama is directed by W S Van Dyke II, runs 93 minutes, is made by Cosmopolitan Production, is released by MGM, is written by Oliver H P Garrett and Joseph L Mankiewicz, from an original story by Arthur Caesar, is shot in black and white by James Wong Howe, is produced by David O Selznick, is scored by William Axt, and is deigned by Cedric Gibbons and Joseph Wright.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,261

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