The Nuisance

Seeing The Nuisance for the first time cured me of at least one illusion I had. That Walter Matthau in his Oscar winning performance as Whiplash Willie Gingrich had created something original. Billy Wilder when he did The Fortune Cookie must have seen this undeservedly forgotten MGM film with Lee Tracy in the title role.

In fact I'll bet Matthau probably clerked in Tracy's office before taking the bar and learned everything well. Tracy is the shyster lawyer that shyster lawyers make jokes about. But he's cleaning out the insurance companies and in those Depression years they've decided to do something about it.

What they've done is hire Madge Evans, a female PI to fake an accident and become a Tracy client. But as things go in these films of course she falls for the guy.

Some other familiar faces populate the cast. Most familiar are Frank Morgan as an alcoholic doctor who treats Tracy like a son and helps Tracy with his fraudulent injury cases. And also there's the ever droll Charles Butterworth who makes a living faking being hit by automobiles for insurance settlements. He's running out of big cities to pull that racket.

Still if you watch The Nuisance you'll know what inspired Billy Wilder in The Fortune Cookie.