Forsaking All Others (1934)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Mary (Joan Crawford) loves Dill (Robert Montgomery) but he leaves her waiting at the altar and elopes with another woman. Their friend Jeff (a miscast Clark Gable) loves Mary but won't say so because she loves Dill, even after the humiliation and despite him being married to another woman. Why either Mary or Jeff would even want to be around this guy is beyond me but I guess they had to fill time with something.Crawford looks great but her character has little self-respect. I hated seeing her pursue Bob Montgomery's character despite his dumping her to marry another woman. I know times change and all but it taints the enjoyment of the movie for me when most of it is based around Joan wanting that creep back. Montgomery is fine I guess but the character of Dill is a royal class jerk. Gable, as I said before, is miscast. It's just very hard to buy him as the wimpy sort of guy he comes across as here. Rosalind Russell is wasted in a minor role. Charles Butterworth (the vocal inspiration for Cap'N Crunch) is OK as Gable's sidekick. Billie Burke is annoying. It's a weak effort overall but at least it ends right. Sort of.

This is one of the several movies that Joan Crawford made with Clark Gable, and fortunately quite a few of them (maybe all) have made it to at least DVD-R via the Warner Archive. This is one of the best the two did together. It's a romantic comedy in which Joan plays socialite Mary Clay, who is about to marry lifelong acquaintance Dillon Todd (Robert Montgomery). Clark Gable plays another of Mary's lifelong friends, Jeff Williams. Jeff has been long away from home and decides to come back just to ask Mary to marry him, unaware that Mary is about to marry Dillon. When he learns about their upcoming marriage he decides to keep his feelings to himself, although the look he has as if having been punched in the stomach when he hears the news says it all. Robert Montgomery is playing the usual harmless playboy character here that he did so much of in the early 1930's. It looks like Mary and Dillon's marriage is about to go off without a hitch until one of Dillon's old girlfriends appears on the scene.This film was released about six months after the precode era ended, so there is nothing really racey going on here. About the most extreme thing you will see is Robert Montgomery in a dress. However, W.S. Van Dyke is the director of this film, and he knew how to combine sexual tension and comedy in an age of aggressive censorship, and this is a fine example of his work. I highly recommend it to fans of films of the 1930's.

throughout the film, all the big names are laughing, joking, playing, having a grand ol time, until every now and then some real life adult situations get in the way. liberal use of backdrop scenery. also a lot of getting dressed and undressed. Miss Joan Crawford (Mary) getting spanked. naughty naughty. Billie Burke with the hair curler contraption on her head. all right at the beginning of enforcement of the film production code, with the official card at the beginning of the movie to prove it. Clark Gable (Jeff) and Robert Montgomery (Dill) keep stepping out of the shower. Montgomery in a dress. Fun stuff! Rosalind Russell and Charles Butterworth ("Shemp"... not to be confused with one of the Stooges... has nothing to do with that) thrown in for more wisecracking. Even the butler gets a couple funny lines. Why isn't this shown more often? and why is it rated so low? Catch this one and see Joanie in a glamorous but not over-done over-bearing role.... before she turned to the dark side...

This is one of more than a dozen 1930's films which were blockbusters for Crawford. She is nothing less than hilarious in this film and it paved the way for I Live My Life and Susan and God. She and Gable had major chemistry, although her acting skills made his look inferior, which of course they were. Rosalind Russell and Crawford work very well together.