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The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Love Me or Leave Me is the Daniel Fuchs-Isobel Lennart story of singer Ruth Etting. Although the melodramatic and squalid details of Miss Etting's career are chronicled with considerable relish, her character, in the hands of Doris Day, is constantly and incongruously that of the clean-cut ideal of American womanhood to which Miss Day has long accustomed us. And although ideally cast as Snyder, James Cagney is unable to prevent his frequent neurotic outbursts from becoming monotonous; while Cameron Mitchell is his usual dull, deadly self. However, the 20's atmosphere is well captured, the back-stage scenes are handled with authority, and Miss Day attacks the musical numbers with commendable zest. But, although based on real life, in my opinion this biography - especially the denouement, with prizes for everybody - smacks too much of the Hollywood stereotype.

Love Me or Leave Me (1955) is eerily close to being a Faustian narrative, a story about an ambitious woman who basically makes a deal with the devil and suffers greatly for it even after she has attained the fame she's desired. It is also a harrowing portrait of an abusive relationship, in this case a fictionalized Ruth Etting and her manager/husband Marty Snyder, played to perfection by Doris Day and James Cagney.Though Day's characterization of Etting is not entirely accurate to the real woman, it is an interesting subversion of her "good girl" image by portraying a character who plays up an innocent image for her own advantage. From the beginning, Ruth knows that Marty expects sex (and later, romantic devotion) in exchange for her singing career; she's not naive and obviously a tough dame. But she puts on a virginal, guileless image, acting as though she has no clue as to Marty's true intentions for her and keeping him at arm's length as a result, constantly using the classic "I'm too tired" excuse. This only works for so long; eventually, after a shocking implied sexual assault, it becomes clear that Marty feels he totally owns this woman and she becomes obligated to marry him, thus sliding into total misery complete with alcoholism. This element of possession is highlighted in the film's intense sense of the male gaze, with Marty and Ruth's love interest Johnny constantly observing her on stage, silently fighting for her favor.It's strange, though, how human the writers and Cagney have managed to make Marty. Despite being obnoxious, violent, and a rapist of all things, there is a sense that he feels inadequate as a person and is holding onto Ruth not only because of twisted affection or her money, but because he has nothing else to do with himself. He's a pathetic monster and part of you reluctantly pities him.Of course, everyone else has gone on about Day's singing, which is fantastic as always, and the film's costumes, which are stunning, especially that big blue dress Ruth dons at the Follies. It's main strength does come from the performances though, and they have kept this one fresh and well worth watching.

. . . says Marty "The Gimp" (James Cagney) early in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. This story takes place before AMER!CAN IDOL brought a measure of meritocracy to the U.S. music scene. Back in the 1900s, commercial success depended upon the Manager, the Mafia, and Payola bribes. Good managers, like Elvis' Col. Parker, flew their meal tickets around on safe planes; bad managers put singers such as Buddy Holly on planes that crashed. In LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, the MGM studio courageously exposes the underbelly of American "success." Among the DVD extras are two films foisted off on the public back in the day by the gangsters behind the subject of this expose\Biopic, "singer" Ruth Etting. It's clear that she had little if any talent in her own right, and would have been kicked out of many church choirs. (Having Doris Day portray Ruth is like starring Eninem in THE LIFE OF TINY TIM, or having the Boston Pops present themselves as the River City School Orchestra.) Ruth operates here on the "If you give a mouse a cookie . . . " Principle. Use payola to allow her to assault the radio waves, and she wants to be on Broadway. Put her there, and she starts humming "California, here I come." Ruth and Marty's relationship is like a too-long episode of THE BICKERSONS. Having Doris Day playing gold-digger Ruth kind of obscures the crux of this sordid tale, which is the Real Life Ruth's total lack of entertainment ability and scruples. Sadly, Roseanne (Barr) was not old enough to play Ruth when this cautionary tale was in the works. She would fit this tawdry part perfectly.

One of the more adult mid-'50s musicals, and it's surprising that it came out of MGM, which generally preferred happy-happy song-and-dance shows, and starred two big stars who had never before worked at Culver City. Day and Cagney are tremendous, she playing up Ruth Etting's unattractive ambition without flinching, and he bringing unexpected charm to a thoroughly unlikable gangster character. As a study of how bad relationships stay stuck in the groove, it's remarkably grown-up for its day, and you might not expect these two stars to play well off each other, but they certainly do. The downside: Ruth Etting had a small, chirpy voice, rather like her contemporaries Janet Gaynor or Nancy Carroll, and Day's vocal delivery is nothing like hers. She sings like... Doris Day. Nor are the arrangements anything like period--they're standard mid-'50s overkill. The costumes and hairstyles don't even pretend to be '20s. And though much is made of Miss Etting's film career--you'd have thought she was a great movie musical star--her Hollywood sojourn was actually brief and unimpressive. Finally, there's that audience depressant Cameron Mitchell as her love interest, and you can't get very interested in him, or root for him. After so many vacuous sunny-side-up musicals at Warners, Day must have relished this opportunity to show what she could really do, and it's very worth sitting through to watch the Day-Cagney fireworks. I guess an accurate portrayal of Ruth Etting and her times would be asking too much.