And introducing… #3. Lee Tracy

Here's part three of the series. Previous instalments were about John Ford and Wendy Hiller. Some of the films dealt with below also feature in my two-part 'FDR's Hollywood' feature, looking at political cinema of the 1930s and '40s.

#3. Lee Tracy



Who?
The electrifying, motormouthed comedian whose career came to a sudden and dramatic halt in the mid-1930s.

How so?
He pissed on the Mexican Army.

He what now?
He (allegedly) relieved himself nakedly on a passing military parade during the location filming of MGM’s Viva Villa! in November 1933, and was thrown out of Mexico.

Well, if you’ve got to go...
Indeed – though for Tracy’s part, he denied it all. He was sacked by the studio anyway and spent the rest of his career at lesser studios, before a brief, remarkable comeback in the 1960s.



Was he any good?
The best. Tracy was an explosive, compelling performer: the living embodiment of the “pre-Code” movie – those do-anything, say-anything films that packed out cinemas in the early ‘30s, before the Hays Office went and spoiled everyone’s fun. The impending censorship clampdown of 1934 effectively put Tracy’s kind of movie out of business, which might have been why MGM weren’t too sorry to see him go.

Any trademarks?
Plenty. A wild-eyed delight at his amoral manoeuvring getting him on top once more. A twirling forefinger, a selection of distinctive vocal trills (“You’re thrrrrrough”) and an arsenal of singular gestures, from the way he appeared to be literally seizing control of a scene – bending forward, arms wide apart – to his deft, farewell flick of the hand.



Where do I start?
With Blessed Event, the 1932 Warner Bros comedy about an unscrupulous gossip columnist, which may just be the funniest movie ever made (watch the trailer here). Tracy’s Alvin Roberts, “that kid from advertising”, is allowed to look after the paper’s social section while the regular author is away, and proceeds to turn it into the most popular – and unpopular – column in the country, incurring the wrath of a gangster, and engaging in a gleeful tit-for-tat rivalry with eternally upbeat crooner Bunny Harmon (Dick Powell). Playing a character loosely based on Walter Winchell – then one of the most influential men in America, and the subject of a half-dozen semi-fictional films – Tracy is hysterically funny, spewing a constant stream of wisecracks, though the film’s centrepiece is a terrifying, perilously dark set-piece in which he talks mobster Allen Jenkins through a trip to the electric chair. He shoves a picture of noted victim Ruth Snyder in Jenkins’ face, before navigating the henchman through a florid, impossibly graphic description of state-sanctioned death, every part of his body seeming to contort as he dominates the screen. You would die with one finger twitching upwards, Tracy concludes with a shaking voice, “to where you’re... not... going”.

That sounds, err, fun?
It doesn’t, but somehow it’s exhilarating, because you’ve never seen anyone act like that before: it’s neither conventional, nor stagy, nor necessarily naturalistic, it’s just dynamic.



What else did Tracy do?
Having originated the role of Hildy Johnson in the legendary stage play, The Front Page (above), he had come to Hollywood in ’29. He appeared as a low-level criminal in Frank Borzage’s abysmal translation of Liliom (later musicalised as Carousel), and had a bit in John Ford's gangster flick, Born Reckless, but came to real prominence with three supporting roles in 1932: The Strange Love of Molly Louvain – a nasty, compelling Pre-Coder that spotlighted his singular, rapidly-quickening style of delivery – Love Is a Racket (a film he would have starred in just months later) and the near-legendary two-strip Technicolor horror-comedy, Doctor X, playing an endlessly quipping reporter – a market he had quickly cornered. After Blessed Event, he starred in a succession of tailor-made vehicles making use of the go-getter persona so beloved of Depression-era audiences, beginning with The Half-Naked Truth (which cast him as a promoter), Clear All Wires! (sending his journalist to Communist Russia), the classic romantic comedy The Nuisance (with Tracy as the last word in amoral shysters) and the fantasy masterpiece, Turn Back the Clock, in which his unsatisfied grocer has the chance to live his adulthood over. The final two were made at MGM, the world's biggest and most prestigious movie studio, which could scarcely miss the impact he had been having over at Warner Bros, and didn't hesitate in offering him a fat long-term contract.

