Lawbolisted Powerful

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

bkoganbing As sound and dialog came to films the Broadway stage became more and more a source for movie properties even if they had to go back considerable ways for material. The Easiest Way was a play written by James Walter and produced by that eminent showman David Belasco first in 1909. It was most typical of the Edwardian era morality works that Belasco so favored.It could never be done today, in fact it was barely acceptable in 1931 for its incredibly anti-feminist stand. According to the character played by Marjorie Rambeau men rule, make said rules, and women just have to deal with it. Submit cheerfully to being wives and mothers with some occasional outside work if you can fit it in.Constance Bennett with her small job in a department store doesn't think this is all that's for her. She help supports her parents J. Farrell MacDonald and Clara Blandick and a couple of small brothers. Sister Anita Page is getting ready to marry honest laundry man Clark Gable who has some most chauvinistic views about women, but also about the value of honesty and hard work. So when advertising executive Adolphe Menjou suggest to Bennett that they shack up, she's ready to take The Easiest Way and go for a life of luxury. That is until she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery who's ready to marry her once he gets back from a long assignment in Argentina. Without going into details Bennett makes a holy hash of her life and those tried and true standards of the time for women serve as a lesson to her and all in the audience. Be good wives and mothers and don't take The Easiest Way to prosperity.The original play only had six characters and so it was expanded considerably at MGM and updated to Depression times where such lessons were not completely appreciated. Still this cast did manage to put it over.The Easiest Way was the first film at MGM for Clark Gable who was billed eighth down in the cast. By the end of the decade Gable was acknowledged King of Hollywood before Elvis was known as the King. Nearly all the players billed above him would be below him in cast lists in the future. His appeal on the screen was immediately discernible and in the end of this film, he's given a bit of humanity and shown as not the blue nose stinker you might originally have thought him to be. The Easiest Way is way old fashioned for today, I doubt too many stock companies do the original play today. Still some will find it a curiosity and Gable is always good to watch.

kidboots Hard to believe, Constance Bennett, now only know to old film fans, was once, for a little while, not only the most popular actress in America but billed as the highest paid actress in the world!!! Constance was considered the epitome of chic, not quite as aristocratic as Norma Shearer or Ann Harding, but finding her own type as the poor shop girl, wooed by riches into a degrading lifestyle, but by the end of the movie finding strength to stand up for the decent things in life. In other words the "sin movie", which peaked in popularity in the early thirties. Having an abrasively honest personality didn't help her popularity and the depression weary public began to tire of her public extravagance (apparently in 1931 she spent $250,000 on a new wardrobe while most of the country battled the depression.) Nowadays "The Easiest Way" is remembered for being Clark Gable's first MGM feature but, in 1931, it was then one of the many popular Constance Bennett movies being rushed into the cinemas.Laura Murdock (Constance Bennett) longs to escape the poverty of tenement life. Her father is off work indefinitely, her mother (Clara Blandick) is a drudge and her sister Peg (Anita Page) is all set to marry self righteous Nick (Clark Gable) who operates a family laundry business, but Laura wants more. She works at the tie counter at the local department store but is whisked into the world of modeling and advertising by a talent scout. Enter the movie's villain - advertising executive, Will Brockton (Adolphe Menjou) who takes Laura under his wing. Laura takes to luxury like a duck to water but the only family member who is on her side is her free loading father (J. Farrell MacDonald), who is always coming to her for handouts!! Nick is not happy and tells her exactly what he thinks of her, the new dress she has given to Peg and the fancy car she rides around in.Posing as Brockton's secretary, Laura goes to the mountains and meets reporter Jack Madison (Robert Mongomery). They fall in love and while Jack knows all about her relationship with Brockton, he makes her promise to stop seeing him and return all his gifts. Jack goes to South America and Laura falls upon hard times - she is locked out of her apartment because she can't pay the rent and her mother dies because she has not been able to give her father the money for an operation. She goes to Brockton for a loan but ends up going back to him. Of course Jack comes back and Effie St. Clair (a just fantastic performance by Marjorie Rambeau) tells her to grab her happiness while she can. She was an elderly mistress who has been left destitute when her "sugar daddy" dies. Laura tries to - by lying about her circumstances but Jack sees through it and the film ends on Christmas Eve with Laura being taken in by Peg and a penitent Nick, and hoping that Jack will forgive her in the near future.It was hard to feel a lot of sympathy for Laura. There was not a lot of emotion in Constance Bennett's performance. I was expecting a showdown at the end but she was happy to try to sneak out with Jack and avoid a confrontation with Brockton, who with a few subtle clues ("you'll find my handerchiefs in the top draw") was able to fill Jack in. Whatever happened to Anita Page? She may have portrayed Clark Gable's first on screen love interest but it was pretty thankless, being very much a supporting part and not very glamorous. Considering she was so memorable in "Our Blushing Brides" only the year before - what happened??Highly Recommended.

