... In fact, this would have played better with Lee Tracy or James Cagney in the part of the Walter Winchell like Larry Wayne and Joan Blondell as his secretary who loves her boss from afar. Instead you have Lew Ayres as the sassy gossip columnist and Maureen O'Sullivan as his secretary, and they acquit themselves pretty well. Although, O'Sullivan got to show much more sass after she signed with MGM.
The print I saw was very bad, with faces often looking like light bulbs with dark holes where eyes are, so it is hard to evaluate lots of things, including the art design, but it was better than nothing. Still, I would have liked to get a better look at Margaret Lindsay as the kidnapped girl.
Wayne has a column and a radio show and is always plugging pieces of gossip about well known figures in both. The main plot - about Wayne getting involved with solving the kidnapping of the daughter of the wealthy best friend of the president - isn't long enough to fill the running time, so they have a scene where Wayne is confronted with a man who finds out his wife is cheating on him via Wayne's column and wants to shoot Wayne instead of his wife, and a shot of Wayne inside what looks to be The Cotton Club, or a facsimile thereof. It would be great to have a pristine print just to get a look at the inside of this club and at the costumes of the chorines.
So the main plot has Louis Calhern, believably enough, as a mobster. Not so believably, he uses his perfect diction to sling words like "ain't" and "mugs" like he is Ed Brophy. There is even a scene with the president, which we are told is a Republican, so this must be Hoover. Hoover had a midwestern accent, this president is only shown in silhouette and has a patrician tone - very un-Hoover. With a very unexpected ending and even a man who walks like a zombie, this initially formulaic seeming film got interesting in a hurry. I'd recommend it. Just have patience with the bad prints that are out there.