Is that all?
Of course not! This was the early '30s, when actors were treated abysmally, so there are always tons of films to enjoy. Tracy had also appeared in Washington Merry-Go-Round, which anticipated Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and went on to deliver an unforgettable supporting performance as the agent to alcoholic actor John Barrymore in Dinner at Eight (perhaps the most prestigious MGM film of 1933), run rings round Jean Harlow’s diva in the superlative, lightning-paced comedy, Bombshell, and star in a bastardised version of Nathanael West’s 'Miss Lonelyhearts' called Advice to the Lovelorn (sound familiar?), designed to cash in on the success of Blessed Event. It was his 14th film in just two years. After that came Mexico. And the rest, as they say, is history.



I’m not sure it is. Please fill me in.
Tracy did the rounds, pitching up at Columbia, RKO and even the Poverty Row studio PRC, where – looking a bit more jowly than 10 years before – he rolled back the years, recapturing some of that old Blessed Event magic in a zingy film called The Pay-Off. His other post-MGM films are a mixed bag, though the mid-‘30s comedy-thrillers Wanted: Jane Turner and Behind the Headlines are pretty great for what they are, while I’ll Tell the World – which cast him opposite Old Rose from Titanic (Gloria Stuart) – is a charming movie in which his dogged, dynamic reporter falls in love with a European princess, without losing his passion for skulduggery and sarcasm.



Tell us about the ones that didn’t work.
It’s not that they don’t work, it’s that they don’t work fully, sometimes leaving Tracy high and dry as the films run out of momentum, or trade sardonism for sanctimony. He’s always worth watching, though, and endearing oddities during this period include a boxing comedy alongside Roscoe Karns (Two-Fisted), a weird comedy-weepie co-starring Jimmy Durante (Carnival), the Hollywood-on-film shenanigans of Crashing Hollywood, 1940’s gimmicky Millionaires in Prison (inevitably featuring Raymond Walburn as one such moneyman), and a variety of vehicles with Tracy in crooked attorney parts, such as Criminal Lawyer – uneven but great fun – and The Spellbinder, which like 1934’s You Belong to Me cast him as a dad, before degenerating quickly into soap operatics.

That doesn’t sound very good. His worst?
No, his worst is definitely The Power of the Press (1943), a hopeless, excruciating collision of small-town patriotic wisdom and WWII propaganda flick – based on a Sam Fuller story, wtf?! – in which folksy newspaper editor Guy Kibbee takes over a New York paper infested with fascist fifth columnists, including Hearst-like businessman Otto Kruger, who's in preposterous form. Tracy’s OK as a snappy but spineless, circulation-chasing editor, but it’s a profoundly depressing experience. He made three more films over the next four years, each more obscure than the last, and then disappeared from the big screen.



So what’s all this about a comeback?
Having made his way slowly down the ladder, and then crossed over to TV, Tracy returned to the stage in the early ‘60s, playing a former President – patterned after Harry Truman – in Gore Vidal’s vital, vivid political play, The Best Man. When it transferred to the screen, Tracy played the role again: a glorious, measured, nostalgic characterisation that showed a range largely untapped by a Hollywood system forever trading off familiar persona, finally allowed him to swear (he swears superbly), and landed him a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Sadly, talk of a comeback was scuppered by his faltering health – he died four years later – but as swansongs go, it was one of the finest.

A case of what might have been, perhaps, had he not made that ill-fated trip to a Mexican hotel balcony. He did, right?
Who knows? In his book, cinematographer Charles G. Clarke said he was standing outside during the parade, and the incident never happened. In his version of events, Tracy had responded to an obscene gesture on the street by making one of his own, but that after the papers got wind of his supposed insult to the nation, MGM had sacrificed Tracy in order to be allowed to continue filming there. Director Howard Hawks was also kicked off the picture for siding with Tracy.



What to say: “Blessed Event is the epitome of pre-Code filmmaking: daring, lightning-paced and furiously funny.”

What not to say: “Blessed Event is so good it makes me want to wee on soldiers.”

***

Thanks for reading.

Blessed Event, Sundays and Cybele, and Ryan Gosling (again) - Reviews #117

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth, 1932) is arguably the greatest comedy film of all time, with “that kid from advertising” Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) commandeering his newspaper’s society section, and turning it into the filthiest gossip column in America. But his take-no-prisoners journalism – and brilliantly abrasive persona – makes him a couple of powerful enemies: crooner Bunny Harmon (a hilariously peppy Dick Powell in his screen debut) and gangster Sam Gobel (Edwin Maxwell). Tracy was the crystallisation of everything great about Pre-Code movies – those fast-paced, scurrilous, say-anything films made before the censorship crackdown of 1934 – and this is his definitive vehicle. He’s just hysterically funny, spewing a constant stream of wisecracks and epithets, before a second half that demands every ounce of talent he had: Roberts throbbing with ebullience, self-loathing and finally righteous anger, as he tries to atone for the one time he took it too far. The script does everything right, circumventing a potential slip into melodrama with dismissive ease, and the supporting cast is truly spectacular, with each and every character – from Ruth Donnelly’s acerbic secretary to Ned Sparks’ pet correspondent and Frank McHugh’s ineffective press agent – given something memorable to do. Really it’s just one great scene after another, but there are several that are simply sensational.

