Just so...so bad

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Joan Crawford and William Bakewell are the spoiled, yet uneducated children of wealthy William Holden (Not the popular matinée idol of the 40's and '50's) who must find other means of supporting themselves when he looses all of his money. Crawford becomes a cub reporter on a big city newspaper while drunkard Bakewell gets involved in bootlegger Clark Gable's racket, seemingly to set him up with wealthy new clients. When Crawford's reporter pal (Cliff Edwards) is spotted investigating a St. Valentine's Day Massacre type assassination on members of a rival gang, Gable forces Bakewell to kill him. Crawford goes undercover to unmask those responsible, wins Gable's confidence, and is horrified by what she discovers.This quick-moving and entertaining melodrama was MGM's answer to "Little Caesar", "The Public Enemy" and "Scarface", with a woman's angle added to make things a little different. As she did in many of her earlier films (both silent and sound), Crawford dances up a storm, proving herself as one of the best "Jazz Babies" of the late 20's and early 30's. Star-to-be Clark Gable is billed way down in the credits, playing a brutish role that made him extremely unlikable, although his sexiness does show in his scenes with Crawford and the feisty Natalie Moorehead as his moll. In all of his future movies with the future "Mommy Dearest", Gable softened his image and was more the lover rather than the brute man, even though he was still all man. Bakewell, who was a major player in the early 30's (usually cast as insensitive and selfish young men who cause their families a lot of heartache), was never really likable on screen, and in bit parts of the late 30's and 40's, this trait continued as well.Well-written and excellently photographed, this is one of the films that assured Crawford stardom, making her a major threat to Norma Shearer. (Garbo would be in a category all her own.) There's a lot of pre-code innuendo, some great montages, and a memorable exchange between Natalie Moorehead and Gable involving a lit match.

"Dance, Fools, Dance" is an early Crawford-Gable vehicle from 1931. Crawford plays a Bonnie Jordan, a wealthy young woman whose life consists of parties, booze, and stripping off her clothes to jump from a yacht and go swimming. This all ends when her father dies and leaves her and her brother (William Blakewell) penniless. Bonnie gets a job on a newspaper using the name Mary Smith; her brother goes to work for bootleggers. The head man is Jake Luva - portrayed by Clark Gable as he plays yet another crook. Later, of course, he would turn into a romantic hero, but in the early '30s, MGM used him as a bad guy. Not realizing that her brother is involved in illegal activity, Bonnie cozies up to Luva.Gable and Crawford made a great team. Her facial expressions are a little on the wild side, but that, along with her dancing, is one of the things that makes the movie fun. Look for Cliff Edwards, the voice of Jiminy Cricket, as Bert.It's always interesting to see the precode movies, and "Dance, Fools, Dance" is no exception.

I disagree strongly with anyone who might dismiss this film as "just" entertainment. Set right after the carefree, roaring 20s, during the early days of the Great Depression, Dance, Fools, Dance is at its heart an earnest cautionary tale, with a clear message about how best to endure these hard times. Yet this fast-paced and tightly-plotted film is far from being a dreary morality tale.In the 30s, Hollywood had a knack for churning out one entertaining *and* enlightening audience-pleaser after another, all without wasting a frame of film. Dance, Fools, Dance -- one of *four* films that Harry Beaumont directed in 1931 -- is barely 80 minutes long, yet its characters are well developed, its story never seems rushed, and despite its many twists in plot, the audience is never left behind.With the lone exception of Lester Vail as flaccid love interest Bob Townsend, the supporting cast is uniformly strong. Worthy of note are William Bakewell as Crawford's brother, Cliff Edwards (best known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket) as reporter Bert Scranton, and Clark Gable in an early supporting role as gangster Jake Luva.But this is Joan Crawford's film, and she absolutely shines in it. Made when she was just 27, this lesser-known version of Crawford will probably be unrecognizable to those more familiar with her later work. However, here is proof that long before she took home an Oscar for Mildred Pierce, Crawford was a star in the true sense of the word, a terrific actress with the charisma to carry a picture all by herself.Score: EIGHT out of TEN

This is one of Joan Crawford's best Talkies. It was the first Gable-Crawford pairing, and made it evident to MGM and to audiences that they were a sizzling team, leading the studio to make seven more films with them as co-stars.The film convincingly depicts the downward slide of a brother and sister who, after their father loses everything in the stock market crash, must fend for themselves and work for a living. Life is hard in the Depression, and soon even their attempts at finding legitimate work prove futile, and they resort to underworld activity. Joan Crawford is excellent as the socialite-turned-moll. She's smart, complex, and believable. She even tempers the theatrical stiffness of the other actors' early Talkie acting style. Clark Gable is a diamond-in-the rough, masculine and gruff as the no-nonsense gangster who becomes involved with Crawford's character. The same year he would play a similar and even more successful role opposite Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul", securing his position as top male sex symbol at MGM.If you like Crawford in this type of role, don't miss "Paid", which she did a year earlier, which is also among her best early Talkie performances.