blanche-2 Constance Bennett is a woman who gets a sugar daddy in "The Easiest Way," also starring Adolphe Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Anita Page, and Clark Gable. Made in 1931, it's directed by Jack Conway, and it's very well done.Bennett plays Laura, who lives in a crowded tenement with her large family, which includes her father who manages not to work. She gets an opportunity to model for an advertising agency. While there, she catches the eye of the boss (Menjou) who offers her a life of luxury. She takes it. Her mother shuns her, and her brother-in-law, Clark Gable, has no use for her. While she and Menjou are in Colorado, she meets a reporter, Robert Montgomery, and they fall in love. She promises to be faithful to him while he's in South America for three months. But it's pretty hard to make it on her own.This is an interesting film. Because the actors were getting used to sound, the rhythm is occasionally off, i.e., there are sometimes awkward pauses between lines. Everyone's acting is good, with the exception of Marjorie Rambeau, who has a very melodramatic role and does the tremulous voice thing in her big monologue. Rambeau, however, had been a Broadway star, where her theatrics were more appropriate, and it took actors time to learn the art of film acting. She was a fantastic actress, and I particularly remember her as Joan Crawford's mother in "Torch Song." Constance Bennett, as usual, was very beautiful. She is excellent in the part of a torn, vulnerable woman. Gable is a tough guy sans mustache. He hadn't yet developed his screen persona, but the gorgeous smile was there. Robert Montgomery is wonderful as a young reporter.There was a neat shot where the camera travels up a building, zeroes in on a window, and then zooms in. It was dizzying and exciting, and it's the kind of detail that makes "The Easiest Way" a good watch. There are real outdoor scenes, too, no painted backdrops, and opulent sets. If they weren't opulent, they were realistic, for instance, the crummy apartment where Laura's family lives.There was another ending to this film that the Hays office vetoed. Apparently it was shown in some theaters but is no longer available. I'm a sap, so I liked the ending that's in the movie.

jotix100 "The Easiest Way" is an example of how Hollywood could deal with thorny subjects before the arrival of the Hays Code. We are presented with a situation in which a young, poor, but attractive young woman, could go up in the world using her natural charms in a realistic way. That was going to change in a few more years, as the Code would not let themes such as this one be dealt with the frankness prior to its arrival.The film, directed by Jack Conway, is curiosity piece by today's standards. The original work was made for the stage where there was an open mind about risky situations. We are presented with a poor family at the beginning of the story living in a crowded tenement. Laura, the beautiful young girl has no future of getting a rich man that will take her away from the poverty she is living. When a rich man enters her life, she sees the opportunity to escape her humble origins.The film deals in a realistic way with the subject of the illicit affair between Laura and Bill Brockton. When she falls for young Jack Madison, she believes that she must abandon the man that provides her comfort and easy life, until she finds herself penniless and must face with the fact that she has to go back to Bill, but loses Jack in the process. At the end, we watch her spying outside her married sister's suburban house which is the epitome of happiness.Constance Bennett makes an interesting Laura, but this is not her best role in the movies. Robert Montgomery is not seen enough in the film. Adolph Menjou makes a great Bill Brockton, the rich man who loves Laura in spite of the fact he knows Laura doesn't care for him. Clark Gable made a good impression as the brother-in-law critical to Laura. Marjorie Rambeau, Anita Page and Hedda Haper appear in minor roles.