kidboots Hard to believe, Constance Bennett, now only know to old film fans, was once, for a little while, not only the most popular actress in America but billed as the highest paid actress in the world!!! Constance was considered the epitome of chic, not quite as aristocratic as Norma Shearer or Ann Harding, but finding her own type as the poor shop girl, wooed by riches into a degrading lifestyle, but by the end of the movie finding strength to stand up for the decent things in life. In other words the "sin movie", which peaked in popularity in the early thirties. Having an abrasively honest personality didn't help her popularity and the depression weary public began to tire of her public extravagance (apparently in 1931 she spent $250,000 on a new wardrobe while most of the country battled the depression.) Nowadays "The Easiest Way" is remembered for being Clark Gable's first MGM feature but, in 1931, it was then one of the many popular Constance Bennett movies being rushed into the cinemas.Laura Murdock (Constance Bennett) longs to escape the poverty of tenement life. Her father is off work indefinitely, her mother (Clara Blandick) is a drudge and her sister Peg (Anita Page) is all set to marry self righteous Nick (Clark Gable) who operates a family laundry business, but Laura wants more. She works at the tie counter at the local department store but is whisked into the world of modeling and advertising by a talent scout. Enter the movie's villain - advertising executive, Will Brockton (Adolphe Menjou) who takes Laura under his wing. Laura takes to luxury like a duck to water but the only family member who is on her side is her free loading father (J. Farrell MacDonald), who is always coming to her for handouts!! Nick is not happy and tells her exactly what he thinks of her, the new dress she has given to Peg and the fancy car she rides around in.Posing as Brockton's secretary, Laura goes to the mountains and meets reporter Jack Madison (Robert Mongomery). They fall in love and while Jack knows all about her relationship with Brockton, he makes her promise to stop seeing him and return all his gifts. Jack goes to South America and Laura falls upon hard times - she is locked out of her apartment because she can't pay the rent and her mother dies because she has not been able to give her father the money for an operation. She goes to Brockton for a loan but ends up going back to him. Of course Jack comes back and Effie St. Clair (a just fantastic performance by Marjorie Rambeau) tells her to grab her happiness while she can. She was an elderly mistress who has been left destitute when her "sugar daddy" dies. Laura tries to - by lying about her circumstances but Jack sees through it and the film ends on Christmas Eve with Laura being taken in by Peg and a penitent Nick, and hoping that Jack will forgive her in the near future.It was hard to feel a lot of sympathy for Laura. There was not a lot of emotion in Constance Bennett's performance. I was expecting a showdown at the end but she was happy to try to sneak out with Jack and avoid a confrontation with Brockton, who with a few subtle clues ("you'll find my handerchiefs in the top draw") was able to fill Jack in. Whatever happened to Anita Page? She may have portrayed Clark Gable's first on screen love interest but it was pretty thankless, being very much a supporting part and not very glamorous. Considering she was so memorable in "Our Blushing Brides" only the year before - what happened??Highly Recommended.

kburditt Precode movies are always interesting because the plot lines were so cutting edge for their era and often still are for now. While the idea of a kept woman may seem quaint by today's morality, the deeper argument of men controlling a woman's life is still relevant today. A woman could/can use her beauty to gain quick and easy access to wealth. But when the beauty fades so may the access to wealth. Men controlled the jobs a woman could get, her access to society, and even her access to her own family. I was disappointed that the kept woman was so lazy about her circumstances. It took the older kept woman to wake her up to the reality of her situation. On the other hand there is the sister - who gets ahead the 'right' way. She starts out a tenement brat - and ends up a neat happy homemaker with an adorable kid & a good husband. It took time and hard work but she made the comfortable life eventually. There are other things that are worth looking at in this film - Advertising - once upon a time all print advertising was created by artists, with live models. Pencil & paint and cramping muscles. Poverty - Hot crowded tenements with thin, malnourished undereducated people. No privacy, no quiet, no prospects, no reason to play by the rules. Social Security - Once upon a time the old and tired were on their own. If they washed up at 65 with no money - and too tired and broke down to keep working - there was no safety net - just a cheap boarding house that locked you out when you missed the rent. When the prospects are dismal - who can blame a kid for taking the easy way out.

jotix100 "The Easiest Way" is an example of how Hollywood could deal with thorny subjects before the arrival of the Hays Code. We are presented with a situation in which a young, poor, but attractive young woman, could go up in the world using her natural charms in a realistic way. That was going to change in a few more years, as the Code would not let themes such as this one be dealt with the frankness prior to its arrival.The film, directed by Jack Conway, is curiosity piece by today's standards. The original work was made for the stage where there was an open mind about risky situations. We are presented with a poor family at the beginning of the story living in a crowded tenement. Laura, the beautiful young girl has no future of getting a rich man that will take her away from the poverty she is living. When a rich man enters her life, she sees the opportunity to escape her humble origins.The film deals in a realistic way with the subject of the illicit affair between Laura and Bill Brockton. When she falls for young Jack Madison, she believes that she must abandon the man that provides her comfort and easy life, until she finds herself penniless and must face with the fact that she has to go back to Bill, but loses Jack in the process. At the end, we watch her spying outside her married sister's suburban house which is the epitome of happiness.Constance Bennett makes an interesting Laura, but this is not her best role in the movies. Robert Montgomery is not seen enough in the film. Adolph Menjou makes a great Bill Brockton, the rich man who loves Laura in spite of the fact he knows Laura doesn't care for him. Clark Gable made a good impression as the brother-in-law critical to Laura. Marjorie Rambeau, Anita Page and Hedda Haper appear in minor roles.

David (Handlinghandel) Constance Bennett stars as a lower class girl who takes the easy way. That is, she becomes a kept women. We see her in beautiful gown, in jewels, in furs. Adolph Menjou is footing the bill.Then she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery and wants to give it all up for true love. I won't reveal the ending. But it's not an especially happy one, and three cheers to Hollywood for not selling out.A few comments on the perfumers: . Robert Montgomery is not someone I can imagine anyone's throwing over even a modest income for.. Clark Gable has a fairly small role here. He plays, with of course no mustache, Bennett's proper working class and disapproving brother-in-law.. Bennett is chic as she always is. But she isn't photographed in a faltering manner. Her profile is rather flat. She appears to have an overbite and her false eyelashes seem apparent. Maybe the director of photography and she did not get on well.. The brilliant Marjorie Rameau turns in the earliest of her fine performances that I have seen. She plays another kept woman. When Bennett is down on her luck and asks for a loan, she sends her packing. But when her daddy dies, she comes to Bennett for money and is given it.Her performance is in a different realm from that of any of the other players in this movie.Bennett is a strangely forgotten star of early movies. Rambeau is a sadly underrated actress, whose career spanned several decades.