The centrepiece is the terrifying, perilously dark set-piece in which Tracy talks mobster Allen Jenkins through a trip to the chair. He shoves a picture of Ruth Snyder in Jenkins’ face, before navigating the henchman through a florid, impossibly graphic description of state-sanctioned death, every part of his body seeming to contort as he dominates the screen. You would die with one finger twitching upwards, Tracy concludes with a shaking voice, “to where you’re… not… going”. It doesn’t sound like much fun, but somehow it’s exhilarating, because I’ve never seen anyone act like that before: it’s neither conventional, nor stagy, nor necessarily naturalistic, it’s just dynamic. There’s also Tracy being called a “nadir” – a shoo-in for any “top ten funniest scenes” list – his conversation with his mum about Bunny Harmon (she’s a big fan), a blistering showdown with Gobel in a café, and a bit in a hospital where a policeman keeps slapping a gunman in the face. Director Del Ruth has a cult following nowadays, on the strength of these breakneck early pictures he specialised in at Warner, and his handling couldn’t be better. But it’s Tracy’s show all the way, this 78-minute jolt of comic genius spotlighting his superb timing and singular style of acting – his high-pitched delivery, gesticulating fingers, monstrous self-confidence and gaggle of outrageous vocal trills combining to exalting effect. He's astonishing, and so is Blessed Event. (4)

See also: Here are my 100 favourite movies - Blessed Event is at #14.

***

*BIG SPOILERS*
Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon, 1962) – A childlike amnesiac (Hardy Kruger), unable to repair his life after a wartime plane crash, befriends a 12-year-old (Patricia Gozzi) girl abandoned by her father. They enjoy blissful Sundays together, aside from his periodic attacks of irrationality, but outsiders begin to distrust the relationship, leading to tragedy. This intensely moving, truly original drama – with increasingly spare comic touches – confronts the cynicism, horror and alienation of the adult world, Bourguignon ingeniously shifting styles to contrast the stifling mundanity of Kruger’s apartment – and his unconnected life – with the tranquil idyll of the park where he and Cybele indulge in transcendent fantasy. It isn’t that Kruger doesn’t have love in his adult life, just that he wants to shrink from the world that forced him to gun down an innocent child. He, young Gozzi and Nicole Courcel – as the protagonist's conflicted girlfriend Madeleine – are terrific, while the film boasts some of the most striking black-and-white photography you’ll ever see: an endlessly creative variety of shots drawing you inexorably in to the heartbreaking story. (4)

***

*SOME SPOILERS*
The Young in Heart (Richard Wallace, 1938) – Magical comedy about a family of con artists who move into the house of a guileless, lonely old woman (Minnie Dupree), hoping to become her heirs, only to be transformed by her benign influence, and by love. It’s a promising premise, but where it really succeeds is in the cast – every role filled by the ideal late-‘30s actor, from Janet Gaynor as a flinty daughter discovering her humanity, to Roland Young and Billie Burke as her parents, displaying that old Topper spark – and a wonderful script. It's like little else I’ve seen from classic Hollywood, fusing the sentimentality of a typical Selznick production with a sense of irreverence and absurdity that’s like something from an ‘80s indie movie. Take the scene where Young is forced to go to work for the first time, cutting short his sightseeing trips of London. “There were so many things I never did,” he tells his son, in a perfect parody of mortality cliches, “I never even went to the aquarium.” The film is full of these bizarre, underplayed comic moments, which are refreshingly intelligent, while possessing a thoroughly modern sensibility. Coupled to an interesting subtext about the family loving the very idea of its harshness, it makes the film's climactic leap into heartfelt emotion – which builds on short passages of kindness and wisdom at crucial junctures – all the more affecting. Ben Hecht used a similar approach for his 1941 film Angels Over Broadway (which also starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), while the plot presumably inspired the 1945 movie The Cheaters, which also cast Burke in her usual role as a wittering mother, while relocating the story to Christmas. The Young in Heart is a bracingly different kind of Hollywood movie, with a strikingly unusual feel and a superb cast that also includes Paulette Goddard, Henry Stephenson, Richard Carlson (doing a bad Scottish accent), a wobbly penguin and a cute puppy. Best of the bunch are Gaynor, who has some marvellous moments, Dupree and Young – in a perfect performance that requires him to be both loveably corrupt and touchingly repentant, without overegging either. The Fairbanks-Goddard chemistry is also first-rate. The only bit of the movie that doesn’t work is a slightly dull, unfunny scene of Young driving the car of the future, courtesy of some dodgy process screen work, but it’s only about 40 seconds long. The rest of it is amazing. (4)

