Love Me or Leave Me [HD]

the performance of a lifetime
Doris Day is stunning in this biopic of jazz singer Ruth Etting, who was known as "America's sweetheart of song". After watching this film, I read some biographical material, and it would seem the film is very true to her life.
Ms. Day sings up a storm (the musical numbers are terrific), and gives a performance with a lot of depth, playing a complex personality caught in a hellbound relationship.

Cagney, as her thug boyfriend/manager, is magnificent. Every gesture and facial expression is a riveting work of art. He was an extraordinary, multi-faceted actor, and this is a performance not to miss.
Cameron Mitchell is also excellent as the pianist who loves her, but is shut out of her life.

Well written, directed and edited, it's a powerful story of control, obsession, and abuse. A downward spiral that's hard to break...when someone tells her "You're making a big mistake", she says: "I've made so many, one more won't make a difference".

This...

Day and Cagney Sizzle in "LOVE ME"
In 1955, after seven years as a major star at Warner Brothers and a string of successful films, Doris Day began to free lance. The first project she chose was a lavish musical biography at MGM entitled, "Love Me or Leave Me". It was the story of 20's and 30's chaunteuse, Ruth Etting and her relationship with Marty "The Gimp" Snyder. It opened that summer to critical and box-office kudos.

The well-fashioned script pulls no punches in it's depiction of the sometimes seamy and tawdry lives of it's principal characters. Etting and Snyder often used one another for their own personal gain and, for a change, the film doe not gloss over some of the less than savory aspects of their lives. The result is one of the best musical dramas ever committed to film.

The rise of Etting, from dance hall girl to Ziegfeld star was told amidst the settings of Chicago and New York. She meets Snyder, who wants to use her and utilizes his obsession with her in order to attain her...

All-Time Best Musical Biography
There are many wonderful Hollywood musicals that take up the story line of a composer or a singer, like LADY SINGS THE BLUES, NIGHT AND DAY, WORDS AND MUSIC, DEEP IN MY HEART, THE AL JOLSON STORY, and RHAPSODY IN BLUE. But the one movie that stands out from all the rest is LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. It is the absolutely perfect blending of story and song. The one that comes closest to it is the AL JOLSON STORY, but the "story" in that one isn't as related to the plot as this Doris Day-James Cagney production. Here, the songs Ruth Etting sang in the era of the Great Depression somehow help tell the story of her life; maybe her most popular songs were the ones that she felt closest to. Well, this movie certainly brings out the relationship between song and story in a way that has never been equalled in a biographical movie. Of course, "biography" puts a limitation on musical films; there is no room for the totally free-wheeling creativity of films like...

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