... and forgive me for the play on words.
This film has a variation of a plot that Warner Brothers released several times, first as an A- list, and subsequently as B films. The original film was "Hi Nellie" in 1934 with Paul Muni in a rare comic role. