Key to the City (1950)

Best movie ever!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A talented cast here brings off a pretty good comedy. Clark Gable is playing a Honest Longshoreman who has been elected Mayor in a Corrupt California City. He is attending a Mayors Convention in San Francisco. He has 2 blonde lady friends including Marilyn Maxwell who are exotic dancers trying to show him a good time. Then he meets a Mayor from Maine (Loretta Young) and the fireworks begin to crackle. Meanwhile Gables city is starting to ram through a crooked building project headed by a seedy ringleader (Raymond Burr). This leads to a whole lot of comedy as Gable is torn between the blondes, Young, and then has to go back home to stop Burr. Meanwhile Gable and Young get caught by the San Francisco Police in a couple of raids. Fearing scandal Young is between a rock and a hard place trying to keep her reputation and court Gable all at once. Then there is the police Sargent played by James Gleason who keeps covering for the 2 of them after each arrest. This is one of James Gleasons better supporting roles. Frank Morgan plays a confidant of Gable though he speaks with the strangest Irish/Scottish type of accent I have ever heard throughout the movie. There is more to this, but if you want to enjoy a great cast giving you some laughs, this movie is very much worth your time.

Ordinary comedy of note more for its cast than any special quality the film itself possesses. Gable and Loretta Young are reunited for the only time after their torrid affair on the set of Call of the Wild resulted in a secret child who was one of Hollywood's most notorious open secrets. This was also Frank Morgan's final completed film, he started work on the disastrous Judy Garland version of Annie Get Your Gun but suffered a heart attack and passed away before the film was restarted with Betty Hutton. As for this picture's story its a bunch of silly nonsense of misunderstandings but the cast give it a game reading and Gable and Young have a good on screen rapport.

This is a very entertaining film with two great actors, Clark Gable, (Steve Fisk) and Loretta Young,(Clarissa Standish) who performed like magic together in this film. These two actors made this film a great success with lots of laughs, romance and drama. In real life, Clark Gable and Loretta Young had a baby and kept it a secret until many years later. This warm feeling between these two actors made this film even more enjoyable. Frank Morgan, (Fire Chief Duggan) gave a great supporting role and lots of comic fun to this film along with Marilyn Maxwell, (Sheila) who played a sexy role as a platinum blonde who did a balloon dance with the balloons all being exploded. Raymond Burr, (Les Taggart) plays a rough and tough longshoreman who gets into a big fight with Steve Fisk. There is nice old scenes from San Francisco and this is truly a great film classic from 1950.

Fifteen years earlier Clark Gable and Loretta Young did Call of the Wild for her studio which was then 20th Century Fox. They had a most discreet affair which resulted in the birth of Young's daughter Judy. Back in those days Young indulged in an elaborate charade and 'adopted' her own daughter as a single mother. Nothing quite as earth shattering as that happened on the set of Key to the City which was made for Gable's MGM. Still it's an interesting comedy drama about a pair of small city mayors who meet at a convention in San Francisco and fall in love.Young is a proper New England mayor from an old stock family in Wynona, Maine. Gable is mayor of the small city of Puget City on the Pacific coast and started out as a longshoreman. He ran on a reform ticket, but the special interests that he beat are still very much alive and represented here in the person of sinister Raymond Burr.It's a convention and people kind of let their hair down at conventions, Clark and Loretta are no different. And San Francisco is quite the romantic town.One of MGM's most beloved players, Frank Morgan, plays Gable's fire chief complete with brogue and all. It was one of his last films and Morgan kind of borrows a bit from Ed Wynn and his famous Texaco fire chief from radio. Also featured well is Lewis Stone as Young's uncle, a federal judge and a most proper and aristocratic gentlemen and Marilyn Maxwell who Gable rejects for Young and is determined to get a little payback. Highlight of the film is the chick fight going on between Young and Maxwell while Gable and Burr are slugging it out.Key to the City is not on the top ten or even top twenty of either Clark Gable or Loretta Young's film credits. But it is still quite amusing even after almost 60 years.