You'll know the ancient Greek myth of the Sirens: beautiful woman-like creatures who were so utterly alluring they would lure sailors onto the rocks to die. The spirit of those temptresses lived on in the equally alluring shape of Lupe Vélez. SO HEED MY WARNING: just because you have heard that Lupe Vélez wears the lowest cut, gravity-defying, sexiest dress ever created (clearly by some powerful dark magic), be like Odysseus and ignore the temptation. If you don't you'll be sorry because the last thing you want to do is suffer an hour and a half of this!
You often hear the word Palooka in pictures from the 30s and 40s which I'd always though was just one of those many slang insults which were thrown around - seemingly not! It comes from this film - or rather from a massively popular American newspaper comic strip called 'Joe Palooka' on which this film was based. A PALOOKA is a not very bright, sometimes violent but not malevolent thug. 'Moose' played by Mike Mazurki in FAREWELL MY SWEET is probably the perfect example. As much as the etymology is quite interesting, the film is not. It's probably because the characters are taken from a comic strip that they're one dimensional. Maybe back when people were reading "The Funnies" they'd enjoy seeing these drawings come to life but for us now this feels flat and lifeless.
It starts off promising enough with a great cast: you'll recognise Otis Harlan (Happy from SNOW WHITE), Robert Armstrong, Thelma Todd and the wonderful Marjorie Rambeau..... but that's all in flashback. After ten minutes the story starts properly and we end up with the B team taking over. From then on the whole thing rapidly goes downhill. After an hour you'll be hating yourself for deciding to watch this.
Even though his character is based on a comic strip drawing Stuart Erwin is terrible, absolutely terrible, absolutely horrendously terrible in this. His character, like the one he played in MAKE ME A STAR is, as they might have said back in the 30s 'feeble minded.' His character's flaws and issues were intrinsic to the story of MAKE ME A STAR, they made you sympathise with him, he came across as a real person and you were desperate to be able to do something to help him. In this you feel you'd want to lock him up in the attic. He's lazily written, appallingly acted and doesn't seem to be directed at all. He is an idiot so ridiculous that he lacks any credibility or authenticity and since you can't believe he's real, you can't like him, you don't care about him and you certainly don't find him funny.
Even worse is Jimmy Durante. It seems he was around forever but I have never seen him ever before. I'm no spring chicken but I've never heard of this person until now - how lucky I am!. Just watch some of this and you'll understand why nobody today knows who Jimmy Durante is. Heavens to Murgatroyd, as Snagglepuss used to exclaim, he's unbelievably awful!
That the only thing worth watching in this tiresome picture, beside seeing why James Cagney's brother's acting career never went anywhere, is an attractive young Mexican lady who couldn't act very well in a sexy outfit clearly shows what rubbish this is. She is quite pretty but nothing is worth the payment of an hour and a half of Jimmy Durante. As a more palatable alternative, she did look rather breath-taking in THE HALF NAKED TRUTH but you would have to put up with an hour and a half of Lee Tracy - nothing like as bad as Mr Durante.