See also: Gaynor had been perhaps the most important actress of the late silent era - her three films with director Frank Borzage are reviewed here (7th Heaven and Street Angel) and here (Lucky Star). She retired after The Young in Heart and made just one more film, a '50s movie about teenagers.

***

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Crazy, Stupid, Love (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2011) – I enjoyed this a lot at the cinema and it’s just as good on DVD: a wise, touching, often very funny ensemble romantic comedy, dealing with the entanglements of divorcing couple Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, their son Jonah Bobo, and the incorrigible womanising slickster (Ryan Gosling) who’s teaching Carell to “be a man”. Carell – in one of those poignant parts he does well – Bobo and Emma Stone are all excellent, though it’s Gosling (*sigh*) who walks off with the film, exhibiting a masterful sense of timing and the ability to create irressistible chemistry with anybody who happens to be in the same room. (Can I be in a room with him? Oh please.) How he didn’t get a Best Supporting nomination is beyon- oh no, wait, I've just remembered the Oscars are rubbish. There are three very special comic scenes in the film, and Gosling is in all of them: the pep talk with Carell in a bar, his chat with Stone about a massage chair ("Who has one of those? Me, I do") and a classic bit of farce that brings together all the main characters in a surprising and clever way. On the downside, Julianne Moore isn’t very good at comedy and there’s the odd scene that drags, but I’m sticking by my oft-derided contention that this is the best mainstream romcom since Just Like Heaven. (3.5)

***

Three Colours White (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994) – The second of Kieslowki’s Three Colours trilogy is a black comedy on the subject of “equality”, as Czech immigrant Zbigniew Zamachowski reacts to life giving him lemons by making some horrible revenge. His target is heartless ex-wife Julie Delpy, who likes to mock him by being loudly pleasured down the phone. Visiting sadistic unpleasantness on its central duo, it's droll rather than funny, and the least impressive of the tricolore triumvirate, but well-constructed and engrossing, with a powerful pay-off. (3)

***

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin, 1955) – When artist Dean Martin needs inspiration for a violent new comic book, he takes it from the dreams of his best pal (Jerry Lewis). Unfortunately they also contain the secret code for a new space station. This is the first Martin and Lewis film I’ve seen, and it was OK. Lewis isn’t particularly funny, but you acclimatise to his relentless mugging after a few minutes, and he had a few good moments – particularly his encounter with the Bat Lady and the fat lady. I watched it because of Tashlin, a former animator who specialised in big, bright comedies satirising anything he felt like, including the marvellous Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? But here his direction is overbearing to the point of being annoying, with sound effects at every juncture. The film’s best moments belong to Shirley MacLaine as Lewis’s girlfriend (it’s always amusing to see where stars ranked in the Hollywood Order of Attractiveness). This was her second film and she's so full of energy she's practically bouncing into your living room. Particularly good is her reprisal of the number Innamorata, where she leaps around a staircase, trying to kiss Lewis. In fact, the musical interludes are mostly surprisingly good; rather better than the comedy (the tone is set by the opening scene, which promises a man being flung through a billboard and then contents itself with dropping some paint on people’s heads). Martin’s Lucky Song, filmed in a similar way to I Got Rhythm from An American in Paris, is a joy, and the title tune is cleverly staged around an artist’s palette filled with various women. Did I mention that the film is quite sexist? All in all, I’m not in a rush to check out more Martin and Lewis movies, but if there’s one on TV, I might give it a go. (2.5)

See also: MacLaine is also in The Apartment. This piece is about how The Apartment is amazing.

