After Office Hours

I was surprised when what I thought was a lighthearted comedy turned into a murder mystery. This seemed to be the film's biggest flaw -- neck-wrenching changes in the action and feel of the show. Is it a romantic comedy, a dark mystery, a brooding social commentary on the upper-crust of society, or what? It didn't know, and neither does the viewer. One thing I did enjoy was finding "other" stars in the movie -- Billie Burke (The Good Witch from "Wizard of Oz") as Mrs. Norwood and William Demarest (Uncle Charlie from 60's/70's TV Show "My Three Sons") as a police detective. I think the film could have used a bit of editing for flow, otherwise it was a nice diversion. Just slightly above average, but I'm glad I saw it.

Take a story of no significance, load it with events of dubious credibility...and what do you have? If you also manage to include roles that are ideal for Clark Gable, Constance Bennett and Billie Burke, and if you find these players at the top of their form, and bring this mix alive with a crackling script by Herman Mankiewicz, the significance and credibility of it all are distinctly secondary. The characters talk fast, think fast, and move fast. This type of picture was done often in the 30s: part screwball, part melodrama, part love story (with sharp edges). When it worked - as it surely does here - you would be royally entertained. Enjoy.

A year earlier Clark Gable as a "punishment" for a recalcitrant star was farmed out to Columbia Pictures by Louis B. Mayer to make a real dog of a film about a bus trip entitled It Happened One Night.

That film essentially created the modern screen comedy as we know it and made a grand slam of the major Oscar categories including one for Clark Gable as Best Actor. Gable played a newspaper reporter in that one, on the trail of runaway heiress Claudette Colbert.

One thing about Louis B. Mayer, if he saw a trend he'd capitalize on it. If his number one star got an Oscar as a reporter, we'll make him an editor. And we'll bring the society girl into the newsroom where she's also working as a reporter. Common job interests should provide a basis for romance.

And that boys and girls is how After Office Hours came into being. But despite the naughty title, the main thing that Clark Gable and Constance Bennett are working on after work is an argument over a society murder.

Gable has a notion that the man arrested for murdering a society grand dame who was doing a little stepping out is not the guilty party. He needs Bennett to help him gain entree to the Cholly Knickerbocker set to prove it.

Bennett and Gable settle comfortably into their roles and Stu Erwin has a nice turn as Gable's sidekick.

As for Louis B. Mayer and MGM, After Office Hours did OK, but Gable made them some big money that year in Mutiny on the Bounty.

But I'll bet Mayer was mighty careful over what he assigned as punishments.

TCM never fails to surprise me. As the centerpiece on TV today for classic MGM films from that studio's golden era, I can say that I never heard of or saw this film before it was shown and I caught it tonight, on the station.

I think Gable and Bennett are great, even better together, as are Burke et al. What surprises me is that it doesn't quite feel or seem like it's up to the quality and visual level of a typical Metro film of the era. Actually, it plays like a film coming from the studio that did It Happened One Night to which Gable had been loaned out by MGM's Louis B. Mayer the year before, ironically.

The movie's OK, not the best.. But I can watch Clark and Constance in anything, because they gave their everything to each of their films.

Clark Gable is fun as a (maybe not so) tough-guy reporter. Stuart Erwin is wasted -- fine but he deserved more -- as his subordinate. Billie Burke is as always fun. But Constance Bennett strolls away with this.

Probably 99.9% of all living beings today have never heard of Ms. Bennett. Granted, about 90% have probably never heard of Clark Gable, either, But there is something odd about Bennett's fall from grace.

She was a huge star and her performances hold up beautifully. Yet, she seems to be viewed as a blip on the radar screen of American movie history, which she really was not.

I wonder, as an example, why "Topper" is almost never shown. I saw it once and thought it a very chic and appealing screwball comedy. Heaven knows, it spawned sequels (sot of sequels) and a TV series based on it was quite popular. Are there some sort of copyright problems? This movie, in any case, has a nice, twisting plot. It's amusing, it's stylish, it has a bit of suspense. It isn't great by any means, though it surely would have been more fun before the Code -- only a year or two before it was released.

(The title is racy but seems to have little bearing on the movie itself, just as an aside.)