DKosty123
After seeing this one for the first time, I wonder how the entire public missed a great film.Clark Gable played a killer named Blackie in this one. William Powell is excellent in this playing a District Attorney then elected New York Governor. Myrna Loy is the woman between both of them.After watching Powell and Loy in the Thin Man movies, this film is a guilty sin of pleasure watching them getting involved in a triangle with Clark Gable. This was MGM in a moment when the studio was delivering great films as the 1930's were full of hits by the studio.That might be the reason this one is over looked. After all, Gable would be Blackie again in a move about the San Francisco earth quake. But this Blackie has more of an edge. He is a ruthless killer with no remorse and yet a friend of the man to bring him to justice.Powell proves here he is more than a Thin Man.
Maddyclassicfilms
Manhattan Melodrama is directed by W.S Van Dyke, has a screenplay by Oliver H.P Garrett and Joseph L. Mankiewicz and stars William Powell, Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.William Powell gives one of his best performances in this as District Attorney Jim Wade. Wade won't allow his lifelong friendship with criminal Blackie Gallagher(Clark Gable)make him do anything wrong in regards to punishing him or any other criminal for their crime.Blackie also never wants Jim to do anything wrong or go against his principles. Jim's principles are pushed to the limit when Blackie faces a murder charge, can he let his friend face the ultimate punishment or not? Myrna Loy is very good as Eleanor the elegant woman loved by both men but destined to only end up with one of them. Gable is excellent as the tough bad guy with a good heart buried deep inside. In my opinion though this film is Powell's, he gives one of his best performances especially in the later scenes where he wrestles with his own conscience about Blackie's sentence.Over the years the film has become famous as well for being the film that John Dillinger had just finished watching when he was killed.
SanteeFats
Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy. How could it be a bad movie? Two kids that are best friends from a very young age that both become orphans when the river boat they are all on burns up. A priest who has lost his son in the same accident semi-adopts them. He raises them as his own until he is run over by the mounted police responding to a disturbance caused by rabble rousing Bolsheviks. The kids are now seen to go their divergent ways. Clark (Blackie) goes to the dark side and gets involved in gambling, betting, etc. Powell goes the other way and studies law. He becomes a lawyer, runs for DA and wins. Gable has sent his girlfriend (Myrna)to pay his respects. She is treated like a lady and likes it. She then leaves Clark and goes out on her own. When Blackie kills a mobster who owes him money, after the guy tries and draw a gun. Now things get interesting as Blackie and Jim Wade start going head to head. Wade goes after the criminals and of course he is an honest man and goes after Blackie too. At the wedding of Wade and Myrna, Blackie is suppose to be the best man but runs out. Probably to keep Wade's reputation clean. Nominated for governor he dismisses his senior assistant for cause. The assistant then re-opens the Manny Arnold murder case to embarrass Wade and cast doubts on his viability as a candidate. By this time Blackie has gone really bad and he murders the assistant. Blackie's crime is semi-witnessed by a not blind beggar sitting just outside the bathroom. So Blackie comes to trial. Jim goes to court and asks for the death penalty. He gets it but it sure isn't a happy occasion. Elected governor Wade has a chance to pardon Gable. He denies the pardon and Blackie is fried. Clark is very noble in the end and goes to his execution with panache. At the end Powell goes before the state legislature and resigns when he learns that Blackie killed a man to protect Wade from scandal.
robert-temple-1
Yes, this is a melodrama all right. Two boys of very different backgrounds are orphaned when a pleasure steamer catches fire and sinks in the Hudson River near New York in 1902. One boy (Mickey Rooney) is a rough and tumble type, while the other is bookish and thoughtful. They are both briefly adopted together by a man who lost his son in the same disaster. They grow up together and then go their separate ways. The rough one, 'Blackie', becomes a criminal and is played by Clarke Gable. The bookish one becomes a lawyer and criminal prosecutor, played by William Powell. Blackie has a girlfriend, played by Myrna Loy, who leaves him for Powell. What is so especially fascinating about this film is that Myrna Loy and Clark Gable do not 'click' at all, and glaze over when they look at one another, despite their best acting efforts to simulate at least some flickers of passion. But as soon as Powell and Loy are on screen together, the fizz begins, and they spark off one another like two cheeky little flints who just can't wait to make wonderful fire together. Powell seems to have been an irresistibly amusing man who was attractive to all the most glamorous gals, despite not being all that good-looking. After all, he was married to Carole Lombard and then was about to marry Jean Harlow when she died tragically. (He paid $30,000 for her funeral and took six weeks off filming with Myrna Loy in another picture because of his uncontrollable grief.) So Powell certainly knew how to interact with women of character. Myrna Loy just had the right kind of wry and whimsical manner to complement the dry humour of Powell. From the moment they first look at each other in this first film together, a unique screen magic was born, and lasted through 14 films. When I knew her very slightly as a youngster, she was 57 and rather uncommunicative, and she seemed depressed, so I never knew the 'lively Loy'. In those days videos and DVDs did not exist, so few people of my age had any idea at all of what she had been like in her films with William Powell, as we had not only never seen any of them but had no way of doing so. Nor was there any internet with a handy IMDb database where you just click your mouse and see the list of her credits. The fact is, Myrna Loy was someone one knew had been a big movie star earlier on, but one had never actually seen her on screen. She was just a name, and someone who had been in films which one's parents had seen before one was born. Well, now we can see them and so many of them are good that we can at last see Myrna Loy in perspective and appreciate just how unique and special she really was. There is a curious thing, namely that her real name was Myrna Williams and she came from Montana. Now who does that remind you of? Why, Michelle Williams of course, who comes from Montana (see my reviews of LAND OF PLENTY and INCENDIARY, where I note that this girl is an actress of genius). I wonder if they could possibly be Montana kith and kin. But I guess the world is full of people named Williams, even in Montana, which has a population of just a few thousand people and a few million cattle, doesn't it? It seems that everywhere you go, there are people named Wiliams. Perhaps it is because they are plural. Oh, back to the story. I always forget the story. Well, you can see it coming, can't you? Powell ends up prosecuting Gable for murder and demands the death sentence. That part of the story is heavily contrived, but it works very well regardless because after all it is a 1930s movie. Loy is distressed because she loves them both. You can see where the melodrama comes in, and they really lay it on, as this is not a film where subtlety is a leading quality. We get the whole thing, death row, the last minute requests for a reprieve (oh yes, Powell is Governor of New York by now and is the one who gets begged to save Blackie's life). Well the melodrama just keeps piling on top of the melodrama like that, so that the film is really a kind of melodramatic club sandwich. There is some cheese and then there's some ham (in fact there is no shortage of ham in this film) and then there's some chicken when certain persons lose their courage and then there's some lettuce to brighten and pretty things up a bit, and then there's the daily bread, it's all there. Take a bite, it's really delicious.
