Is My Face Red?

This was the type of film William Haines was so famous for at the time, only the role went to Ricardo Cortez. It's all about a guy with one heck of an ego, living on the edge of his seat and in BIG trouble with the ladies. Translation: lots of fun.

Cortez plays Bill Poster, a daring tabloid reporter, looking for the scoop of the day. He uses his chorus dancer gal pal Peggy (played by beautiful Helen Twelvetrees) to get him the latest gossip. These two are supposed to eventually get married, that is until he meets up with socialite Mildred Huntington (Jill Esmond), giving her the engagement ring that was meant for Peggy. What a guy!

Of course, being the tricky fool he is... Bill may also be playing a game with Mildred to get her to spill the beans about her rich friends. Hmmm? In the meanwhile, his exploits get him mixed up with notorious bootlegger Tony (played by future Charlie Chan Sidney Toler), who he witnesses kill a guy -- and now he's in even bigger trouble. What a mess, and don't y'all love it.

Ricardo Cortez is terrific in this role, best at playing both good guys and cads. Also a fine role for Helen Twelvetrees and British actress Jill Esmond, who at the time was married to Laurence Olivier. Robert Armstrong (prior to KING KONG) appears as Ed, comedienne Zasu Pitts plays a phone operator and sparky Arline Judge has a good part as Bill's secretary. Can't beat this cast.

Hits the bullseye thanks to director William A. Seiter, no stranger to comedy, associated with Laurel and Hardy, WC Fields, the Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello. In fact, it was said Seiter looked a bit like Oliver Hardy!

Not to be missed. Always on remastered dvd and thanks to TCM for running this oldie but goodie.

William Poster writes The Keyhole to the City, a gossip column for the Morning Gazette. He gets most of his information from showgirl gal pal Peggy Bannon. He has a fling with heiress Mildred Huntington and joins her on the boat to Europe. He witnesses a murder and writes about it.

I don't care for the William Mildred pairing. It's a waste of time. The better pairing is William Peggy and she has the additional positive of being involved in his underworld dealings. She could have made him better. Mildred is a waste of time. I'd rather have more time building up Peggy. This could be a fun screwball crime romance comedy but it goes down a wrong path somewhere. He never gains full rooting interest.

What happened in around 1930 or '31 that had Hollywood studios clambering to pillory newspapers and reporters? There was "Scandal Sheet" (1931), "Five Star Final" (1931), "The Famous Ferguson Case" (1932), and "Is My Face Red?," all about unscrupulous journalists or newspapers.

"Is My Face Red?" is about William Poster (Ricardo Cortez), a gossip columnist for the New York Globe. He doesn't care how he gets his gossip nor does he care who the gossip is about; he's going to print it. One of his main sources is his girlfriend Peggy Bannon (Helen Twelvetrees). She's a dancing girl and always has her ears to the streets. She puts in a call to her beau whenever there's something that can be counted as news.

William goes out over his skis when he reports about a murder he witnessed. He further shot himself in the foot when he started two-timing on Peggy with a society woman named Mildred Huntington (Jill Esmond). William was a hot conceited mess.

So, that brings me back to my original question: what happened in the early '30's to spark the production of these movies? It was as if society at that time had an unflattering opinion of news media altogether so Hollywood put it on celluloid. Some things never change.

Ricardo Cortez publishes a gossip/Broadway column in the newspaper, maintains a professional feud with fellow columnist Robert Armstrong, and does his own legwork. He has a reliable girl Friday in Arline Judge, a girlfriend in chorine Helen Twelvetrees, and gets engaged to society deb Jill Esmond. It's when he's in a speakeasy and sees bar man Sidney Toler kill gangster Fletcher Norton, that he gets into trouble. He prints the story. Toler drops from sight, except for sending Cortez threatening messages.

William Seiter directs at a snappy pace. While it never veers far into comedy, the movie has a light touch, even as Cortez extricates himself from the bar after seeing a murder. Miss Twelvetrees looks like she's enjoying herself away from the weepers, and Zasu Pitts and Clarence Muse are on view for small and amusing bits.

Mostly, though, it's good to see that a silent film star could re-establish himself with a different screen persona. Cortez did so, switching from the Latin lover to the modern urban on the make, and kept going.

I like Ricardo Cortez--he tried on a number of identities in a long career, from Latin lover (he was actually Jake Krantz from the Lower East Side) to cocky leading man to dignified elder-statesman character actor, and succeeded at most of them. He was handsome--in some shots, he looks alarmingly like Gene Kelly--and he even did a bit of directing. In this quick RKO programmer, a mild spoof of the Walter Winchell sort of gossip columnist popular at the time (Winchell gets a mention, and so does Ed Sullivan), he's lively and busy, but somewhat overselling the charm. He's also playing a rotter, and unable to charm his way out of that. While devoted to girlfriend Helen Twelvetrees, top-billed but without a lot to do, he's also carrying on with socialite Jill Esmond, cheating fellow reporter Robert Armstrong out of scoops, and laughing over the witnessing of a murder, by Italian (!) mafioso Sidney Toler. Some nice moments with harried switchboard operator ZaSu Pitts and bootlegger Clarence Muse, and Esmond and Twelvetrees were always worth watching, even stuck in uninteresting parts as they are here. But the tone is off--is it a comedy? An expose? A satire?--and, much as I generally like Cortez, this role's a much more natural fit for a Lee Tracy.