Common factory girl Marian Martin (Joan Crawford) stands outside the depot, watching as the train slowly pulls into the station, living vicariously — as though each passing compartment window represented a silver screen with a different story emblazoned across it. (It’s one of those “magic of the movies” moments that can only be realized on screen, as opposed to the stage or the pages of a book.) Flagrant gold digger that she is, Marian won’t hear of living “life on the installment plan.” If a man can use everything he has to get ahead in life, why can’t a woman do the same? A monied dipsomaniac, alone in the caboose sipping cocktails, serves as her inspiration to make the leap to the big city, where the streets are paved with millionaire playboys. Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher plays the aforementioned inebriate with such relaxed abandon and familiarity that I was shocked to learn that I’d only seen him once before, in another Clark Gable vehicle, Idiot’s Delight. His screen presence is commanding enough to inspire regret that it’s timbered Gable and not Skeets into whom the gold digger ultimately digs her chainsaw. The tale of conflicting ambition gridlocks with a grin when revamped society dame Marian runs into a lower-class version of herself. Where it will end is inevitable; how director Clarence Brown wraps things up with one brazen long take is nothing short of a miracle. (1931) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.