Main Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Reginald Owen, Mona Barrie
Release Year: 1936
Country: US
Run Time: 80 minutes
Plot
Having turned down the opportunity to produce Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), MGM's Louis B. Mayer had second thoughts when the Capra film swept the 1935 Oscars ceremony. Mayer hastily commissioned an It Happened One Night wannabe titled Love on the Run, tailored for the talents of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable (who, of course, had starred in the Capra picture, and had copped one of those Oscars). Gable and Franchot Tone play rival journalists Michael Anthony and Barnabas Pells, who travel the length and breadth of Europe to outscoop one another. Crawford portrays madcap heiress Sally Parker, who is engaged to marry fortune-hunting Prince Igor (Ivan Lebedeff). Whereas in It Happened One Night the heroine (Claudette Colbert) linked up with Gable in order to expedite her elopement with the wrong man, in Love on the Run Crawford seeks out Gable's help to escape her impending marriage with Prince Igor. The two stars combine their flight across Europe with business, dogging the trail of international aviator Baron Spandermann (Reginald Owen), whom Anthony suspects of being a spy. Pells goes along with Anthony and Parker, and soon all three of them are tied up (literally, in Pells' case) with an espionage ring. While it is Clark Gable who ends up with Joan Crawford at fadeout time, it was Franchot Tone who claimed her as his bride in real life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
This screwball comedy may have been done in the shadow of Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, but that doesn't mean it's lacking in charm -- indeed, with a supporting cast that includes Charles Judels and William Demarest, and even Donald Kerr in a wisecracking bit role, it would be difficult not to enjoy this madcap chase comedy, especially under the knowing directorial hand of W.S. Van Dyke (The Thin Man). Before she became the queen of drama and left us a legacy to be exploited by Frank Perry, Faye Dunaway, etc., Joan Crawford knew how to do comedy and did more than her share -- here she's meek, tempestuous, defiant, and confused by turns, and she and Clark Gable have some chemistry, even if it isn't quite as beguiling as what he shared with Claudette Colbert in Capra's movie. (There's also some unintended irony here, when Crawford's character talks about the pressures of intrusive reporters and demanding board of directors -- one wonders if Dunaway or, at least, Perry, looked at this picture and that scene before doing Mommie Dearest.) But Van Dyke, Gable, Franchot Tone, Crawford and company offer more than odd signposts to modern campiness; it's all pretty zany with a topical edge of sorts, and done with MGM's usual opulence it's a pleasure to look at, although the extant VHS tape was made from a source with scratches at the reel-change points and some other flaws that ought to be rectified (if possible) before the film goes to DVD. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Ivan Lebedeff - Prince Igor; Donald Meek - Caretaker; Charles Judels - Lieutenant of Police; William Demarest - Editor; Norman Ainsley - Newspaper Reporter; Harry Allen - Chauffeur; Alice Ardell - French Maid; Jimmy Aubrey - Airplane Mechanic; Egon Brecher - Dr. Gorsay; Agostino Borgato - French Comptroller; Elsa Buchanan - English Department Store Girl; James B. Carson - French Waiter; Gennaro Curci - French Train Announcer; Gunnis Davis - Hotel Elevator Man; Frank Du Frane - Assistant to Editor; Otto H. Fries - Mechanic; Billy Gilbert - Cafe Manager; Betty Jane Graham - Italian Girl; Tom Herbert - Comic Taxi Driver; Lilyan Irene - Bit; Charles Irwin - Movie Camerama; Donald Kerr - Movie Cameraman; Leonid Kinskey; Adia Kuznetzoff - Rudolph, Baron's Servant; Nanette Lafayette - French Maid; Joe Mack - Hack Driver; Fred Malatesta - French Waiter; Mona Maris - Baroness; Margaret Marquis - Bit; Alphonse Martell - French Spy; Frank Mayo - Traveling Man; Viola Moore - English Department Store Girl; Richard Powell - Bit; Frank Puglia - Waiter; Dewey Robinson - Italian Father; C. Montague Shaw - Motel Manager; Yorke Sherwood - London Bobby; Phillips Smalley - Bit; Eleanor Stewart - Bit; Charles Trowbridge - Express Company Manager; Bobby Watson - Italian Boy; Duke York - Paul, Baron's Chauffeur; Fred Cavens - French Waiter; George Andre Beranger - Comedy Reactionary; Douglas Gordon - Cockney Comic Chauffeur; Jacques Vanaire - French Telegraph Operator; Robert Cory - Assistant to Inspector McCaskill; Robert Du Couedic - French Clerk; Richard Lancaster - English News Photographer; Genaro Spagnoli - French Taxi Driver; George Davis - Sgt. of Police; John Power - English Major-Domo
