VividSimon Simply Perfect

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

calvinnme This is Lee Tracy in a definitive role for him in a definitive Warner's precode. Tracy had been a hit in quite a few films over at Warner's but if I was going to recommend just one film that he did that best displayed his fast talking talent, it would probably be this one.Tracy plays Alvin Roberts, a guy who worked in the ad department at a newspaper until someone with a regular column goes on vacation (Ned Sparks as George Moxley). Roberts is given a chance to do the column for a couple of weeks and turns it into a mud slinging piece. He is constantly writing bits about how Mr and Mrs. X are anticipating a "blessed event", even if the event is in October and the wedding was in July. Believe it or not, just the discussion of pregnancy in the 1930's was taboo, even though, as Alvin says, the Blessed Events eventually turn into babies, and who doesn't like babies? Circulation soars, and when Moxley returns he finds that he is now the "pet editor" and Alvin keeps the column.Ruth Donnely plays Alvin's fast talking secretary who answers phones ringing off the hook threatening lawsuits. As she says, "the line forms on the left". Alvin gets in trouble with a local gangster he is always writing about, and when one of his muscle men (Allen Jenkins as Frankie Wells) comes up to threaten him, Alvin turns the tables and scares him by getting Frankie to threaten him with the Dictaphone turned on, then Alvin describes the electric chair to Wells in hilarious detail - who else but Lee Tracy could make the electric chair funny? - and even charms Wells when he shows up at Alvin's apartment and meets his mom. At any rate, Wells ends up becoming a source of information for Alvin.Soon Alvin has radio spots and with his column and appearances is pulling down 90K a year in 1932!. Still in spite of this hardened front Alvin lives at home with mom and drinks milk. Now all through this Alvin has a running feud going in his column with crooner Bunny Harmon (Dick Powell). This is Powell's first credited role, and apparently Harmon got Alvin fired from another paper years ago, so now Alvin goes around talking about what a bad singer Harmon is and showing up in "Alvin free zones" that Harmon has set up. But here's the thing - Dick Powell has no dialogue until the very end, and then it is very generic. Perhaps WB was just trying out Powell as a songbird to see if he went over with audiences.So we have several stories here that begin to collide - Alvin's love for a female reporter (Mary Brian) who does not like how he is making his living, the gangster who can't figure out how Alvin knows his every move, Alvin's feud with Bunny Harmon, and one piece of dirt that Alvin dished out that he wishes that he could take back because it ruined a girl's life. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out. Highly recommended.

Richard Burin 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.

fowler1 This isn't the first time I've raved about Roy del Ruth's Warners work prior to the emergence of the Hays Office, but it needs to be restated: few directors had as sure a hand with fast-paced, cynical comedy as Del Ruth. And, when teamed with the equally forgotten (and equally inspired) comedian Lee Tracy, what results is one of the best comedies of the 30s, as funny and audacious today as then. Tracy (who came West to Hollywood after originating the Hildy Johnson role in THE FRONT PAGE on Broadway) was the wisecrack-slinger all others are measured against; here he's so good, so inspired at mixing verbal and physical comedy, you'll be wondering how it's possible his career didn't soar for 25 years. (Besides his heavy drinking, which couldn't have helped him, he earned the wrath of Louis B Mayer during the shooting of VIVA VILLA by urinating on the Mexican army from his hotel balcony, effectively ending his career as a leading man. Or so the legend has it.) This is probably his best film, playing a Winchell-like columnist named Alvin Roberts, and Tracy plays him with such cheerful unscrupulousness you might almost forgot what a rat the real Winchell was. But this is pre-Code Warners, where even an unprincipled cur could be a hero so long as he scraped bottom with zest and pluck; don't be surprised at the many one-liners and situations that would become taboo in three years time: abortions, adultery, homosexuality and ethnicity are all fair game for BLESSED EVENT's satirical arrows, and only an insufferable prude would stifle his laughter. Not until Preston Sturges played chicken with the Hays Office in the early 40s would such darkly funny farce be allowed on the screen again. Keep an eye out for this one and prepare to become a Lee Tracy fan for life. As usual, Del Ruth's direction is dead on the money, while never calling attention to itself.

houndspirit Fast paced and very clever Lee Tracy vehicle playing a Walter W. type gossip columnist with a grudge against "crooners"generally and one in particular played by Dick Powell. Definitely precode with dialogue and subject matter that would have been totally rejected just a few years later. One scene culminates in a phrase spoken by Tracy's"mother" containg a word that rocked the film world at the end of Gone With the Wind. Among other wonderful sequences watch for Tracy's evocation of a trip to the "hot seat", and Dick Powell's rendition of a singing commercial extolling the qualities of"Shapiro's Shoes". With Shapiro himeself beaming at his side. Do catch this film also a similar effort also with Tracey "The Half Naked Truth".