Procurando Encrenca

For whatever reason, LOOKING FOR TROUBLE doesn't show up on television and isn't available on video, but I was lucky enough to catch it at Cinevent in Columbus.

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE is given the genre classification of crime drama in the AFI Catalog, but there are healthy doses of wit throughout. With the affable Jack Oakie as second banana, what would you expect? Tracy and Oakie play easygoing telephone linemen troubleshooters with Constance Cummings and Arline Judge as their respective girlfriends. Tracy's disreputable ex-partner Dan Sutter gets fired for his involvement in an illicit gambling joint, and blames Tracy for squealing on him. Cummings sides with Sutter and ends up working for him at the real estate office he opens. She refuses to listen to Tracy's suspicions that her boss is a crook. All sorts of excitement follows as Tracy and Oakie investigate Sutter, including a fire, a murder and an earthquake! The earthquake sequence was a recreation of the immense quake that hit Long Beach on March 10, 1933 – just seven months before filming began on the picture. According to Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, which gives LOOKING FOR TROUBLE 3 stars, actual footage of the earthquake was used in the film. The AFI states: "The scene in which Tracy is caught in the quake has been included in numerous documentaries on both Hollywood film-making history and earthquakes."

Spencer Tracy got his big break in pictures in 1930 when director John Ford, impressed by Tracy's performance as a Death Row inmate on Broadway, got Fox to sign him for a prison movie he was making. Tracy made an impression with audiences in UP THE RIVER (along with fellow new-comer Humphrey Bogart), but the role got him type-cast as thugs for the next few years. He grew increasingly unhappy with the parts he was given and became difficult to work with. His Fox contract was coming to an end when he was loaned out to Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Pictures for LOOKING FOR TROUBLE (working title, TROUBLE SHOOTER) to be directed by William Wellman. Soon after he left Fox, Irving Thalberg signed Tracy to a long-term contract at MGM where his talents were put to better use.

"Wild Bill" Wellman (so-named for his daring aerial feats while in the Lafayette Flying Corps. in WW1) owed his start in films to his friendship with Douglas Fairbanks. Stories vary on how the two met (one account has it that Wellman made a forced landing on the actor's property), but it's a fact that after Wellman saw himself on screen in Fairbanks' film KNICKERBOCKER BUCKAROO (1919), he decided that he would rather be behind the camera. He worked his way up from prop man, to assistant director and finally to director of Buck Jones westerns at Fox. In the years before LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, Wellman directed such notable films as WINGS (1927), the first picture to win an Academy Award; BEGGARS OF LIFE (1928) with Louise Brooks and THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931). The latter helped to launch the popularity of the gangster movie and the career of James Cagney.

It's always a treat to see the smart and striking Constance Cummings in a featured role. Like Tracy, the Seattle-born actress started in theater. She was discovered while on Broadway by Sam Goldwyn who brought her to Hollywood. Columbia signed her up and cast her as prison warden Walter Huston's naïve daughter in THE CRIMINAL CODE (1931). After 10 films in two years with the studio, Cummings went freelance. It was during this period that she made perhaps her best picture, MOVIE CRAZY (1932) with Harold Lloyd. She moved to England in the mid 1930's with her husband, English playwright and screenwriter Benn W. Levy. There, she continued acting in films and on the stage. In 1974, Cummings was made a Commander of the British Empire for her contributions to the British entertainment industry. She died on November 23, 2005 at the age of 95.

Remarkably, another member of the cast is still with us as of this posting. Hatchet-faced, bespectacled prolific American character actor Charles Lane (billed here as Switchboard Operator) turned 101 on January 26, 2006! Other notables to look for in uncredited parts are Bryant Washburn, star of early Essanay films from the 1910's, as "Richards, Long Beach Manager," and Jason Robards Sr. as "Shotgun Henchman."

Mordaunt Hall in The New York Times gave the film a mixed review, finding the amusing scenes with Tracy and Oakie "highly entertaining, but when it tackles the plot and the inevitable spat between the romantic couple, it slumps." He added that the earthquake scenes "…are done extraordinarily well."

Tracy aces the Bell Telephone Company trouble shooter hero character. Incident is piled high as Spence takes a night time 'phone emergency, with new side kick Okie in tow, and gets mixed in with the speak easy low lifes at the club, where he's repairing the 'phone. Misunderstandings follow with switch operator lady friend Cummings and rival gone to the bad Conway, involving wire tapping and a bank job. Throw in the 1933 Long Beach earth quake no less.

They go on too long past the fire scene, which should be the climax and major talents like director Wellman, Tracy and Cummings must have regarded this as light duties but they seem to be in their element and deliver lively entertainment for the undemanding.

Tracy was always playing the hard guy in his days at Fox Films. He really didn't play normal or sympathetic figures until he moved to MGM. Here Tracy plays Joe Graham, a telephone company troubleshooter. He's offered a promotion - a job as supervisor of 14 other troubleshooters, and tells his boss he doesn't want the job. The money means nothing to him, not sitting around in an office means everything to him. He says he just wants to be happy and for now being a troubleshooter does that. He's apparently seen the world, hopping freighters for China or India, or wherever, and just picking up odd jobs until he wanted to come home.

He's dating Ethel (Constance Cummings), but their relationship is turbulent. He's jealous of everyone, and of Dan in particular. Dan's a bad guy, working both as a troubleshooter and in an illegal gambling hall. Heck, he'll do anything to pick up money if it's illegal. Joe knows this and keeps mum about it - not because he's crooked himself, he just has a philosophy of not meddling. But when something Dan has done gets blamed on Joe's new partner, Casey (Jack Oakie), Joe speaks up, gets Dan fired, and Joe punches Dan in the nose for good measure. Since Dan has been circling around Ethel, he tells Ethel a one sided story of what happened - that Joe beat him up AND got him fired just because Joe was jealous. Ethel breaks if off with Joe and is drawn even closer to Dan, with whom she sympathizes.

The point here is, both of these people are being unreasonable and not communicating. Ethel never bothers to hear Joe's side of the story. Joe goes around accusing Ethel of being untrue to him, when she has often just gone out by herself on nights when Joe was troubleshooting. In the meantime, Joe's goofy partner hits it off with Ethel's roommate, played by Arlene Judge, although the mutual attraction had me scratching my head.

So Ethel quits the phone company and starts working for Dan, who is actually running an illegal enterprise out his rented office of which Ethel is completely unaware. Now you might think, I can see where this is going. Dan is going to out himself as a bad character, Ethel will see the error of her ways, possibly in danger of bodily harm from Dan, Joe saves the day, all is well.

Actually, that's not what happens at all. The turn of events is completely unexpected and the last half of this film is particularly exciting. I'll let you watch and find out what does happen. Let me just say that even an earthquake enters in as a plot point! Great shades of "San Francisco"!

Let me just say in closing that I never thought Paramount or Fox really knew what to do with Jack Oakie. It seems like he did his best stuff at Universal - "Chance of a Lifetime", "Bowery to Broadway", and "That's The Spirit" come to mind. At any rate I'd recommend this one. It certainly does not take you where you'd expect it to take you.