Oh, that was fun! No screwball action here but a lovable little romantic comedy, starring a ridiculously young and baby-faced Clark Gable as card-sharp 'Babe' Stewart, and a pre-stardom Carole Lombard as Connie Randall, the girl he marries on the flip of a coin: "Heads we... do it, tails--" "Tails we get married", Connie puts in, in a cheerful pre-Code gamble of her virtue, and tails it is. Babe the lifelong gambler gracefully pays up, and the challenge is on: judging by the post-coital scene in the sleeper car, he hasn't got such a bad bargain... but how long can he keep his new wife in happy ignorance of the crooked nature of the card-parties she helps to host?
The film's title bears no particular relation to its plot, and the plot itself takes a couple of abrupt and apparently arbitrary turns to attain each scheduled set-up; but any degree of implausibility can be forgiven for the sake of the resulting comic situations, in particular the library scenes, where Babe tries to get Connie into bed with him on their first meeting, the 'getting-up' scene where Connie innocently ensures her husband is up and dressed in time for the fictional day job he has invented, and the finale where he launches into a vivid description of his supposed voyage from South America... in blissful ignorance that the truth is already out! There are relatively few laugh-out-loud moments, but the film has a sweetness of tone rarely found in later screwball comedies, with equal emphasis on the humour and the romance; it's clearly fond of its characters, and there were few moments when I wasn't either grinning with affection or amusement on their behalf.
Gable and Lombard may have gone on individually to greater things, but "No Man of Her Own" remains a thoroughly enjoyable piece of fluff, worth watching for more than just the one-off pairing of its stars. Forget all logic and likelihood, ignore the occasional unevenness, and just sit down and enjoy.
The film's title bears no particular relation to its plot, and the plot itself takes a couple of abrupt and apparently arbitrary turns to attain each scheduled set-up; but any degree of implausibility can be forgiven for the sake of the resulting comic situations, in particular the library scenes, where Babe tries to get Connie into bed with him on their first meeting, the 'getting-up' scene where Connie innocently ensures her husband is up and dressed in time for the fictional day job he has invented, and the finale where he launches into a vivid description of his supposed voyage from South America... in blissful ignorance that the truth is already out! There are relatively few laugh-out-loud moments, but the film has a sweetness of tone rarely found in later screwball comedies, with equal emphasis on the humour and the romance; it's clearly fond of its characters, and there were few moments when I wasn't either grinning with affection or amusement on their behalf.
Gable and Lombard may have gone on individually to greater things, but "No Man of Her Own" remains a thoroughly enjoyable piece of fluff, worth watching for more than just the one-off pairing of its stars. Forget all logic and likelihood, ignore the occasional unevenness, and just sit down and enjoy.