The Easiest Way (1931)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Simply A Masterpiece

People are voting emotionally.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Constance Bennett is a woman who gets a sugar daddy in "The Easiest Way," also starring Adolphe Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Anita Page, and Clark Gable. Made in 1931, it's directed by Jack Conway, and it's very well done.Bennett plays Laura, who lives in a crowded tenement with her large family, which includes her father who manages not to work. She gets an opportunity to model for an advertising agency. While there, she catches the eye of the boss (Menjou) who offers her a life of luxury. She takes it. Her mother shuns her, and her brother-in-law, Clark Gable, has no use for her. While she and Menjou are in Colorado, she meets a reporter, Robert Montgomery, and they fall in love. She promises to be faithful to him while he's in South America for three months. But it's pretty hard to make it on her own.This is an interesting film. Because the actors were getting used to sound, the rhythm is occasionally off, i.e., there are sometimes awkward pauses between lines. Everyone's acting is good, with the exception of Marjorie Rambeau, who has a very melodramatic role and does the tremulous voice thing in her big monologue. Rambeau, however, had been a Broadway star, where her theatrics were more appropriate, and it took actors time to learn the art of film acting. She was a fantastic actress, and I particularly remember her as Joan Crawford's mother in "Torch Song." Constance Bennett, as usual, was very beautiful. She is excellent in the part of a torn, vulnerable woman. Gable is a tough guy sans mustache. He hadn't yet developed his screen persona, but the gorgeous smile was there. Robert Montgomery is wonderful as a young reporter.There was a neat shot where the camera travels up a building, zeroes in on a window, and then zooms in. It was dizzying and exciting, and it's the kind of detail that makes "The Easiest Way" a good watch. There are real outdoor scenes, too, no painted backdrops, and opulent sets. If they weren't opulent, they were realistic, for instance, the crummy apartment where Laura's family lives.There was another ending to this film that the Hays office vetoed. Apparently it was shown in some theaters but is no longer available. I'm a sap, so I liked the ending that's in the movie.

"The Easiest Way" is an example of how Hollywood could deal with thorny subjects before the arrival of the Hays Code. We are presented with a situation in which a young, poor, but attractive young woman, could go up in the world using her natural charms in a realistic way. That was going to change in a few more years, as the Code would not let themes such as this one be dealt with the frankness prior to its arrival.The film, directed by Jack Conway, is curiosity piece by today's standards. The original work was made for the stage where there was an open mind about risky situations. We are presented with a poor family at the beginning of the story living in a crowded tenement. Laura, the beautiful young girl has no future of getting a rich man that will take her away from the poverty she is living. When a rich man enters her life, she sees the opportunity to escape her humble origins.The film deals in a realistic way with the subject of the illicit affair between Laura and Bill Brockton. When she falls for young Jack Madison, she believes that she must abandon the man that provides her comfort and easy life, until she finds herself penniless and must face with the fact that she has to go back to Bill, but loses Jack in the process. At the end, we watch her spying outside her married sister's suburban house which is the epitome of happiness.Constance Bennett makes an interesting Laura, but this is not her best role in the movies. Robert Montgomery is not seen enough in the film. Adolph Menjou makes a great Bill Brockton, the rich man who loves Laura in spite of the fact he knows Laura doesn't care for him. Clark Gable made a good impression as the brother-in-law critical to Laura. Marjorie Rambeau, Anita Page and Hedda Haper appear in minor roles.

Constance Bennett stars as a lower class girl who takes the easy way. That is, she becomes a kept women. We see her in beautiful gown, in jewels, in furs. Adolph Menjou is footing the bill.Then she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery and wants to give it all up for true love. I won't reveal the ending. But it's not an especially happy one, and three cheers to Hollywood for not selling out.A few comments on the perfumers: . Robert Montgomery is not someone I can imagine anyone's throwing over even a modest income for.. Clark Gable has a fairly small role here. He plays, with of course no mustache, Bennett's proper working class and disapproving brother-in-law.. Bennett is chic as she always is. But she isn't photographed in a faltering manner. Her profile is rather flat. She appears to have an overbite and her false eyelashes seem apparent. Maybe the director of photography and she did not get on well.. The brilliant Marjorie Rameau turns in the earliest of her fine performances that I have seen. She plays another kept woman. When Bennett is down on her luck and asks for a loan, she sends her packing. But when her daddy dies, she comes to Bennett for money and is given it.Her performance is in a different realm from that of any of the other players in this movie.Bennett is a strangely forgotten star of early movies. Rambeau is a sadly underrated actress, whose career spanned several decades.

Having returned to cinema after a five year absence, Gable began to draw attention to himself on the screen with the aid of talking films like this one. Silent features did nothing for him as an actor, but hearing him speak provided him with regular work.