To Please a Lady (1950)

[4]

Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck star in this story of a midget car racer (Gable) whose treacherous tactics get exposed by a prying news reporter (Stanwyck). After he’s blamed for causing the death of another driver, Gable’s racing career implodes. Stanwyck finds him doing daredevil stunts for a circus. Despite the obvious animosity he has for her, the two fall for each other. As he works on getting ‘back in the game,’ their relationship proves a rocky one. The film concludes at the Indy 500, including actual footage from 1950’s big race.

I like Gable. I like Stanwyck. I don’t much like Gable and Stanwyck together. Two cocksure charmers just create the wrong kind of sparks, I guess. While lust at first sight has its own sort of comic charm, their relationship here is simply too impossible to believe. There is one great ‘getting to know you’ scene in this movie, though, in which Gable and Stanwyck discuss future possibilities while walking an empty race track late at night. But their other encounters are incongruous and the movie’s ending reeks of an audience-tested re-shoot. With Adolph Menjou.

Trivia: This is the movie Gizmo is watching on television in Gremlins.