Dance Fools Dance (1931)

When the stock market crashes, a society playgirl (Joan Crawford) and her wastrel brother (William Bakewell) find themselves penniless and abandoned by their society friends. She goes to work for a newspaper as a cub reporter and he joins a gang of bootleggers. Directed by Harry Beaumont (MAISIE GOES TO RENO), this pre code melodrama was the first teaming of Joan Crawford with Clark Gable (who plays a bootlegger here) in a supporting role, not yet a star and they would go on to make seven more movies together. I love Crawford during her early period at MGM. She's vital and sexy, quite the scrappy vixen and unrecognizable from the hard shelled lady she became in the mid 1940s. She holds the screen like a true star. As to the film itself, it's an entertaining newspaper crime drama, more Warners in tone than MGM. The picture earned Metro a tidy little profit. With Cliff Edwards, Lester Vail and Natalie Moorhead.