Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Fantastic

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Dance, Fools, Dance (1932)Here's another Joan Crawford movie to add to your list. Here, she plays a spoiled rich girl, Bonnie Jordan. Her and her brother, Rodney (William Bakewell) are partying like it's 1999. Bonnie is seeing Bob (Lester Vail) more out of habit. Everything is free and easy.Then the stock market crashes and old man Stanley Jordan, played by William Holden (not the same Bill Holden that you're thinking) collapses on the trading room floor of a heart attack. All of their money is gone, they have to sell the mansion out from under them and (gulp) get a job. They become a pariah by their former rich friends. Even Bob uneasily proposes to Bonnie, out of pity, which Bonnie turned down.Bonnie gets a job on a newspaper from her dad's old friends, but Roddy is kind of dangling a bit. He falls in with some bootleggers run by Jake Luva (Clark Gable). It doesn't take long before Roddy realizes that he's way over his head with these guys, who massacres a rival gang.Bonnie goes undercover as a dancer in Luva's speak-easy to try to get the goods on him. Jake is taken by her nice legs and is putting the moves on her to her disgust. Maybe Bonnie's is in way over her head too.

Joan Crawford is Bonnie Jordan, an ex-society girl working as a reporter investigating the murder of a fellow worker named Bert Scranton played by future Jiminy Cricket, Cliff Edwards. She goes undercover as a dance hall girl at gangster Jake Luva's joint. Luva is played by Clark Gable, at the time just a working actor but possibly due to his brief kiss with Ms. Crawford, about to become a superstar. In fact, the king of the box office for much of the 30s. The way the camera is stationed as well as the lack of music score reveals the picture's early talkie roots but the expressions of the actors are enough to carry it to still-interesting heights. In summary, Dance, Fools, Dance is still well worth a look for the historical first teaming of Crawford and Gable.

Lots of familiar faces in this one - Joan Crawford stars as Bonnie Jordan, with Clark Gable as the gangster Jake Luva. Cliff Edwards is Bert, and a 20 year old Ann Dvorak is still playing chorus-girl parts at this point. Bonnie's brother "Rodney" is played by William Bakewell, much less-well known, but had made 166 films and TV shows, starting in the silents. Even Sam McDaniel, Hattie's brother, plays the butler in this one. You can tell it's pre-code, since they are buying illegal liquor, and having naughty conversations here and there. Dad goes broke in the stock market crash, and the mooching "kids", now adults, must go to work. Their choices of professions give them separate dilemmas, and they both have decisions to make. Joanie does a dance number in Jake's club in this one, to be able to cozy up to him, shocking all her old high-society "friends". Plain and simple story, no real surprises, but a likely-enough gangster plot, I guess. Everyone was heavy on the makeup, and Joan Crawford does her big, obvious facial expressions which had been so necessary in her earlier silent films, but now seem overdone. I didn't see her slap anyone in this film, but I guess she hadn't started that trend yet in 1931. Entertaining film. Crawford and Gable had come a long way since they were both extras in "Merry Widow" 1925.

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