Fifteen years earlier Clark Gable and Loretta Young did Call of the Wild for her studio which was then 20th Century Fox. They had a most discreet affair which resulted in the birth of Young's daughter Judy. Back in those days Young indulged in an elaborate charade and 'adopted' her own daughter as a single mother.
Nothing quite as earth shattering as that happened on the set of Key to the City which was made for Gable's MGM. Still it's an interesting comedy drama about a pair of small city mayors who meet at a convention in San Francisco and fall in love.
Young is a proper New England mayor from an old stock family in Wynona, Maine. Gable is mayor of the small city of Puget City on the Pacific coast and started out as a longshoreman. He ran on a reform ticket, but the special interests that he beat are still very much alive and represented here in the person of sinister Raymond Burr.
It's a convention and people kind of let their hair down at conventions, Clark and Loretta are no different. And San Francisco is quite the romantic town.
One of MGM's most beloved players, Frank Morgan, plays Gable's fire chief complete with brogue and all. It was one of his last films and Morgan kind of borrows a bit from Ed Wynn and his famous Texaco fire chief from radio.
Also featured well is Lewis Stone as Young's uncle, a federal judge and a most proper and aristocratic gentlemen and Marilyn Maxwell who Gable rejects for Young and is determined to get a little payback. Highlight of the film is the chick fight going on between Young and Maxwell while Gable and Burr are slugging it out.
Key to the City is not on the top ten or even top twenty of either Clark Gable or Loretta Young's film credits. But it is still quite amusing even after almost 60 years.
