After Office Hours (1935)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Robert Z. Leonard

Writers:

Laurence Stallings (story) and
Dale Van Every (story) ...

Release Date:

22 February 1935 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Tagline:

BEAUTY AND THE BOSS AND BUSINESS WAS PLEASURE! (original print ad - all caps)

Plot:

Hard-hitting news editor Jim Branch falls for high-society type Sharon Norwood but can't get to first...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | High Society | New York City | Infidelity | Drunkenness

Cast

Constance Bennett	...	Sharon Norwood
Clark Gable	...	James 'Jim' Branch
Stuart Erwin	...	Hank Parr
Billie Burke	...	Mrs. Norwood
Harvey Stephens	...	Tommy Bannister
Katharine Alexander	...	Julia Patterson
Hale Hamilton	...	Henry King Patterson
Henry Travers	...	Cap
Henry Armetta	...	Italian Diner Owner
Charles Richman	...	Jordan
Herbert Bunston	...	Barlow, Norwood's Butler

Also Known As:

Adam Started It (USA) (working title)
Copy Cats (USA) (working title)
Sob Sister (USA) (working title)
Town Talk (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

72 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #593)

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Sidney Lanfield was originally signed to direct.

Quotes:

Sharon Norwood: Why did you lie to me?
James 'Jim' Branch: If you were looking at what I'm looking at you'd know why I lied to you.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Clark Gable: Tall, Dark and Handsome (1996)

Pleasant But Ultimately Disappinting

Clark Gable is fun as a (maybe not so) tough-guy reporter. Stuart Erwin is wasted -- fine but he deserved more -- as his subordinate. Billie Burke is as always fun. But Constance Bennett strolls away with this.

Probably 99.9% of all living beings today have never heard of Ms. Bennett. Granted, about 90% have probably never heard of Clark Gable, either, But there is something odd about Bennett's fall from grace.

She was a huge star and her performances hold up beautifully. Yet, she seems to be viewed as a blip on the radar screen of American movie history, which she really was not.

I wonder, as an example, why "Topper" is almost never shown. I saw it once and thought it a very chic and appealing screwball comedy. Heaven knows, it spawned sequels (sot of sequels) and a TV series based on it was quite popular. Are there some sort of copyright problems? This movie, in any case, has a nice, twisting plot. It's amusing, it's stylish, it has a bit of suspense. It isn't great by any means, though it surely would have been more fun before the Code -- only a year or two before it was released.

(The title is racy but seems to have little bearing on the movie itself, just as an aside.)