No Man of Her Own (1932)

Film: No Man of Her Own (1932)

Stars: Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Dorothy Mackaill, Grant Mitchell

Director: Wesley Ruggles

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Carole Lombard-click here to learn more about Ms. Lombard (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our month devoted to Carole Lombard with a film that should be a bigger deal than it is.  Lombard's career up until 1932 had been fine, but not particularly interesting.  She'd been signed to a star contract Paramount, and was regularly working (she made five films in 1931 alone), but wasn't really known as a headlining star.  In fact, it was more her marriage to actor William Powell (significantly more famous than she) who was giving her the bulk of her press, as people were clamoring for gossip about the newlyweds.  It was about this time that Clark Gable got the opportunity to be loaned out from MGM (a rarity for the actor) to Paramount (so that Marion Davies could get Bing Crosby as her leading man), and he selected a script called No Man of Her Own, where he was initially paired opposite Miriam Hopkins, but when she backed out, the studio picked Lombard to be his costar.  As we'll find out below, this was a weird stroke of fate...that ultimately would go nowhere for years.  But first, the movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a low-key romantic comedy, where we have Babe Stewart (Gable), a gambler who hustles rich men out of their fortunes in rigged games of poker.  In the opening scenes he dumps the distraction in the card game, Kay (Mackaill), who is smitten & wants revenge on him.  With a jilted lover & the latest victim of his card game aware of what happened, Babe goes to Glendale, a small town where he meets a worldly (but still innocent) librarian named Connie (Lombard).  She falls for him, and eventually tricks him (through his gambling addiction) into marrying him.  Marital bliss doesn't work out for the two of them, though, as Babe refuses to make an honest man of himself, and hides his criminal past from Connie.  Things come to a head when Babe "goes to South America" (but really turns himself into the police so that he can "come clean") and while Connie knows that he is lying to her, she realizes he's doing it out of genuine love, and lets him continue lying about where he's been, knowing that what matters, their marriage, is built on reality and not falsehoods.

While the film was a hit, it wasn't particularly important in Lombard's (or Gable's, for that matter) career.  It would be two years before Lombard would have her first major film role, and graduate from leading lady into superstardom, and Gable had far bigger things going on in 1932 than this movie.  The film is also pleasantly-regarded but not well-remembered amongst film historians, and that's because it's not very good.  The chemistry between the two leads is there, but it's not outstanding, and the script meanders & loses focus, never quite knowing what to do with Connie (or Kay, for that matter).  It's forgettable, and qualitatively nothing more than a footnote in the careers of the two stars.

So why'd I pick it when there are dozens of options for Lombard to choose from?  Because No Man of Her Own is a bizarre curiosity that had to be witnessed due to what was happening off camera...which in 1932 was nothing.  Despite Gable's reputation as a ladies' man, he & Lombard didn't have an affair on the set of No Man of Her Own (she stayed faithful to William Powell, though they'd be getting a divorce soon).  Bizarrely, Lombard & Gable, a couple that would eventually marry and are now regarded as one of the most iconic Classic Hollywood couples, didn't feel any heat during the filming of their only movie, and would only become romantically-involved a few years later.  They are also part of one of my favorite Hollywood Love Squares (or at least a rhombus), as Powell, after he broke up with Lombard, would eventually romance Jean Harlow (before her untimely death), who (while not romantically involved) would be arguably Clark Gable's best & most frequent leading lady.  Despite Harlow & Powell and Gable & Lombard being the iconic pairings offscreen, both actresses would do their best work with the other guy onscreen-Harlow lighting the cinema on-fire with Gable in the sizzling Red Dust and Lombard scoring her sole Oscar nomination for My Man Godfrey a few years after their divorce.