Manhattan Melodrama

About Manhattan Melodrama

Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 crime melodrama film, produced by MGM Pictures.

It was directed by W. S. Van Dyke and stars Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Leo Carrillo, Nat Pendleton, and Isabel Jewell. The movie also provided one of the earliest film roles for Mickey Rooney, who played the Gable character as a child.

Filmed relatively quickly and with a modest budget, Manhattan Melodrama was expected to return a profit, but not to capture the imagination of the public. Its success surprised the studio and made stars of Myrna Loy and William Powell in the first of their fourteen screen pairings. It also solidified the success of MGM's most popular male lead, Clark Gable, who had recently appeared in It Happened One Night, the film which would win him his only Academy Award for Best Actor.