Adventure ** (1945, Clark Gable, Greer Garson, Joan Blondell, Thomas Mitchell) – Classic Movie Review 6,712

MGM’s 1945 big-budget, mismatched relationship drama film Adventure is a disappointing movie with clichés galore and Clark Gable and Greer Garson obliged to say some virtually unspeakable lines in a weak screenplay.

‘Gable’s back and Garson’s got him!’ The public must have been thrilled when MGM announced Clark Gable’s return from the war in his first film for three years and that the studio had teamed him with Greer Garson. But director Victor Fleming’s 1945 big-budget ($3,500,000) mismatched relationship drama film Adventure is a disappointing movie with clichés galore and the stars obliged to say some virtually unspeakable lines in a weak screenplay based on a novel by Clyde Brion Davis. To add further allure and kudos, Fleming had directed Gable in Gone with the Wind.

Gable plays a womanizing hot-headed sailor called Harry Patterson (‘there ain’t a dame I can’t forget in six months’) who clashes with and then marries a sophisticated, cold-blooded librarian named Emily Sears (Garson), and this odd couple finally get their act together when they have a baby.

Garson and Gable were MGM’s biggest stars at the time, but perhaps they do not form a particularly attractive team, and it proved their only film together. Adventure is also too long and drawn-out at 135 minutes, though Joan Blondell, Thomas Mitchell and some of the other actors help.

Also in the cast are John Qualen, Richard Haydn, Tom Tully, Lina Romay, Philip Merivale, Harry Davenport, Tito Renaldo, Pedro de Cordoba, Martin Garralaga, Dorothy Granger, Elizabeth Russell, Barbara Billingsley (in her film debut), Esther Howard, Florence Auer, Lee Phelps, Eddie Hart, Morris Ankrum, Byron Foulger, Audrey Totter, Rex Ingram, Kay Medford, Stanley Andrews and Bess Flowers.

Adventure is directed by Victor Fleming, runs 135 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan, Vincent Lawrence, Anthony Veiller and William Wright, is shot in black and white by Joseph Ruttenberg, is produced by Sam Zimbalist, and is scored by Richard Haydn and Herbert Stothart.

Despite its high cost and critical disfavour, it earned a profit of $478,000 for MGM as the number seven box office hit of 1946. Released on 28 December 1945, Adventure earned more than $6 million worldwide.

Gable enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in August 1942 after the death of his wife Carole Lombard in an airplane crash.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,712

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