When Clark Gable came back from the his overseas service, MGM was, of course, chomping at the bit to put him in a movie and recapture some of the old magic. Adventure was the name of that first movie, and Greer Garson was Gable’s costar, with “Gable’s back and Garson’s got him!” as the tagline.
MGM sold Adventure to the hilt. Was it a triumphant return for dear Mr. Gable? Errrr, not exactly.
The movie opens in a South American port, where Merchant Marine Harry Patterson (Clark Gable) is saying goodbye to his girlfriend, Maria (Lina Romay) before heading out. They’ve taken on a new crewmember, Ramon (Tito Renaldo), after promising Ramon’s grandfather (Philip Merivale) that they’ll take good care of his grandson. Harry’s ship gets torpedoed by a Japanese sub, he and his crewmates are stranded aboard a lifeboat, and unfortunately Ramon dies.
Sigh. Here’s the first problem with this movie. Why is a character who we haven’t had time to know or care about dying? That’s kind of sloppy writing.
Anyway, Harry’s friend, Mudgin (Thomas Mitchell) promises to reform if they get rescued. No more booze, women, or gambling. He’ll give all his money to the church.
However, once the crew is back on solid earth, what does Mudgin do? He goes to a bar for a rip-roaring carouse in San Francisco and accidentally gets a guy stabbed.
Mudgin is beside himself, and one would think he’d make a beeline for the nearest church, but instead, he and Harry end up in a library, where they do some reading about souls and Harry asks the pretty librarian, Emily Sears (Greer Garson) and her roommate, Helen (Joan Blondell) to dinner.
Helen has a blast, but Emily seems a bit annoyed by the boisterousness of her dinner companions, until she gets mad enough to do a little carousing herself, making Harry and Helen’s jaws drop. As far as she’s concerned, Emily doesn’t want to see Harry again.
Emily’s ire lasts until the next morning, when Harry shows up at she and Helen’s apartment building, and the three of them end up taking a drive to Emily’s family’s farm out in the country. They stay for the weekend, where among other funny bits, Harry and Emily steal some chickens from a neighboring farmer. Emily’s chicken call is very convincing.
Helen and Harry seem to be getting along famously, but Emily and Harry are the ones who get married, with Helen crying what she claims are happy tears. Long story short, the marriage lasts for three days, Harry goes back to sea, Harry finds that his wild ways don’t have the same lustre they used to, Emily divorces Harry, and then Emily finds out she’s carrying Harry’s child.
Will Harry redeem himself? The answer isn’t too big of a mystery.
Adventure smacks of trying too hard. Really, really too hard. The generic title oversells the story. Gable and Garson are supposed to be playing young, naïve individuals who make mistakes and learn from them, but postwar Gable had seen too much and done too much, plus he was still haunted by Carole Lombard’s death. Greer Garson wasn’t doing too badly in Hollywood, but she was on the latter side of spring chicken, not to mention she was still married to Richard Ney, who had played her son in Mrs. Miniver. I’m sorry, but that feels a bit icky.
Plus, Adventure seems to be checking off boxes. We’ve seen everything in this movie before, only we’ve seen it done better and with younger, more suitable actors. It also seems to play the comedy out as if it’s painting by numbers. “Five minutes have gone by, so let’s have a joke,” seems to be the M.O.
On the plus side, this is the only time in her entire career that we see Greer Garson clucking like a chicken, including a fair imitation of a cockrel. It was yet another “only” in a series of “onlys,” another being Miss Garson singing “She’s My Daisy” in a leggy sendup of Harry Lauder in 1943’s Random Harvest.
Another reason Adventure feels off is the chemistry between the two leads, and it should come as no surprise that Gable and Garson reportedly didn’t like each other. Garson, per MGM publicist Emily Torchia, wasn’t “earthy” enough for Gable. Joan Blondell was a better match and wasted as Helen, but there’s nothing like forcing the proverbial square peg into a round hole. Or, as Hedda Hopper wrote in Modern Screen, “Gable needed a lusty, slam-bang American girl for Adventure — and he got an English lady acting too darned cute.”
Naturally, it was the only time Gable and Garson shared a screen, and neither one of them seemed too broken up about it.
How did the public like Adventure? Put it this way: It’s a bad sign when theater owners say things like, “Opened with a bang and slipped on each succeeding day. It is not all it is cracked up to be. Although some thought it was wonderful, the majority were a little disappointed.”
That was Stanley Leay, owner of the New Stanley Theater in Galena, Illinois. Fellow theater owner, W.F. Shelton of the Louisberg Theater in Louisberg, North Carolina, basically agreed: “Over long, but it seemed to please the ladies. Not up to previous performances at the box office.”
The critics weren’t any easier to please, but as we all know, critics are always a wee bit jaded and cynical. Harrison’s Reports’ review, which was reprinted in FilmIndia, called the movie, “antiquated and episodic, and at times too talky,” but also “unobjectionable morally.”
Film and Radio Guide really didn’t like the film, saying,
Adventure is a rough, knock-me-down, improbable story that depends upon melodrama with a capital “M’’ rather than upon charm or subtlety. It bangs upon the big bass drum by including a shipwreck, a death on a raft floating at sea, a brutal fight in a questionable house in a seaport city, a series of slugging affairs, a birth that is all but tragic, and the repentant death of a half-crazed seaman…The producers made a most unwise choice of a medium for the return of Clark Gable and for the appearance of Greer Garson.
The famously finicky Bosley Crowther had this to say:
For those two names joined on a marquee have the potential, in a box-office way, of the atom-splitting equation used by the scientists at Oak Ridge. But something went wrong in Metro’s handling of these two cosmic elements and their “Adventure,” which should have been a bomb-shell, is about as explosive as a slightly ancient egg. Truly, a more conspicuous fizzle than this new film now showing at the Music Hall cannot be readily imagined—not by this writer, anyhow. And if anyone wants a prize example of bungling and bad taste he might point right at “Adventure” and say, “People, there it is!”
Ouch.
Seen today, Adventure‘s novelty wears off quickly. While it has its moments, in the end there’s not much to do but watch the clock.
Coming up in October (click on the images for the links)…
My blogathon is coming up too, of course.
Yeah, September’s been a wee bit light for various reasons that I won’t go into, but October will more than make up for it. Speaking of which, our latest Substack update is coming up on Thursday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
Adventure is available on DVD from Amazon.
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