Love Me or Leave Me (1955) - film review

In 1920s Chicago, Ruth Etting scrapes a living by dancing with patrons at an exclusive nightclub.  When she loses her job, racketeer Marty Snyder takes her under his wing and offers her an opportunity to achieve her ambition to become a singer.  Although suspicious of Marty’s motives, Ruth plays along and in no time is a singing sensation, drawing the crowds on Broadway and looking forward to a career in the movies.  But when payback day comes Ruth has no choice but to marry the man who made her a star, even though she has lost her heart to songwriter Johnny Alderman.  Marty’s attempts to control Ruth’s career soon bring the couple to the brink of disaster...

One of the finest and most popular musical biopics to come out of Hollywood, Love Me or Leave Me stands out from the rest because it doesn’t gloss over the more sordid aspects of the protagonist’s life but instead paints a  grimly honest picture of how its subject achieved stardom.  Amidst the usual MGM froth and jaunty musical numbers there is a no-nonsense love story with a keen edge to it, which is all the more emotionally stirring because it is faultlessly played by two of Hollywood’s finest, James Cagney and Doris Day.  Charles Vidor directs the film with his customary aplomb, not wasting a cent of his lavish budget in his attempt to deliver one of cinema’s most authentic and vibrant recreations of the Jazz Age.

Love Me or Leave Me was just one of James Cagney’s many late comebacks and he is superbly cast as Etting’s overly possessive first husband, combining the rough gangster persona of his early years with the tragic vulnerability of a self-sufficient man who is incapable of showing his emotions.  It was Cagney who pushed for Doris Day to take the lead role when other actresses (including Ava Gardner) had set their sights on it.  Cagney’s instincts proved to be right - no one could have injected more life and poignancy into this film than Day.  The on-screen chemistry between Cagney and Day is electrifying, so intense and so unpredictable that you feel anything is possible.  With such a winning duo and hit songs like I’ll Never Stop Loving You and Ten Cents a Dance, what’s there not to like?  This is a classic, in every sense of the word.

© Derek Adamson 2010

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