EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

st-shot Even before he was typecast as a Hollywood he man Clark Gable found work playing toughs and gangsters in secondary roles with the exception of this role against type before or after stardom as a sincere Salvation Army worker trying to save good time cabaret girl Bunny Stevens from the wages of sin. Toned down from the macho self assuredness that would carry his career he gives a more than adequate performance supporting leads Joan Crawford and Neil Hamilton (yes, Inspector Gordon).Bunny (Crawford) is a modern flapper out for a good time when she get's the gate from her married traveling salesman boyfriend Howdy Palmer (Hamilton). Thunderstruck she attempts to toss herself in the river but is prevented by Salvation Army officer Carl Loomis (Gable) who after a long walk and talk and a night to think it over gets her to sign up. Rewarding as it is she runs into Howdy a year later who wears her resistance down.The blonde Crawford does her usual solid desperate depression era every-woman sch tick with her tremulous voiced struggle with the world while letting her piercing eyes and delicate toned figure fill in the rest. Neil as the heel (couldn't resist) wears the moustache in this film as he fast talks Bunny into bed. Loathsome and unctuous as he is he does not kid himself he is anything else and in doing so attains a scintilla of dignity in a role that is all sleazy creep.Scene stealers Guy Kibee ( a mortician salesman who deals in "underground novelties") and Roscoe Karns along with Hamilton do yeoman work in perpetuating the traveling salesmen stereotype while Gert Short buying an O'Henry candy bar has a brief but hilarious center stage moment. It's Crawford's vehicle from start to finish but with 20/20 hindsight Gable's toned down soul saver shows him gaining fast.

marcslope MGM at its most intolerable, with Louis B. Mayer imposing his hypocritical morality on a dime-novel romance. Bad girl Joan Crawford is cavorting with the supremely unattractive traveling salesman Neil Hamilton, but is redeemed by--how's this for casting against type--Salvation Army major Clark Gable. Together the photogenic twosome wander off to host Salvation Army luncheons, dance around the maypole, and sing "London Bridge" to underprivileged tots. Designed to show off Crawford's versatility--she sings, dances, and almost acts--it instead reveals how deficient she is at this point in her career in most of these endeavors, and Gable looks bored. Anyway, it's short, and Hamilton at least gets to rub elbows with a fine crew of fellow salesmen, including Roscoe Karns, Guy Kibbee, and Cliff Edwards.

bkoganbing The second film that had Clark Gable and Joan Crawford together didn't start out that way. Laughing Sinners started out with Johnny Mack Brown as the Salvation Army Worker who saves Crawford and the film was completed when Louis B. Mayer saw the film and said reshoot it with Gable. This was after having seen them together in Dance Fools Dance where Gable was a villain and had only a couple of scenes with Crawford. This is according to Joan herself in a tribute she wrote in the Citadel Film Series Book, The Films of Clark Gable.Crawford is definitely in her element as singer/dancer and good time Prohibition party girl who falls for the charms of Neil Hamilton, a traveling salesman. You know what a bunch of party animals they are, just ask Arthur Miller. Anyway Hamilton decides though he thinks Joan's great in the hay, he wants to marry the boss's daughter and does, leaving her flat and despondent.One night as she's ready to throw herself off a bridge, Salvation Army worker Clark Gable stops her. She likes him, but still has a yen for Hamilton and he, her.Given Clark Gable's later image the casting of him as a Salvation Army worker is ludicrous. Mayer knew that and during the course of the film he gives him a nice prison background before he joined Edwin Booth's Army. The only way Gable could possibly fit the part. Anyway Mayer did it for the obvious chemistry between Gable and Crawford.It's more Joan's picture than his though. Later on her talents as a dancer which brought her to film in the first place would be not seen at all. So Laughing Sinners is a treat in that way.The film is based on a Broadway play Torch Song which ran for 87 performances the year before and starred Mayo Methot, Reed Brown, and Russell Hicks in the parts that Crawford, Hamilton, and Gable have. Coming over from the Broadway cast is Guy Kibbee in the role of another salesman, the only one to repeat his role from Broadway. Roscoe Karns and Cliff Edwards play another pair of salesmen and Marjorie Rambeau is Crawford's party girl friend.Russell Hicks is definitely more my idea of a Salvation Army worker, but Gable's more my idea of a leading man opposite Joan Crawford.

ccthemovieman-1 Like a lot of early '30s film, I found this a pretty interesting short (72 minutes) story. This one is about a chorus girl-type who gets jilted, hooks up with a Salvation Army man, then is enticed back to the old sinful ways for a night with the man who jilted her and finally realizes she is better off with the good guy and the good morals.This is an early look at Joan Crawford, who is blonde here with huge eyes. Clark Gable is sans mustache and really looks young. Neil Hamilton, the third lead, is the same man who went on to play Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series three decades later. In here, he's the pagan bad guy.This film goes a long way in portraying traveling salesmen as morally bankrupt people. Now why would they do that?!!