Dance Fools Dance (1931)

Synopsis
Joan Crawford and William Bakewell play the spoiled-rotten grown children of stockbroker William Holden. When Wall Street lays its famous egg in 1929, Crawford and Bakewell find that they can no longer pursue their flamboyant lifestyle (for example, they'll have to put a moratorium on the sort of "lingerie parties" with which this film opens). Crawford gets a newspaper job, while Bakewell ties up with vicious bootlegger Clark Gable. When Gable is implicated in the murder of seven gangsters (a transparent reenactment of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre), Crawford's fellow reporter Cliff Edwards gets proof of Gable's complicity. Bakewell is ordered to kill Edwards; Crawford, not knowing of her brother's actions, takes Edwards' place, wooing Gable in hopes of getting a scoop. When Gable finds out that Crawford's working undercover (so to speak), he prepares to rub her out, but her life is saved by Bakewell at the cost of his own. Compared to the rest of the stick-figure leading men in Dance Fools Dance, Clark Gable stood out like a testosterone-soaked thumb, and it wouldn't be long before he'd be promoted from villains to heroes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide