Such a low rating... only a 4.9 as of today. Opens with Ivy (Joanie Crawford) running to catch the train when it comes in. She spends five minutes smooching her guy, and then shows up late for her show at the theater. Crawford had started as a "hoofer", and we get to see plenty of it in the silly show they put on. Some big names in here, in the early days... Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon!) is "Howard" and a 30 year old Clark Gable (Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind) had started in the silent films, and easily moved into talkies. You can see all the heavy make-up on Crawford, left over from the "silents"... Supporting Guy Kibbee and Rosceo Karns were in everything in the early days. Joan C. sings a couple times in this one, but clearly singing warn't her thang! She receives a telegram one night, and faints. She runs off, and bumps SMACK into Carl (Clark Gable) and they tell each other their stories. He is with the salvation army, and she is intrigued. naturally. who wouldn't be?? and about halfway through, we get the vaudeville act from Kibbee and his cronies... some old time humor. We cover a lot of ground in 72 minutes. Directed by Harry Beaumont, who had done a bunch of precode Crawford films. It's okay, but i can see why its rated pretty low. She spends the whole film running back and forth from Howard and Carl. takes a long time to get anywhere. Sound and picture quality are pretty good, considering its age.

Laughing Sinners marks the first time Clark Gable appeared in a movie starring Joan Crawford. Crawford is the only name above the title and Gable is listed third in the cast list after Neil Hamilton (who would be better known as Commissioner Gordon in the "Batman" TV series). Crawford is a singer/dancer who falls for the traveling salesman Hamilton. He abandons her while she sings a love song for him. Gable plays a Salvation Army man who saves Joan from jumping off a bridge and convinces her to join. While she performs on a street corner, Hamilton sees Crawford and convinces her to stay in his hotel room. I'll stop right there and mention who else is in this movie: Guy Kibbee, Roscoe Karns, Cliff Edwards before he became the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, and, in a nice picnic scene with Gable and Crawford, Our Ganger Mary Ann Jackson, hair bob and all. There are some entertaining musical numbers danced by Crawford including an amusing sequence of Joan dressing as a farmer with funny nose and beard. Other than that and the picnic scenes, this is a pretty talky picture that reveals its stage origins too clearly toward the end so you may feel bored after a while. Still, an interesting curio for fans of all the above players.

Like a lot of early '30s film, I found this a pretty interesting short (72 minutes) story. This one is about a chorus girl-type who gets jilted, hooks up with a Salvation Army man, then is enticed back to the old sinful ways for a night with the man who jilted her and finally realizes she is better off with the good guy and the good morals.This is an early look at Joan Crawford, who is blonde here with huge eyes. Clark Gable is sans mustache and really looks young. Neil Hamilton, the third lead, is the same man who went on to play Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series three decades later. In here, he's the pagan bad guy.This film goes a long way in portraying traveling salesmen as morally bankrupt people. Now why would they do that?!!

"Laughing sinners" was a pleasant surprise to me. I never knew what a good actress Joan Crawford was until I saw this film. I saw her rather exaggerating performance in "Grand Hotel", and a better performance in 1931's "Possessed", but here she is totally convincing and real. There are moments of great beauty, especially the scenes between Crawford and Clark Gable, moments when the film shows a timeless quality. Gable and Crawford are completely believable as the Salvation Army officers : sincere, vulnerable and intense. Clark Gable in a very unusual role - wise, calm, sensitive and understanding - It makes him powerful in a subtle way. Neil Hamilton is terrific especially in the scene - a very long uninterrupted take ! - when he tries to persuade and seduce Joan Crawford - for a night of bliss. Can he offer her salvation ?