***

Perrier’s Bounty (Ian Fitzgibbon, 2009) – When his plans to pay back a €1,000 debt go awry, scruffy criminal Cillian Murphy, the girl he loves (Jodie Whittaker) and his dying dad (Jim Broadbent) have to stay one step ahead of Brendan Gleeson’s goons, who want to lop off his willy and put it up his bottom. Given the cast, this crime-comedy is a big disappointment, with a poor, mannered script of the type currently entrancing the Irish Film Board: a torrent of swearing and a show-off’s vocabulary intending to compensate for a complete absence of anything to say. Man. Sorry, everyone in the film says “Man” all the time, like it’s 1967 (or Manchester in 1998). Films like Brick really did create their own vernacular; this isn't how you do that. The movie is also saturated in the kind of obvious post-modern irony of which The Guard was sometimes guilty. Gleeson gives an excellent performance and Murphy and Broadbent are both quite good, but it’s a smug and unsatisfying film, the agreeable invention of parts of the plotting and a handful of nice lines obliterated by a blizzard of bullshit and a climactic death scene that is a new kind of rubbish. Perrier's Bounty sounds like a two-for-one at WHSmith. That it's actually less inspiring than that is probably a criticism. (2)

***

Beautiful Lies (Pierre Salvadori, 2010) – When hairdresser Audrey Tautou receives a lyrical, unsigned love letter, she first throws it in the bin, then fishes it out and sends it to her mum, who’s in a four-year rut. Mumsy (Nathalie Baye) guesses who wrote it – over-educated handyman Jean (Sami Bouajila) – but not who it was intended for. After unwittingly waiting years for a love triangle featuring a mum and a daughter, I’ve seen two in two weeks (the other was It’s a Date), but this one’s no frothy confection; certainly not the Amelie-ish romcom promised by a disingenuous marketing campaign. It starts off cheerily, with an amusing opening 20, but gets lost, becoming a fraught, gloomy romantic drama desperately in need of a lighter touch. As an outwardly harsh businesswoman plagued by loneliness, fear and insecurity, Tautou is excellent, and Bouajila does a good job of articulating his character's predicament, but the film gives the distinct impression of having got out of hand somewhere along the line, with plot developments that simply don’t work. Jean is buffeted around by lies in a way that’s more bleak than funny. Beautiful Lies is neither enjoyable enough to work as entertainment, nor resonant or believable enough to have value as anything else. The French title actually translates as True Lies – I wonder why they changed that. (2)

***

This film doesn't deserve a nice high-res photo.

What About Bob? (Frank Oz, 1991) - Multiphobic patient Bill Murray crashes psychiatrist Richard Dreyfuss's holiday, and manages to charm everyone except the doctor, in this desperate screwball comedy. Murray has a few good moments in the second half, but Dreyfuss is embarrassingly bad, giving a relentlessly shouty performance that sinks the movie. Well, that, the script and a hideously intrusive score. It's like Boudu Saved From Drowning, if Renoir's film wasn't satirical, funny or really any good. (1.5)

***

I'm sure I've seen this somewhere before...

SHORT: Pirate Party on Catalina Isle (Charles "Buddy" Rogers, 1935) - There are loads of these musical-comedy two-reelers doing the rounds, with guest appearances from big stars who a) never interact with each other (they clearly all filmed their parts separately), b) never speak (it must be a payment thing), and c) generally just sit near a pool eating. I'm not sure how that was considered entertainment in the 1930s, though I suppose our generation had Big Brother. I watched this one because of Lee Tracy, but his appearance only lasts for four seconds - he grins, puts a knife between his teeth and throws his head back - which is about 0.33 per cent of the running time. The rest consists of the great Chester Morris struggling with some terrible dialogue as he introduces a few unfunny walk-ons and links various unexciting musical numbers, the best of which are the Busby Berkeley-esque We're in the Money - which steals shamelessly from Gold Diggers of 1933 - and a song-and-dance duo tapping on a ship. Which means the only real reason to check it out is if you want to see a few major players of the period in garish colour (I don't think Tracy ever made a colour feature, aside from the two-strip Doctor X) or are particularly interested in the Avalon, Catalina holiday resort. (2)

An introduction to... Lee Tracy (with a review of Criminal Lawyer)

This post contains one instance of strong language, employed in a comical sense. If that's likely to offend, please take a look at the Myrna Loy piece instead. No swearing there.

As you may have guessed from the blog name (borrowed from a 1933 Tracy vehicle), this razor-witted, motormouth leading man is my favourite actor. Here's a quick intro to the man.

