Main Cast: Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Roland Winters, Will Geer
Release Year: 1950
Country: US
Run Time: 91 minutes
Plot
Arrogant Mike Brannan (Clark Gable) is a famous driver of midget race cars and is the type of man crowds love to hate. He earned his bad-boy image after he is blamed for causing a fatal crash during a race. Wanting to see if all the hoopla is true, tough columnist Regina Forbes (Barbara Stanwyck) tries to interview her, but Mike refuses. Later she watches as he is involved in another deadly crash. Believing he deliberately caused the accident, she rakes him over the coals in her column and this leads to his disbarment from the racing circuit. In order to make ends meet, the disgraced Mike begins driving in a stunt show. Eventually, he earns enough money to allow him to buy a full-sized race car. The film's exciting finale was shot at the Indianapolis Speedway. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
To Please a Lady is far from a great film, but it has enough sheer star power in its two leads to make it worth watching, especially for fans of Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck. It's also a romance that might have particular appeal for the male member of couples, thanks to its car racing setting. Director Clarence Brown(in tandem with ace cinematographer Harold "Hal" Rosson") lavishes quite a bit of attention on those sequences involving the cars in action; some of it may seem technically primitive to modern audiences, but most of it is exciting and involving, and the final race sequence is edge-of-your-seat fun. When director Brown is away from the roaring wheels, the film bogs down a bit; he doesn't have a great deal of interest in the cardboard characters or in the rather predictable situations these characters find themselves in. That leaves it all up to Gable and Stanwyck, who fortunately have enough sheer personality and screen presence to make up for the character's lack of depth. They're a well-matched pair, both overwhelmingly ambitious and blind to the fact that they are two sides of the same coin -- and these two stars play that for all they're worth. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Racing driver Mike Brannan (Clark Gable), has a bad reputation. Columnist Regina Forbes (Barbara Stanwyck) tries to interview Brannan, but he refuses. Regina then sees Brannan involved in a crash in which another driver is killed. Her column suggests that Brannan caused the accident deliberately, which leads to his disbarment from the racing circuit. Brannan begins driving in a stunt show and eventually he earns enough money to buy a car of his own and enter the big race himself.
