#wesley ruggles

[sesiondemadrugada]

Arizona (Wesley Ruggles, 1940).

[jeanharlowshair]

Movie Classic Magazine, February 1937.

[citizenscreen]

Director Wesley Ruggles (June 11, 1889 – January 8, 1972), pictured on set of CIMARRON (1931)

[gatutor]

Joan Bennett-Bing Crosby "El cantor del río" (Mississippi) 1935, de A. Edward Sutherland, Wesley Ruggles.

[precodesoul]

George Raft and Sally Rand in Bolero (dir. Wesley Ruggles & Mitchell Leisen, 1934)

[marypickfords]

Betty Compson in Street Girl (Wesley Ruggles, 1929)

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Best Clark Gable movies and performances:

1. Gone with the Wind - Victor Fleming (1939)

2. It Happened One Night - Frank Capra (1934)

3. No Man of Her Own - Wesley Ruggles (1932)

4. Red Dust - Victor Fleming (1932)

[allaboutstanwyck]

Barbara Stanwyck with Henry Fonda and director Wesley Ruggles on the set of You Belong To Me, 1941.

[byneddiedingo]

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in No Man of Her Own (Wesley Ruggles, 1932)

Cast: Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Dorothy Mackaill, Grant Mitchell, Elizabeth Patterson, George Barbier, J. Farrell MacDonald, Tommy Conlon, Walter Walker, Paul Ellis, Charley Grapewin. Screenplay: Maurine Dallas Watkins, Milton Herbert Gropper, Edmund Goulding, Benjamin Glazer, based on a novel by Val Lewton. Cinematography: Lee Tover. Film editing: Otho Lovering. Costume design: Travis Banton. 

If actors weren't cattle, as Alfred Hitchcock is reported to have said, they were at least property, and their studios treated them as such. Clark Gable was becoming one of MGM's most valuable properties when he was loaned out to Paramount to make the only film in which he starred with Carole Lombard, who later became his wife. It was part of a complicated talent swamp initiated by Marion Davies, who had clout with MGM because of her relationship with William Randolph Hearst, who produced films for her that were distributed by MGM. Davies wanted Bing Crosby for a movie, so Paramount traded him to MGM for Gable and No Man of Her Own. Lombard became his co-star only because Miriam Hopkins didn't want to take second billing to Gable. The studio mountains labored to bring forth a cinematic mouse: a passable romantic comedy remembered only for the star teaming. Gable and Lombard are very good in it, though he comes off somewhat better than she does. Lombard was best in movies that gave her license to clown, like Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934) and My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936). In No Man of Her Own she's simply a woman who knows what she wants, and it isn't necessarily Gable, it's just to get out of the dull little town where she's the librarian. Gable on the other hand is in a role tailor-made for him: "Babe" Stewart, a raffish professional poker player who's as adept at wooing women as he is at cheating at cards. On the verge of getting caught by the detective (J. Farrell MacDonald) who's been tailing him, he skips town and winds up in the burg that Lombard's Connie Randall wants to escape. She catches his eye -- in one pre-Code scene she climbs a ladder and he looks up her skirt -- and with improbable speed they get married. Eventually she finds out that he's not the stockbroker he pretends to be, but nothing fazes her. He gets in trouble again, but just as he's about to take it on the lam, deserting her, he finds of course that he really loves her. The story lacks snap and tension: It was cobbled together from several sources, nominally from a novel by Val Lewton called No Bed of Her Own, a title the Hays Office nixed, but also from another story in Paramount's files. What life the film has comes from Wesley Ruggles's direction and from its performers, including Dorothy Mackaill as Babe's former partner in card-sharping. Lombard and Gable work well together, but reportedly didn't strike any off-screen sparks at the time -- they were both married to other people. They met again at a party four years later and were married in 1939.   

[thebestestwinner]

The top two vote-getters will move onto the next round!

[braineyboxd]

My third and final post from last week's impromptu Carole Lombard snow day mini-marathon is another screwball comedy, one I suspect had a not-insignificant influence on the madcap housewife genre on radio and TV in the 1940s and '50s (we see you, Mrs. Ricardo).

True Confession is an absolutely wild story of a wife who cried wolf and ends up accused of murdering the sleazy boss of a new job her husband ordered her not to get. Nobody believes her very true tale of innocence, so instead she pleads self-defense in the hopes she will get acquitted. As her husband works to market her to the jury as a representative--nay, a bastion--of womanly virtue everywhere, a supposed criminologist with bizarre motives and even bizarre-er philosophies refuses to let the case rest.

If I'm honest, the film lacks the necessary pep to be hilarious, especially since it's hard to get past Helen's devious tricks at times. (Some of her lies are truly heinous, lol). She probably had a little trouble coming to her...

The thing I love about this film, though, is how much you can tell our stars enjoyed the production. With True Confession, Lombard and MacMurray closed their underrated cinematic partnership, while John Barrymore reunited with Carole three years after another chaotic classic, 1934's Twentieth Century. The real life relationships shine through this film and its promotional material.

Speaking of promotional materials, our stars each have a confession to make, and they definitely weren't ghostwritten by a Paramount intern or somebody:

(Dig the not one but two mustache references on Fred's confession spread. Apparently it was as big a deal then as it is to us classic film viewers today. What's the verdict folks? Hot or not?)

I CONFESS that my real internet home is on Letterboxd. You can find my star rating for True Confession here.

[citizenscreen]

Birthday remembrance - director Wesley Ruggles #botd

[gatutor]

Robert Walker-Donna Reed "See here, private hargrove" 1944, de Wesley Ruggles.

[danielslevine]

Jean Arthur in 'Too Many Husbands': Or 'My Favorite Wife' in Reverse

Jean Arthur in ‘Too Many Husbands’: Or ‘My Favorite Wife’ in Reverse

The same year Cary Grant had to decide between two wives, Jean Arthur had to decide between two husbands in Too Many Husbands (1940). Although much less well-known today, Too Many Husbands is tighter, wittier and funnier than My Favorite Wife (1940). The two movies have the same story DNA and even run just about the same length. However, the budgetary constraints at Columbia and the endlessly…

[marypickfords]

Street Girl (Wesley Ruggles, 1929)

[zoirohs]

Barbara Stanwyck as Helen Hunt YOU BELONG TO ME — dir. Wesley Ruggles, 1941