No Man of Her Own (1932)

So much average

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

To be honest neither Clark Gable nor Carole Lombard, in this film husband and wife on screen together enticed me as film performers. The movie seems well photographed and planned but by the time Clark and Carole had their long scene together about half way through I felt impelled to turn it off and plan not to see the second half. In my mind it is well made and edited though not for everyone a sort of cotton to it or not project.

You would think that since this is the only film with these 2 big stars it would be a big one...don't expect anything groundbreaking.A Card Sharp has his way with a lot of suckers in the city but a pesky cop keeps on his tail and he decides it's time to get out of town. He heads to a small town and tries his suave city ways on a bored local girl. She sees right through him but she likes him. They immediately fall in love but she wants marriage. He thinks he'll just have some fun but she won't have it. They flip a coin and she wins. They get married. He gets back to the city thinking he'll keep her around for a few months and send her back home. Only thing is, he doesn't foresee her taking charge and loving him...for real. She finally realizes he's a Card Sharp and tries to convince him to stop...He won't. Carole Lombard is as beautiful as ever but this early effort doesn't show what she had in store with the screwball comedy antics she had in store for her later films. This one is a fairly ordinary light comedy/drama. Don't expect fireworks considering the 2 leads and you'll be fine.

I think other reviewers heard that this was supposed to be "a screwball comedy" and ran with that idea because they didn't know what else to say. I didn't see anything light and fluffy or "screwball" about it. Perhaps "offbeat" might be a more apt characterization. Gable's interpretation of the New York gambler was interesting because something in his usual sort of charming yet manly approach was notably lacking. He possessed the irreverent and utterly confident attitude we have come to associate with his other performances, but a number of his youthful facial expressions were of a more complex and unfamiliar sort. The reserved yet knowing way he nodded howdy-do upon introduction to Lombard's mother and then her father was especially amusing, I thought. There were also the many intriguing interactions with the actress, herself, particularly with regard to the touchy subjects of marriage and stability. The oft-subtle writing in this flick made for several interesting moments and both actors were fully up to the challenge of a sensitive and intelligent interpretation of the script. It is also interesting that there was allegedly no actual romantic attachment between these two because the chemistry was already quite evident. It must have miffed a number of the more glamorous Hollywood starlets when Lombard won Gable's heart in real life. Although beautiful, she wasn't glamorous, nor was she pretentious and affected, but more like the girl next door. I read that the library scene (where Gable sent her up a ladder as an excuse to examine her legs) single-handedly started some sort of decency league in the motion picture industry. The bluenoses are always with us, aren't they, shoving their childish attitudes down the throats of the adults. Much more risqué was the scene in which Lombard's predecessor, Kay, appeared on screen in a see-through nightgown that revealed critical aspects of her anatomy, both front and back. The thirties obviously were a much less prudish time because her gentlemen friends didn't even pay much attention, at least not overtly, and scenes such as that would not appear in movies again until the sixties. We've noted a similar sensuality in other movies from that era. As a society, we keep coming back to the cultural doldrums, where they are pushing wealth or war or something else that always seems to further the interests of those in control. Unconventional times like the thirties and the sixties are few and far between. It showed in this movie.

Oh, that was fun! No screwball action here but a lovable little romantic comedy, starring a ridiculously young and baby-faced Clark Gable as card-sharp 'Babe' Stewart, and a pre-stardom Carole Lombard as Connie Randall, the girl he marries on the flip of a coin: "Heads we... do it, tails--" "Tails we get married", Connie puts in, in a cheerful pre-Code gamble of her virtue, and tails it is. Babe the lifelong gambler gracefully pays up, and the challenge is on: judging by the post-coital scene in the sleeper car, he hasn't got such a bad bargain... but how long can he keep his new wife in happy ignorance of the crooked nature of the card-parties she helps to host?The film's title bears no particular relation to its plot, and the plot itself takes a couple of abrupt and apparently arbitrary turns to attain each scheduled set-up; but any degree of implausibility can be forgiven for the sake of the resulting comic situations, in particular the library scenes, where Babe tries to get Connie into bed with him on their first meeting, the 'getting-up' scene where Connie innocently ensures her husband is up and dressed in time for the fictional day job he has invented, and the finale where he launches into a vivid description of his supposed voyage from South America... in blissful ignorance that the truth is already out! There are relatively few laugh-out-loud moments, but the film has a sweetness of tone rarely found in later screwball comedies, with equal emphasis on the humour and the romance; it's clearly fond of its characters, and there were few moments when I wasn't either grinning with affection or amusement on their behalf.Gable and Lombard may have gone on individually to greater things, but "No Man of Her Own" remains a thoroughly enjoyable piece of fluff, worth watching for more than just the one-off pairing of its stars. Forget all logic and likelihood, ignore the occasional unevenness, and just sit down and enjoy.