Love Me or Leave Me ***** (1955, Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell) – Classic Movie Review 2211

Director Charles Vidor’s 1955 musical drama Love Me or Leave Me is a brilliantly spirited, acidic-flavoured, fictionalised biopic of the career of jazz singer Ruth Etting. Her fraught life, tricky career and tempestuous relationship with Chicago gangster Marty Snyder give the dazzling Doris Day the perfect chance to prove that she is far more than just a cute face and a pretty voice.

It is a strong candidate for Day’s best performance and best film, out of her 39 movies.

However, Day still faces competition from a powerhouse James Cagney, Oscar-nominated as Etting’s scary gangster friend and lover, Marty ‘the Gimp’ Snyder, who helped to propel her to stardom. Scandalously, Day was overlooked at the Oscars, though she went on to pick up a Best Actress nomination for Pillow Talk (1959).

This richly enjoyable, rousing movie is not really a musical but rather a drama with music, packed full of great vintage songs. Fortunately, you really do not even have to have heard of Etting and Snyder to appreciate it. Daniel Fuchs won an Oscar for his Best Motion Picture Story – the film’s only Oscar after six nominations – and he was also nominated for Best Screenplay, written with Isobel Lennart. It is a brilliant screenplay.

The movie’s hit song ‘I’ll Never Stop Loving You’, by Nicholas Brodszky (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics), was also Oscar nominated. It is one of two new songs for the film – the other is the lovely torch song ‘Never Look Back’.

Also in the cast are Cameron Mitchell, Robert Keith, Tom Tully, Harry Bellaver, Richard Gaines, Peter Leeds, Claude Stroud, Aubrey Wilder, John Harding, Jay Adler, Henry Kulky, James Drury, Otto Reichow, Dick Simmons, Mauritz Hugo, Roy Engel and Veda Ann Borg.

Day’s next film is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

Doris Day (1922–2019).

RIP Doris Mary Ann Kappelhof, who died on 13 May 2019, aged 97. She is fondly remembered as one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century and the biggest female film star in the late Fifties and early Sixties.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2211

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