Cain and Mabel
The carousel used in the Coney Island sequence was built for the film at a cost of $35,000 ($742,000 in 2022). Marion Davies kept it for her Santa Monica (CA) home after filming wrapped.,During the gargantuan MGM-style "I'll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs" production number, a stage hand can be seen walking behind a white horse and carriage.,Larry Cain: [complaining about the noise] Say listen, thunder foot. You're making my room sound like a pool hall on Saturday night.
Mabel O'Dare: Well that out to make you feel right at home!,Featured in Behind the Scenes of Cain and Mabel (1936),Coney Island
(1936) (uncredited)
Music by Harry Warren
Lyrics by Al Dubin
Played at the rehearsals in the theater and hotel room
Performed by Marion Davies, Sammy White and chorus,This isn't a great movie. It's a passable comedy, with some clever dialogue.

The real interest is Marion Davies. She is remembered, inaccurately, as the inspiration and model for Susan Alexander in *Citizen Kane*, which was evidently not altogether the case. (Yes, Kane was certainly based on William Randolph Hurst, Davies' financial backer and lover, but Susan A. was evidently based on several women in her situation in the 1930s, including at least one actual would-be opera singer.) As a result, it is assumed that she had no talent.

As this movie shows, that wasn't the case. No, she was not a Judy Garland, or a Jean Harlow, or a Ginger Rogers, or a Jeannette MacDonald. But she sang and danced quite decently, and she did a good job with light comedy. (She was evidently in over her head when Hurst put her in historical dramas.) Gable is definitely the best thing in this picture, and does a great job creating the all-man prizefighter, but Davies holds her own.

As do several of the supporting comedians, especially Walter Catlett and Roscoe Karns.

As I said, not a great movie, but a pleasant comedy, and one that makes a case for Davies.

---------------------------------

I watched this again tonight. One thing that struck me about it this time was that, in the very large musical number in the second half of the movie, which just goes on and on and on - it's supposed to be part of the musical Mabel O'Dare is appearing in - Davies is given almost nothing to do. She just stands on top of the elaborate stage set in an elaborate costume and smiles. I kept thinking: if this were a musical with any other musical star, they would have had her doing a lot more dancing, and probably some singing.,