Amame o déjame

If you're not a fan of Doris Day, give this movie a viewing. No syrup or sugar in this film. It's amazing just how good she is, and I wonder why she let herself be typecast as the eternal virgin? Here's an actress that seems to be able to do almost anything and do it well, ie: sing, dance and act too.

Another great performance comes from Cameron Mitchell who I really didn't know too much about. He does a great job playing Doris' torch carrying pianist. In fact everyone does a great job in this film. The film hints about a possible drinking problem, but fails to deliver on that point. One scene in particular must have been quite shocking for 1950's audience with a possible rape in a hotel room.

"Love Me Or Leave Me" has hints of "A Star Is Born" in its fabric but it seems to fail in telling the entire Ruth Etting story. Good on all counts, but it could have been much more powerful with this cast.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s musicals acquired a distinctly noir-ish quality, and the life of singer Ruth Etting was made to order.

Born in 1896, Etting was a hardknocks chorus girl when she caught the eye of small-time Chicago hood Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder, who married her in 1922 and proceeded to promote her career--occasionally, according to rumor, at gun point. By 1927 Etting was a popular singer and a major Broadway star, and when talkies arrived the couple moved to California, where Etting became a favorite for the musical shorts that were then in vogue. But the marriage was volatile, and when Snyder found Etting was having an affair with pianist Myrl Alderman, Snyder shot him. Alderman survived and Etting wasted little time in divorcing Snyder and marrying Alderman, but the scandal was so shocking that it effectively ended her career. She died, largely forgotten, 1978.

As you might expect, LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME plays fast and loose with the facts, presenting Etting as an innocent (she wasn't) and Snyder as a major crime figure (he wasn't); even so, it does seem to capture something elemental about both the era and the characters. Much of this is due to the on-screen chemistry between leads Doris Day and Jimmy Cagney, who spark and sizzle in a truly surprising way.

It will not surprise viewers that Cagney plays Snyder extremely well; he is, after all, best recalled for his numerous crime-drama roles. But it may surprise viewers that Day had the acting chops to match him. Today she is most widely remembered as a master of light comedy, but in truth Doris Day's films of the 1940s and 1950s were more often hard drama than fly-weight amusements, including such heavy-hitters as YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, STORM WARNING, and YOUNG AT HEART; she would continue her string of dramatic roles in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Her performance in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME is often considered her high-water mark as a dramatic actress: she gives it everything she's got, and the sparks really fly when she and Cagney square off.

The look of the film, which was directed by Charles Vidor and sports art direction by the legendary Cedrick Gibbons, is beautiful, and the film moves at a smart clip; its one failing is that censorship issues of the era left several scenes--including a legendary rape sequence--on the cutting room floor. The music, drawn from Etting's most famous recordings, is also memorable, and Day pulls out all the stops for her songs. The DVD is not flawless, but you'll never notice it, and it includes several bonuses, two of which show us the real Ruth Etting. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Before she became America's top box-office star by playing its oldest virgin, Doris Day was an instinctive, if untutored, actress and an accomplished, popular singer. In Charles Vidor's Love Me Or Leave Me, she takes on the part of Ruth Etting, the troubled songstress from the jazz age, and her twin talents merge memorably. It's a faultless performance, all the more impressive for staying understated, scaled down.

Her co-star, James Cagney, takes the low road; as Marty (`The Gimp') Snyder, a lopsided fireplug of a man, he sizzles with resentment and ignites into rages. Strangely, his scenery-chewing complements Day's underplaying; the tension between their temperaments fuels this dark drama which occasionally resembles a musical but is closer at heart to film noir (Vidor, after all, directed Gilda).

A taxi-dancer in a Chicago dive, Day catches Cagney's eye (he holds the linen-laundering concession for the place). Finding she's not the quick pick-up he had in mind, he lands her a job in the kick-line at another nitery he services. When he finds out she wants to be a singer, he arranges for lessons with pianist Cameron Mitchell (who plays the thankless role of the loyal but shoved-aside lover). But Cagney, used to getting what he wants and to browbeating everybody around him into surrender, meets his match in Day. Her quiet determination proves every bit as strong as his bellowing bluster. When it looks like her star is in ascendancy, he becomes her manager, puts her on radio, and snares her a spot in New York as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies.

They settle into a grudge-match of a marriage, with guerrilla warfare erupting from both sides. (Cagney's Snyder is a marginally less disturbed version of his Cody Jarrett in White Heat.) One of their flashfire fights takes place in her dressing room after a show. Cagney knocks a vase of flowers across the room; Day extends her arm for him to unclasp a bracelet. They bicker some more, with Cagney losing the argument while Day nurses the drink that has become her ally. He leans over and tells her `You oughtta lay off that stuff – you're getting to look like an old bag.' It's the chilliest moment in the movie.

In the last third, Day answers a call from Hollywood, which lays the foundation for the unravelling of this messy, nerve-wracking relationship. And if the wrapping up grasps toward the sentimental (with a detour into the melodramatic), it doesn't quite take. Cagney, actor and character, hangs on like a bulldog with a bone. The Marty Snyders never change, and Cagney knows it; he stays the self-deluded small-time hood he started out as, who can't accept that he's driven away a woman he can't believe he loves so much.

Day, however, rises to a magnanimity that rings hollow. Her steely self-confidence about where her talents would bring her, and her casual callousness in using Cagney to help her get there, make her final gesture improbable. But when she takes the spotlight, singing `Mean to Me' or `Ten Cents A Dance' (with her feet planted provocatively – defiantly – apart), Day, actress and character, takes it by natural right. The voice isn't quite right – Etting's was reedy and tremulous, Day's big and secure – but the assurance and style are dead on.

I am NOT a fan of Doris Day - there is just something about her that annoys me. But in this movie she acted very different from the usual Doris Day movie. And the way she sang those ballads breaks your heart. But the acting job that truly amazes - and has through the years made me a fan - is that of James Cagney. One wonders if he had a parent that was abusive or an Uncle or someone he had intimately observed. Because from somewhere that man understood something about an abusive relationship and put it in his performance. It was positively beyond extraordinary. He deserved an Academy Nomination at the very least. While he was cruel, vile, despicable, certainly repulsive and yet you felt at the same time he was pitiful, sad, pathetic. It was an extremely complex performance. When I saw "Love Me Or Leave Me" as a teenager I didn't appreciate the subtlety of his acting. It wasn't until I saw it many, many years later and had gone through a lot of living that I comprehended the true magnitude of his performance.

Doris Day plays Ruth Etting, torch singer of the twenties and thirties, in this glossy MGM biopic. Several key songs from Etting's career are covered, sung well by Day (specifically Ten Cents a Dance, You Made Me Love You, and Love Me or Leave Me).

Although Day is effective in the role and looks a treat, the best acting performance in the movie comes from James Cagney as Marty ‘The Gimp' Snyder, Etting's manager and husband. Cameron Mitchell plays Johnny the loyal piano player who waits for Etting to find her own way, while Robert Keith is good as Barney, close friend to both Snyder and his wife.

Good Technicolor and a Cinemascope treatment makes the movie look good, and the arrangements are excellent. Day is nothing like the real Ruth Etting either in looks or voice, but she does well in one of her last great musical roles.