LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME
US, 1955, 122 minutes, Colour.
Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell, Robert Keith, Tom Tully.
Directed by Charles Vidor.
Love Me or Leave Me was a big dramatic breakthrough for Doris Day. Although she appeared in some dramas at Warner Bros in the early 1950s, including Storm Warning, she was best known for her singing and her bright and breezy personality on screen. She made a great impact in such films as Calamity Jane. When her contract with Warner Bros was finished, she moved to MGM and began a series of films with top-ranking stars including with James Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much, Jack Lemmon in It Happened to Jane, Clark Gable in Teacher’s Pet. The film was also a strong vehicle for James Cagney who received an Oscar nomination, once again playing a gangster.
The film was directed by Charles Vidor, the Hungarian-born director who worked in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s and who came to prominence in 1945 with his Chopin biography A Song to Remember. He made a number of popular films during the late 40s including Gilda, with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. He also directed them in The Loves of Carmen. During the 1950s he made a number of popular films including Hans Christian Andersen and The Swan, with Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness. His final films were The Joker is Wild with Frank Sinatra, a remake of A Farewell to Arms with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones and his final film was The Liszt biography, Song Without End, with Dirk Bogarde.
Love Me or Leave Me is the biography of singer Ruth Etting who began as a small-time singer, was promoted by Chicago gangster, Marty Snyder (nicknamed The Gimp because of his lame leg). Offstage, however, there was a great deal of violence in the relationship.
The film showed that at the time that MGM was making frothy musicals, dramatic musicals were possible – and this film won the Oscar for best story and the Directors’ Guild for best American musical.
1. How strong a drama was this? Its exploration of personalities and their conflicts? Did it seen real or unreal - in its story? In its treatment? The world of Chicago, New York, Hollywood? Do these worlds seem real to us? Why?
2. The significance of the title and the title song? This film as a dramatic musical? The impact of the music within the drama? Doris Day's personality and acting contrasting with James Cagney? The effectiveness of this unlikely combination?
3. Was Ruth Etting the central character? Trace her story and the changes in her career and personality. Did the film show insight into such a character? (The fact that there was a real-life basis for this story?) The picturing of her in her ordinary beginnings, a dime a dance girl, the response of Marty, the beginnings of change in her, the development of her talent and singing, her emotional response to Marty, the fact that this was so wearing, the clash between gratitude and exasperation, the overwhelming nature of her ambitions, her achievement in New York at the expense of Marty and the effect on her, her love for him and her pity for him, the consequences she suffered because of love and pity, the shooting and her bailing Marty out, her continued success and his failure? Was Ruth a credible character? Within this show-business world? What insight into the characters did the film give?
4. How much insight into the character of Marty? Did his background in Chicago and the laundry explain him? His short stature and his punk and pugnacious attitudes? His running things and gradually getting out of his depth? Why didn't he understand that he was getting out of his depth? How much did he suffer? Why did he become so jealous and suspicious, so possessive? How was he obsessive about Ruth? The impact of the marriage on him? The circumstances of the shooting? Could he be saved? What future would he have? How happy a man was he, how bitter?
5. Was Johnny presented as anything more than a conventional musician? His relationships with Ruth and Marty? His innocence and yet suffering? That he was in over his head?
6. How important were the interactions among the main characters in changing situations for insight into their lives? The tensions of inter—relationship non—understanding, dependence and independence?
?. Did the songs contribute anything more than musical interludes? The title song and its ironic pathos?
8. It was said that Marty had given a chunk of his life and Ruth had taken it. How was this an insight into the themes of the film?
