Laughing Sinners

Clark Gable is particularly handsome in his Salvation Army uniform.He is very efficient when it comes to showing seduced girl Crawford the straight and narrow!And he must display lots and lots of patience ,indulgence and compassion for ,even after the marriage of her beau ,a smug buck,she's ready to fall in love again head over heels . Gable and Crawford singing canticles while delivering free meals to the needy.What a nice way to redeem your soul and to find true love!

What's really tragic is that these poor people are still looking for free meals in the soup kitchen ,be it the the Salvation Army or one of the other charitable organizations .In France ,in the organization I'm currently working for("Les Restos Du Coeur" ) ,the number of beneficiaries has increased by 15% in 2010-2011.

A lot of interesting bits in this. O'Henry bars in 1931?! Reference to the Fresh Air taxi? Acting very good throughout, especially Neil Hamilton who was a real sleazeball. Joan Crawford, who I was never a big fan of, was very pretty, certainly better thas in "This Modern Age" (same year) and almost to her Lucille La Seur standards. The 2nd half was better than the 1st, but they, as was common then, always ended the movie too abruptly. Most revealing was the scene early on in which a bunch of kids were playing in the park, boys & girls. Some were black some were white. Then the religious right and their Code came along after which blacks were only portrayed as servants, buffoons and dullards.

Like a lot of early '30s film, I found this a pretty interesting short (72 minutes) story. This one is about a chorus girl-type who gets jilted, hooks up with a Salvation Army man, then is enticed back to the old sinful ways for a night with the man who jilted her and finally realizes she is better off with the good guy and the good morals.

This is an early look at Joan Crawford, who is blonde here with huge eyes. Clark Gable is sans mustache and really looks young. Neil Hamilton, the third lead, is the same man who went on to play Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series three decades later. In here, he's the pagan bad guy.

This film goes a long way in portraying traveling salesmen as morally bankrupt people. Now why would they do that?!!

Interesting early talkie with Joan as a laughing sinner who is then cast aside by her love interest and saved by Clark Gable and the Salvation Army. Having seen Cary Grant previously as a temperance league type (`She Done Him Wrong'), I was able to accept Gable in this same role. Good moral messages as we see how traveling men use `loose' women in small towns and the good that is done by organizations like the Salvation Army.

Aside from that, the best part of the movie is watching Joan dance made up to look like a farmer – with a long noses and a long goatee. She sings and dances as well as anyone. Of course switching later into Adrian-designed gowns makes for an interesting contrast. Early in the movie, there is a great facial shot of Joan as she anticipates meeting her boyfriend upstairs in the cabaret. This is a good story and makes for a pleasant hour and a quarter entertainment. Recommended.

The second film that had Clark Gable and Joan Crawford together didn't start out that way. Laughing Sinners started out with Johnny Mack Brown as the Salvation Army Worker who saves Crawford and the film was completed when Louis B. Mayer saw the film and said reshoot it with Gable. This was after having seen them together in Dance Fools Dance where Gable was a villain and had only a couple of scenes with Crawford. This is according to Joan herself in a tribute she wrote in the Citadel Film Series Book, The Films of Clark Gable.

Crawford is definitely in her element as singer/dancer and good time Prohibition party girl who falls for the charms of Neil Hamilton, a traveling salesman. You know what a bunch of party animals they are, just ask Arthur Miller. Anyway Hamilton decides though he thinks Joan's great in the hay, he wants to marry the boss's daughter and does, leaving her flat and despondent.

One night as she's ready to throw herself off a bridge, Salvation Army worker Clark Gable stops her. She likes him, but still has a yen for Hamilton and he, her.

Given Clark Gable's later image the casting of him as a Salvation Army worker is ludicrous. Mayer knew that and during the course of the film he gives him a nice prison background before he joined Edwin Booth's Army. The only way Gable could possibly fit the part. Anyway Mayer did it for the obvious chemistry between Gable and Crawford.

It's more Joan's picture than his though. Later on her talents as a dancer which brought her to film in the first place would be not seen at all. So Laughing Sinners is a treat in that way.

The film is based on a Broadway play Torch Song which ran for 87 performances the year before and starred Mayo Methot, Reed Brown, and Russell Hicks in the parts that Crawford, Hamilton, and Gable have. Coming over from the Broadway cast is Guy Kibbee in the role of another salesman, the only one to repeat his role from Broadway. Roscoe Karns and Cliff Edwards play another pair of salesmen and Marjorie Rambeau is Crawford's party girl friend.

Russell Hicks is definitely more my idea of a Salvation Army worker, but Gable's more my idea of a leading man opposite Joan Crawford.