Love Is a Racket

During his tenure with Warner Bros., William A. Wellman churned out a number of energetic, fast-paced entertainments which are often overlooked by admirers of his work but stand out from the assembly-line programmers they were intended to be. Among the highlights from this early period are L'angelo bianco (1931) with Barbara Stanwyck, the grim Pre-Code drama L'isola della perdizione (1931) and Love Is a Racket (1932) (1932) starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a newspaper columnist working the Broadway beat. The latter film is not only a fascinating time capsule of its era, with glimpses of then-popular New York City nightspots such as Sardi's, but also presents an unapologetic, cynical view of reporters who often resort to any means necessary to score a front-page story.

Wellman would go on to make several more distinctive B-pictures for Warner Bros. including the post-World War I social drama Eroi in vendita (1933) and the picaresque railroad adventure, Wild Boys of the Road (1933), but Love Is a Racket (1932) is a fun, unpretentious introduction to his Pre-Code films for the studio.

Alternate-language version of L'athlète incomplet (1932)