“If you like your romance spread thick, your passion strong, and your Garbo hot, don't miss this,” read one 1931 review of Greta Garbo's only film with Clark Gable. Garbo plays the illegitimate daughter of a farmer who wants to marry her off. She flees to the mountain cabin of construction engineer Clark Gable, and it looks like legitimacy is just around the corner. But, with father hot in pursuit, she's off again, to begin a series of loveless affairs with men - a carnival owner, a wealthy politician - in return for their aid. Gable, naturally, doesn't go for this, but Garbo still goes for Gable, and finds him at last, a downtrodden man in a South American construction camp. In this jungle setting she endeavors to convince him of her love, and things are on the rise once again.
Photographed by William Daniels, who shot Garbo's most memorable films, from the sensual Flesh and the Devil (1929) to the elegant Ninotchka (1939), Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise was directed by Robert Z. Leonard “with an eye for Freudian symbolism; (and) the stars responded with emotion-charged performances” (“The MGM Story”). (JB)