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Love Me Or Leave Me

LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME

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CREDITS

1955, 122 minutes, Eastman Color and CinemaScope.
Producer, Joe Pasternak; Director, Charles Vidor; Screenplay, Daniel Fuchs and Isobel Lennart; Cinematography, Arthur E. Arling; Music Direction, Georgie Stoll; Choreography, Alex Romero.

CAST

Ruth Etting, Doris Day; Martin Synder, James Cagney; Johnny Alderman, Cameron Mitchell; Bernard Loomis, Robert Keith; Frobisher, Tom Tully.

SONGS

It All Depends On You by Ray Henderson, B.G. DeSylva and Lew Brown; You Made Me Love You by James Monaco and Joe McCarthy; Everybody Loves My Baby by Spencer Williams and Jack Palmer; Sam, The Old Accordian Man; At Sundown by Walter Donaldson; Love Me Or Leave Me by Donaldson and Gus Kahn; My Blue Heaven by Donaldson and George Whiting; Shaking The Blues Away by Irving Berlin; Ten Cents A Dance by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; I'll Never Stop Loving You by Nicholas Brodszky and Sammy Cahn; Never Look Back by Chilton Price; Mean To Me by Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert; Stay On The Right Side Sister by Ted Koehler and Rube Bloom; I'm Sitting On Top Of The World; Five Foot Two by Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young and Ray Henderson.

PLOT

"Jazz Age singing sensation Ruth Etting (Doris Day) had looks, ambition and a haunting smoke-tinged voice. But it took more than that to make her a star. It took Marty 'The Gimp' Snyder (James Cagney), the limping, evil-tempered Chicago hood who propelled Ruth from dingy dance halls to Broadway fame. . .but turned her offstage life into a nightmare of violence and fear."
- Liner Notes from MGM/Turner Laserdisc

NOTES

". . .Doris Day. . .proved that there was more to her than just her girl-next-door image. In her most dramatic role to date, she shared the acting honors with co-star James Cagney as 'The Gimp' and, although his performance was the more mesmeric of the two, she coped well enough with the demands of [the] often abrasive screenplay. . ."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS:
Best Actor - James Cagney
Writing (Screenplay)
Sound Recording
Song - "I'll Never Stop Loving You"
Scoring Of A Musical Picture

ACADEMY AWARD WINNER:
Writing (Motion Picture Story)

Love Me Or Leave Me was one of the top-grossing films of 1955. See Box Office Hits

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