Credit
Adrian - Costume Designer, W.S. Van Dyke - Director, Frank Sullivan - Editor, Gus Kahn - Composer (Music Score), Franz Waxman - Composer (Music Score), Cedric Gibbons - Production Designer, Oliver Marsh - Cinematographer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz - Producer, Edwin B. Willis - Set Designer, Alan Green - Screen Story, Gladys Hurlbut - Screenwriter, John Lee Mahin - Screenwriter, Manuel Seff - Screenwriter, Julian Brodie - Short Story Author
Rival London-based American newspaper correspondents Michael Anthony and Barnabas Pells flip a coin to determine who will cover which of two boring assignments. Mike gets the story about millionairess Sally Parker's wedding to fortune-seeking Prince Igor, while Barney takes an interview with aviator Baron Otto Spandermann and his wife Hilda. On the way into the wedding, Mike sees Sally running out of the church and follows her, hoping to get a story. At her hotel, Mike runs into the suspicious Barney, but doesn't tell him what just happened, then sneaks into Sally's hotel room, and telling her that he has admired her for years, suggests that he help her "get away from it all." When the gigolo prince comes to the hotel, Mike slugs him when the prince recognizes him as a reporter, and he and Sally decide to run away, using the baron and baroness' flying suits as disguises. Barney chases them to the airport, but is too late and they fly away, though neither is a pilot. Just before they crash land in France, they find a munitions map in a bouquet of flowers intended for the baroness and realize that the aviators are spies. Though Mike has sent a secret cablegram about Sally to his editor Berger in New York, he is even more excited about the spy story. In Paris, after getting money from his paper, Mike and Sally are found by Barney, then are spotted by the baron and baroness. As they flee, Barney comes along until Mike pushes him into the back of the truck they steal and convinces Sally that Barney is a lowlife reporter. By nightfall, they arrive at the Palace of Fontainebleau and sneak in to spend the night. During the evening, they realize that they are in love, and Mike tries to tell her that he is a reporter, but can't. Next morning, Barney finds them again, but Sally doesn't believe him when he accuses Mike of being a reporter, too. Soon, however, an ashamed Mike gives her a newspaper with his byline and she realizes what he has done. He apologizes and tells her he loves her, but she sends him away. When Barney arrives, she says she will give him the greatest story of his career, and they go off to make headlines. A short time later, while they are traveling by train to Nice, Sally realizes that she still loves Mike and wants to go to him, but just then the baron and baroness come into their compartment with guns and demand that Sally give them the map. They search Sally but do not find it and leave her after pushing Barney off the train. When Barney catches up with Mike at a cafe in Paris and tells him what has happened, Mike decides to go to Nice himself to save Sally. In Nice, Mike is lovingly reunited with Sally at her hotel and they go to the train station. In the station, the baroness switches clothes with Sally in the ladies room, then goes with Mike, posing as Sally. The baron then finds Sally and takes her to a restaurant. She tries to contact the police, but when two policemen arrive, they believe the baron's story that she stole his plane. The baron then kidnaps Sally and the policemen and takes them to his chateau, where the baroness has taken Mike. Having followed Mike and the baroness, thinking that she was Sally, Barney also arrives. Using various ruses, Mike, Sally and the policemen eventually overwhelm the baron and baroness and Sally and Mike go off, leaving Barney tied-up, but Mike has a change of heart and returns, once again finding Barney trying to get his story first by using the chateau phone to cable his editor. They finally agree to file a joint byline, and Sally and Mike agree that they will soon be married.
Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "A lot of gay nonsense has been strung together....a fantastic and insubstantial narrative, with the result that it is almost continuously amusing and frequently hilarious... Miss Crawford, of the big eyes and flowing hair, turns in a surprisingly volatile and amusing performance as the heiress."
