Cain and Mabel 1936

     Mabel O’Dare is a waitress and she looses her job because of a customer.  He feels very badly about this because Mabel needs the job.  He gets her a job as the lead dancer in a musical.  She is practicing in a hotel and the noise is keeping boxer Larry Cain from getting the sleep he needs for a fight.  Mabel and Larry do not have any good feelings about each other!!  The do seem to make a change in each other when they are together?  Their managers arrange for the couple to begin to like each other so that Mabel’s show can keep running and Larry can win his fights.
     This is a depression era boxing movie with star power.  It seems like a slice right out of 1936 with black and white filming and snappy dialogue.  Davies and Gable have good chemistry and they were not hard on the eyes to look at.  It is probable that Marion’s hair was bleached and a mixture of ammonia, Clorox bleach and Lux soap flakes was usually the mixture of choice.  This could and probably did weaken and damage hair!!  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)    
      
90 min, Musical directed by Lloyd Bacon with Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Allen Jenkins, Roscoe Karns, Walter Catlett, Robert Paige, Hobart Cavanaugh, Ruth Donnelly, Pert Kelton, William Collier Sr., Sammy Whiate, E.E. Clive, Allen Romeroy, Robert Middlemass,Joseph Crehan.

Note:  Imdb 6.6* out of 10* with 1664 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes 55% audience, Letterboxd 3.2* out of 5*, Amazon 3.5* out of 5* with 11 reviews.

Special Note:  The opening scene is at Champs Diner in NYC.  The elaborate musical numbers were filmed on stage 7 (now stage 16) at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California.  The sets were enormous and the roof and walls for the stage were raised an additional 35 feet.  This cost $100,000 in 1926 dollars and it was paid for by William Randolph Hearst.  The carousel in the Coney Island sequence was built for the film at a cost of $35,000.  Marion Davies kept it for her Santa Monica home after filming wrapped.  This is often cited as being a box-office flop?  Grosses reported in the trades show that the film was quite popular and did especially well in cities?  This is probably another case of creative bookkeeping on the part of the studio?