rickrudge A Free Soul (1931)This is the movie that made a minor character actor into a romantic superstar. Famous defense attorney (and alcoholic), Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) is defending a murder suspect and gangster, Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable). An interesting "If the hat doesn't fit, you must acquit" causes Ace to get released. Here is where Ace meets Stephen's free-spirited daughter, Jan (Norma Shearer).Flighty Jan is bored with her nice-guy boyfriend, Dwight Wintrhop (Leslie Howard) and goes for the bad boy, Ace in a big way. The only problem is that Ace has fallen for Jan and when she wants to get out of the fling, Ace objects in a big way. To top that off, her dad, Stephen is hitting bottom with his drinking problem.Although, this isn't a great movie for Gable, his man-handling of Norma Shearer touched a nerve with females audiences that caused MGM to try to duplicate Gable's persona throughout the rest of his career.Unlike the legend that Gable's slapping Norma Shearer's character made him hot for the ladies (he actually only pushes her down on the couch), I think it was him telling her that he loved her and he wasn't going to let her go, that sealed the deal with his new found fans.

sol **SPOILERS** It's when San Francisco defense attorney Stephen Ash, Lionel Barrymore, had his free spirited daughter Jan, Norma Shearer, come with him to the courthouse where he was in the process of arguing a murder case that things turned sour for him Jan as well as her fiancée the cultured genteel and sensitive Dwight Winthrop, Leslie Howard.Pulling a rabbit out of his hat Ash, in the O. J Simpson style it don't fit you must acquit, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his client notorious SF gangster Ace Wilfong, Clark Gable, is innocent of gunning down a man in front of some half dozen witnesses! It was the handsome and sure of himself Wilfong who stole Ash's daughter's heart and in no time at all she broke off her engagement with a heart-broken Dwight to become Wilfong's personal squeeze and gun moll.This affair between his daughter Jan and the sneering and murderous Wilfong drives Ash, who had earlier saved Wilfong's neck from the San Quentin gallows, to hit the bottle to the point where he becomes too drunk to do his job as a defense attorney! It also has both him and Jan disowned by their family the wealthy and socially registered, the cream California's elite, Ash's who want nothing to do with them. Seeing what her affair had done to both her and her now helplessly drunk father Jan makes a deal with him that if he stops boozing she'll cut Ace Wilfong out of her life forever! Taking a three month vacation in the Northern California mountains both Jan and her dad stick to their commitments until the booze, or lack of it, get to old man Ash's dried out, in lacking the stuff, brain. Hitting the bottle harder then ever Ash drops out of sight until the last 15 or so minutes of the film. And what a amazing turnaround Ash makes with what little time that he still had left! ***SPOILERS*** Jan now destroyed over her father's non stop drinking binges goes back to Wilfong who treats her like a doormat for daring to leave him. Dwight who was out of the picture all that time comes back into Jan's life trying to get her away from Wilfong who's in the process of manhandling her into marrying him. In a final effort to prevent the marriage between Jan and Wilfong from taking place Dwight make the ultimate sacrifice by putting his life on San Quentin's death row by blasting a surprised Wilfong in the San Francisco office of the illegal casino that he runs! With Ash's good friend Eddie, James Gleason,tracking him down in a skid row flophouse on he San Francisco waterfront he's sobers himself up to take the case, without him knowing about it, of the indited for first degree murder Dwight Winthrop. That despite Dwight being more then willing to die, by being hanged, for freely doing what he believed in: Killing Ace Wilfong to prevent him from marrying Jan!In what has to be one of the most electrifying courtroom performance in movie history a barley sober and on the brink of death, from what the booze did to his heart liver and kidneys, Stephen Ash in his noble attempt to save Dwight's life bares his troubled and tortured soul to a shocked jury and a packed and standing room only courtroom in how he and only he was responsible for Wilfong's death in not being the father he should have been to his daughter Jan! It took everything out of him but in the end Ash's heart-felt and tearful summation did in fact save Dwight from the gallows but the poor man, with his weak heart finally giving out from the abused of his boozing, wasn't around to see it!

Neil Doyle At some point in a courtroom scene, someone says, "This is too theatrical." His comment fits a description of this Clarence Brown movie that features NORMA SHEARER, LESLIE HOWARD and LIONEL BARRYMORE in leading roles.But the actor who commands the most attention whenever he appears is CLARK GABLE, then being groomed for stardom by MGM. He was given another "dangerous guy" role as a gangster who had once been a client of Shearer's father (Barrymore) and set free. Complications ensue when Shearer falls in love with the man she treats as a "boy toy" and the melodrama gets steamier when Leslie Howard has to protect her by shooting Gable.Remade in the '50s for an Elizabeth Taylor film called "The Girl Who Had Everything," it's hampered by the '31 conventions of early talkies, all of them featuring performers who were still using silent film technique for their acting styles. Thus, you can expect a lot of overacting, especially from Lionel Barrymore who uses all of his mannerisms to the nth degree in the final courtroom confrontation. Yet, he won a Best Actor Oscar for his very theatrical performance.Summing up: It's a matter of taste--and whether or not you can tolerate all the talky dialogue played out in stage-like fashion by a cast of talented players trying to make the transition to sound films. Of the cast members, it's Clark Gable who actually gives the most natural performance in the film--and whom one can easily spot as a candidate for stardom.

laddie5 Yeah, yeah, it's Gable and Howard 8 years before Gone With the Wind, and even then the former makes the latter look like a eunuch. A number of posters seem flummoxed by this little coincidence and by the early-talkie theatricality of this movie. But for its time it really moves and breathes, particularly in the impressive scenes of Norma Shearer and Lionel Barrymore camping in the Sierras, trying and failing to leave their addictions behind and repair their broken relationship.Technically, this movie may be primitive, but in terms of content and meaning you couldn't get it made today: it's the story of a woman who uses a thug only for her own sexual pleasure, and the baffled and violent way the men in her life react. All three of them are outwardly brilliant and successful -- the lawyer, the gangster, and the rich polo player -- but have their vanity and weakness exposed when confronted with a powerful woman making her own choices. Some of the quieter moments of this movie are pretty devastating.p.s. strange how the myth that Gable "slaps" Shearer persists... are people really watching this movie? He shoves her back onto a couch twice, and that's it. The real violence is what she does to him by treating him as a boy toy.