Clear All Wires!

"Clear All Wires!" is another movie about unscrupulous journalism. In this case it wasn't serious like "Scandal Sheet" (1932) or "Five Star Final" (1931). It was silly, it was stupid, it was bad.

The movie starred Lee Tracy which was already a negative. He played a lying, deceptive journalist who fabricated just about every bit of news report he turned in. The only reason he hadn't been found out is that he was an overseas correspondent so there was no other journalist there to fact check him.

I can only take Lee Tracy in small doses. His voice is annoying and his type of comedy is not for me. He played Buckley Joyce Thomas, a reporter for a Chicago newspaper. He could out-talk anyone and it seemed to work; especially on women. He didn't go anywhere without his faithful sidekick Lefty (James Gleason) who'd do anything for him.

***Side bar

Servants and assistants were extremely faithful back then according to Hollywood. Whether their employer could pay them or not they'd stick around, fully vested in the well-being of their employer. They'd even lie, cheat, and steal for them. Why do I find that hard to believe?

***End side bar

Buckley's antics got even worse when he went to Russia to cover the fifteen year anniversary of the Russian revolution. His attempts to make news there were as dangerous as they were brainless. If only it were funny.

Meanwhile, Buckley had at least three women hanging onto his coattail. He had Dolly (Una Merkel), his main squeeze and his boss's sweetheart. There was Eugenie (Lya Lys), a Russian paramour he'd forgotten about. And there was Kate (Benita Hume), the smart, decent woman who he largely ignored, but who would patiently wait until Buckley got around to recognizing she was the best thing for him. Those women are the worst.

Free on Internet Archive.

Flash! Urgent! CLEAR ALL WIRES! Buckley Joyce Thomas (Lee Tracy), ace reporter of the Chicago Globe, after returning from captivity in the Moroccan desert, now lands up to his ears in danger in Soviet Moscow. Hoping to interview New Russian citizens - and perhaps be seen hobnobbing with Stalin - he finds himself in intense trouble with dames (Benita Hume & Una Merkel) and suspected by the Secret Police of attempted murder! Will this be Buckley Joyce Thomas' last dispatch?

This is an enjoyable, fast-moving, if somewhat corny film, with dialogue & situations that let you know it was definitely produced pre-Production Code. It is interesting to see Hollywood's take on Red Russia only 15 years after the Revolution.

Lee Tracy, having recently become a star at Warner Brothers, began his short stint at MGM with this film. He would appear in 4 MGM films in 1933, and was well on his way to becoming the Studio's answer to Cagney, when he suffered a spectacular fall from grace the following year & was immediately fired from MGM. It is a shame he is almost forgotten today, as he was an exciting actor to watch: pushing the limit, rough edged, perfectly cast as nosy reporters, shyster lawyers or shady talent agents.

The other members of the cast all do a fine job. Special mention should be made of James Gleason as Tracy's faithful factotum, and Ari Kutai as a Russian gofer. Movie mavens will spot Mischa Auer as a Moroccan prince & Akim Tamiroff as a sleazy Moscow hotel manager, both uncredited.

Those of us who only know Lee Tracy from his late career Art Hochsteader, the former president in Gore Vidal's play and movie THE BEST MAN (Tracy repeated his Tony winning role in the film) are in for a treat in this FRONT PAGE-style farce on the newspaper trade from early in that career.

After a somewhat disappointing 93 performance Broadway run with Thomas Mitchell as the lead newsman, Sam and Bella Spewak (later to create KISS ME KATE with Cole Porter) brought their frantically paced farce West with two members of the Broadway Cast (John Melvin Bleifer as Sozanoff and Ari Kutai as Kastya - relatively minor roles). The resulting film would be a perfect double feature with Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur's classic FRONT PAGE, filmed just two years earlier.

As far as we know, the Broadway run of CLEAR ALL WIRES did not provide any moments as romantic as THE FRONT PAGE's Opening Night - when MacArthur asked Helen Hayes to marry him - but barely five years after the movie came out, the Spewaks and Cole Porter used CLEAR ALL WIRES (with the addition of a comic reluctant diplomat character) as the basis for their musical hit LEAVE IT TO ME, which introduced Mary Martin to Broadway - and Broadway has had a love affair with HER ever since.

Una Merkel plays the Mary Martin part (Dolly) in the movie and even bears a striking resemblance - but she doesn't get to sing "My Heart Belongs To Daddy!"

CLEAR ALL WIRES' politics (Stalin and even an expendable Romanoff life are less important to Tracy's character than a headline) are a bit muddy, but the farce scarcely gives you time to think about them. It's 1933 and all Director George W. Hill and the Spwewaks care about is getting the next laugh - which they do with satisfying regularity - either the next laugh or the next turn that leaves you stunned with the sheer audacity. A fun 78 minutes.

Lee Tracy plays a typical '30s reporter in "Clear All Wires" from 1933.

What's a typical '30s reporter? Fast-talking, glib, manipulative, will do anything to get a story -- and who better to play him in his MGM debut than Lee Tracy?

In "Clear All Wires," Tracy's character, Buckley Joyce Thomas, isn't averse to making the news either, or embellishing it. According to him, he's dying of thirst in the desert at one point when in fact, he's being treated like a king.

When he returns to Chicago, he runs into his publisher's girlfriend, Dolly (Una Merkel) - she calls her benefactor "Daddy" -- and, with his boss out of the room, Buckley makes plans to meet her that evening. His publisher isn't an idiot. Buckley is then dispensed to Moscow immediately.

There, he takes over another reporter's suite (and later his identity) and, with his assistant (James Gleason) tries to get some major interviews.

Then Dolly shows up, and the publisher fires him for conduct unbecoming. Desperate, he tries to marry a fellow reporter, Kate (Benita Hume) who is insulted because she really does love him. Now he really has to do something to keep his job.

It's a very fast film probably trying to be madcap, but it's a little too talky for that, having been a play starring Thomas Mitchell. But Lee Tracy is excellent. Always theatrical in his approach, this was his kind of role.

This material has a place in Broadway history. It was made into a musical, "Leave it to Me," which was Mary Martin's debut in the Una Merkel role. And what did she sing? "My Heart Belongs to Daddy."

Lee Tracy was a very unusual actor in that he played the same sort of character in tons of his 1930s films....a snappy talking newspaper reporter. So, the plot here isn't too unusual, although the film IS set in the Soviet Union.

In "Clear All Wires!", Buckley (Tracy) is an unethical reporter who is declared a hero in Paris, when he really didn't do anything! Well, this same attitude about stories is Buckley's m.o....make up the news instead of actually reporting it. But when his boss fires him because he thinks Buckley was cutting in on his girl, Buckley decides to create an insane story about the last of the Romanovs being shot....and, as you'd expect, it's all crap...though he actually DOES end up getting shot himself. What's next? See the film.

If you've never seen any of Tracy's newspaper reporter stories, then this one is worth seeing...though it's far from his best. If you've seen quite a bit of these films, then you might just want to skip the movie because it's not among his best reporter films...mostly due to the silly script.