An introduction to... Lee Tracy



After originating the role of Hildy Johnson in the original Broadway production of The Front Page, sparky, red-headed Lee Tracy went to Hollywood. He made a splash at Warner Bros, playing reporters, shysters and sharpsters in a run of gloriously snappy flicks like Blessed Event, The Half-Naked Truth and Washington Merry-Go-Round, something of a dry run for Capra's Mr Smith. Tracy signed for MGM in 1933 (William Powell made the same switch a year later), a move that did nothing to curb his ebullience or anti-authoritarianism, on screen or off. Just how highly the studio regarded him is evidenced by the number of movies they threw him into. In '33 alone he made no fewer than six movies at MGM, including forgotten classics Turn Back the Clock and The Nuisance, established greats Bombshell and Dinner at Eight and a peculiar Russia-set screwball comedy called Clear All Wires!, opposite Benita Hume and Una Merkel. Then he blew it.

There are potentially many fine ways to put the skids on a meteoric rise, but Tracy's takes some beating.

He pissed on the Mexican Army.

The story goes that Tracy was in Mexico shooting Viva Villa! for the studio when - blind drunk - he resolved to relieve himself off a balcony. The presence of a passing military parade below led to a diplomatic incident that saw him arrested, kicked off the film and then fired by MGM, after the Mexican papers called his actions "an insult to the nation". There is some debate over the authenticity of that story, though, superb as it is. Cameraman Charles G. Clarke says in his autobiography that Tracy was merely making obscene gestures to a guy outside his window. It's also worth questioning why Tracy had to go (from the studio, not to the toilet), since studios routinely hushed up sex scandals and hit-and-runs involving their stars. Perhaps the story was already too public, or perhaps his near-constant hellraising had left him on a last warning, but some have speculated that his type of wisecrack-driven film may have been losing favour with audiences (he only had a supporting role in Viva Villa!), with the scandal providing a suitable pretext on which to sack him. Whatever, they must have been mad. Tracy was something very special.

Charismatic and dynamic, the actor had one-of-a-kind delivery and a catalogue of recognisable mannerisms, like utilising his long, thin index finger to emphasise a point. Though there is such thing as a recognisable Tracy character - an incorrigible scalliwag playing everyone around him as he gets the scoop/wins the case, before displaying some skewed sense of morality in the final reel - he was no one-trick pony. Tracy's reporters in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain and I'll Tell the World (1934) are completely different, as are his promoters in Two-Fisted and Dinner at Eight. He also excelled in more obviously diverse roles: as a broken-hearted clown slipping into self-loathing in You Belong to Me, a Truman-esque President in his last film The Best Man and a disenchanted middle-aged man getting the chance to relive his life, and change history, in the devastatingly brilliant Depression-era fantasy Turn Back the Clock.

Following his sacking in '34, Tracy struck a three-picture deal with Columbia, before making a heap of low-budget star vehicles over at RKO, and a few for Poverty Row studios like PRC. Though the RKO movies vary in quality, they do acknowledge Tracy's standing as a uniquely gifted, fast-talking leading man near the peak of his powers, and are largely tailored to his talents.

One such RKO film is Criminal Lawyer (Christy Cabanne, 1937), which I watched last night. It's in many ways a standard Tracy film and, as such, an absolute riot. Taking the basic set-up of The Nuisance - Tracy is a shyster whose success in the courtroom is based more on theatrics and tricks than conventional legal practice - the writers also toss in the gangster subplots familiar from Blessed Event and Advice to the Lovelorn. The result is very similar to the William Powell movie Lawyer Man, though bizarrely that 1932 film chose not to show any of the courtroom sequences to which it frequently referred. The plot here has Tracy's barrister-come-showman becoming DA and trying to shake off his nefarious former sponsor. Hilariously, the tagline of the film gives away its entire storyline. What does the poster think it is - Halliwell's? Without telling you exactly what happens, I'll just say that as Tracy spars with hateful hood Eduardo Ciannelli, a woman (Margot Grahame) enters the picture, becoming Tracy's cook, secretary and confidante. That makes his sometime girlfriend (Betty Lawford) very jealous, setting up a slightly melodramatic final third that isn't as strong as the rest of the picture. Erik Rhodes provides plenty of comic support playing his patented amorous Italian (as seen in The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat and The Smartest Girl in the World), but as usual it's Tracy's show. Just seeing him on screen makes me happy, since he's never tired, or lacklustre, or sub-par. He's always just magnificently, spectacularly Tracy-ish. When the script is sharp, he's impossibly good, but he also elevates so-so sequences. His interrogation of a woman accused of murder recalls his pyrotechnics in Blessed Event, talking Allen Jenkins through a trip to the electric chair, and he imbues the climactic scene with an improbable credibility as well as a compulsive watchability. My 21st Tracy film is flawed, certainly, but yet another must for fans of the actor. (3)