Parnell * (1937, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Edmund Gwenn, Edna May Oliver, Alan Marshal, Donald Crisp, Billie Burke) – Classic Movie Review 11,127

‘The romance that rocked the foundations of an empire…. now lives on the screen!’

Director John M Stahl’s 1937 black and white historical romantic drama Parnell is a tedious, misbegotten biopic of Charles Stewart Parnell, the 1880s-1890s Irish campaigner for home rule for Ireland, starring a miscast Clark Gable looking quite lost in the British House of Commons, and Myrna Loy just as wrong and disengaged as the married woman Katie O’Shea with whom he has an affair.

The scandalous 1880s affair between Westminster’s Irish Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell and married Katherine O’Shea damaged his career and his championing of Irish Home Rule.

Writers John Van Druten and S N Behrman base their screenplay on a play by Elsie T Schlauffler, and attempt to draw then contemporary parallels with the Edward and Mrs Simpson relationship to try to make it relevant for 1937, but fail to pull the screenplay together in a satisfactory or satisfying way.

The MGM stock company, out in amazing force, is wasted this time (apart from Edna May Oliver’s old auntie, Edmund Gwenn as Parnell’s secretary Campbell, Alan Marshal as Loy’s husband captain Willie O’Shea and George Zucco as Parnell’s lawyer Sir Charles Russell), and it is a misuse of Gable and Loy (replacing Joan Crawford) at their prime.

Parnell is a good-looking, expensive MGM production ($1,547,000) that nowhere near recouped its costs. The film is notable as Gable’s biggest flop, even at the height of his career when almost all his films were smash hits. Gable vowed never to do another historical costume drama but changed his mind to play Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891).

Instead of wearing a full beard like the real Parnell, Gable simply wears sideburns in addition to his usual moustache.

Parnell is portrayed by Robert Donat in the 1947 film Captain Boycott. In 1954, Patrick McGoohan played Parnell in The Fall of Parnell (December 6, 1890), an episode of the TV historical series You Are There. And in 1991, Trevor Eve played Parnell in the TV mini-series Parnell and the Englishwoman.

It is shot at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, 10202 W Washington Blvd, Culver City, California.

Gable and Loy also starred together in Manhattan Melodrama and Wife vs Secretary.

Also in the cast are Donald Crisp, Billie Burke, Berton Churchill, Donald Meek, Halliwell Hobbes, J Farrell MacDonald, Phyllis Coghlan, Neil Fitzgerald, George Zucco, Montagu Love, Byron Russell, Brandon Tynan, Erville Alderson, Frank Baker, Wade Botelier, Thomas Carr, Wallis Clark, D’Arcy Corrigan, George Cowl, Alec Craig, Drew Demarest, Dick Elliott, Frank Elliott, Pat Flaherty, Otto Fries, Douglas Gordon, Lumsden Hare, Ramsay Hill, Keith Hitchcock, Leyland Hodgson, Robert Homans, Olaf Hyten, Charles Irwin, Jack Kennedy, Crauford Kent, Murray Kinnell, David MacDonald, Gordon Mackay, Ian Maclaren, Wally Maher, Tom Mahoney, Eily Maylon, Jerry Mandy, Leo McCabe, Frank McGlynn Sr, Tom McGuire, Charles McNaughton, Pat Moriarty, Corbert Morris, Leonard Mudie, Jack Murphy, Joseph North, Frank O’Connor, Pat O’Malley, Rita Page, Dermot Quinn, Tom Rickets, Frank Sheridan, Yorke Sherwood, Russell Simpson, Pat Somerset, William Stack, Jameson Thomas, Zeffie Tilbury, Joseph R Tozer and Clarence Wilson.

Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) served as a Member of Parliament from 1875 to 1891, and was Leader of the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882 and then Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1882 to 1891. His party held the balance of power in the House of Commons during the Home Rule debates of 1885–1886. After the revelation in 1890 of Parnell’s long adulterous love affair in 1890, the Irish Parliamentary Party split and he headed a small minority faction till he died of pneumonia on 6 October 1891, aged 45.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,127

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