Robert Z. Leonard | After Office Hours

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Robert Z. Leonard

After Office Hours

After Office Hours (1935) is a pleasant mix of romance, comedy, and mystery. None of these elements are ever allowed to over balance the others. As is usual with Leonard, a graceful, genteel tone is established and maintained throughout.

Clark Gable plays a fast talking newspaper man who will do anything for a story. Such characters were already well established in other writers' and directors' plays and films. One thinks immediately of The Front Page and of Roy Del Ruth's Blessed Event (1932). Gable's character is less extreme than the denizens of those films. Gable is chiefly motivated by a desire to expose a big time crook. This is rightly seen as a worthwhile goal by the film. So all his hustling is mainly viewed as a newspaper man simply doing his job.

The script is full of intelligent references to current events. These do not seem to be didactic or politically motivated. Instead, these references seem designed to add interest to the dialogue.

Gable's ability to hold down a successful job was clearly a key part of his characterization in the midst of the Depression. The way he is flourishing through hard work, talent and aggressiveness is a fantasy model of success for an economically battered audience. One sequence shows Gable in white tie and tails. This is a visual correlative for Gable's ability to move in all levels of society. Most of the writing I've seen on Gable emphasizes his toughness and his working man qualities; this seems to be how people thought about him, and how he is remembered This is true, but also a bit misleading. Actually, many of Gable's films show him in white tie and tails. He wore this costume almost as consistently as Fred Astaire. Gable was never an aristocrat; he always was one who entered society through his own effort and work. But enter it he did. Gable often played men whose roots were in the lower classes, but who penetrated to the upper. One thinks of John M. Stahl's Parnell (1937), where he played the great Irish leader.

The mystery plot has a construction that is more common in books than in films. The structure is largely the same as one of R. Austin Freeman's "inverted mysteries". We see the criminal committing the crime. The audience knows everything, but none of the other characters in the film knows anything. It looks like a perfect crime. Then we follow Gable unravelling the mystery, and bringing the bad guy to justice.