Love Is a Racket

The quality of films from 1931 was variable to say the least but if William Wellman's name was on the credits you could be assured of getting slick, professional and expertly made entertainment.

This is no exception although it's not exceptional.

Although Douglas Fairbanks Jr is definitely Clarke Gable if your studio can't afford the real Clarke Gable, he's fabulous in this. He's like someone you meet on holiday and think you've known since school. How he manages to do this is something only a few actors can do. His character is not unlike the role he played a year later in (the much better) 'Union Depot' but a bit more cynical. The rest of the cast too are all exceptional as well - everyone one of them. It's brilliantly put together, it's got excitement, plays with your emotions with menace, excitement and hope and you will enjoy watching this ...but somehow 24 hours later, like that bloke you met on holiday, you'll have forgotten it as though you were at the bathtub brew, had a great time somewhere but can't quite remember.

Maybe because it's so well made (not just for 1931) you don't notice how lightweight the story actually is. Maybe because you'll forget that you've seen it is a good excuse to watch it again - it's worth it.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Is the Broadway columnist for a big New York paper. He's also in love with gorgeous Frances Dee, just back in the City with her aunt Cecil Cunningham. She's trying to promote a career, either on the stage or Park Avenue, and Doug is trying to help her with the former, as well as a fortune in rubber checks she's passed. But gangster Lyle Talbot is also interested in the lady, and has paid off the checks. He's expecting something in return. Can newspaper pals Lee Tracy and Ann Dvorak figure out where Fairbanks has been kidnapped to?

With that title and William Wellman directing, I was expecting a sardonic comedy; after all, he would helm NOTHING SACRED and ROXIE HART. But Wellman was a master of the tough-men-bonding-in-tough-circumstances stories that Howard Hawks and John Ford liked to tell, and it became clear about halfway through that this movie is about that. The humor starts to drain out of movie about a third of the way in, along with the idea of romantic love. It is replaced, though, with love born of respect and risks faced together. Nor does it limit itself to men, with Miss Dvorak giving one of her graceful, understated performances.

This seedy, downbeat Broadway tale of love, money, ambition, and power makes for an entertaining film. Credit director William Wellman's felicity with the fast-paced Warner Bros style for the no-nonsense, snappy approach. Douglas Fairbanks Jr is very fine as the hardbitten gossip columnist with a fatalistic, romantic side, but Lee Tracy, Ann Dvorak, Frances Dee, Warren Hymer, and, especially, Cecil Cunningham as the conniving Aunt Hattie, do their best to steal the film. And, as this is a pre-code movie, who says a character can't get away with murder?

The title is something Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. concludes at the end of this film. Perfectly understandable after all he goes through in the running time.

Fairbanks is a reporter on the Broadway beat modeled after of course Walter Winchell who was just going into high gear in his career. The column that Fairbanks writes dishes dirt on both the Broadway and gangland scene and how they mix on more than one occasion. As such he's made an enemy out of gangster Lyle Talbot whom I think is based on Owney Madden.

Promising Broadway newcomer Frances Dee has gotten into a nice jackpot with bum checks that Talbot has assumed the debts for. He wants payment however one way or another.

Fairbanks is crazy about her even though Ann Dvorak is crazy about him. He certainly goes above and beyond for her in the film and no good deed goes unpunished.

Lee Tracy has a nice part in a sidekick role for Fairbanks. Warren Hymer is one of Talbot's gunsills. Hymer has a little more menace to him than usual, but just as dumb.

This is a nice pre-Code drama, note some of the items when the camera goes to Fairbanks's column. Some really nice and saucy double entendre there.

In the best Walter Winchell style of course.

This almost seventy-five year old programmer holds up amazingly well due in large part to the skilled acting of the leads, a witty script that keeps everything lighthearted, and the masterful direction of William A. Wellman. The title may sound silly but if the viewer watches the entire film, "Love is a Racket" is explained by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. at the very end via a harangue on the ephemeral nature of romantic love.

Filled with cynicism draped with roses Fairbanks learns about love from all the wrong people, in particular from the wily, ambitious Mary Wodehouse (Frances Dee), who has been spoiled rotten by her Aunt Hattie Donovan. Seems Mary has been bouncing checks and wants Jimmy Russell (Fairbanks) to bail her out. When he attempts to retrieve the hot checks by asking the holders to wait a while before cashing them, he learns that a mobster has picked them up already. When Jimmy finds the mobster dead, he takes possession of the checks and makes it all look like a suicide unawares that his columnist buddy, Stanley Fiske (Lee Tracy), is watching.

This little gem from the early days of the Great Depression is well worthwhile and still entertaining even after seven decades.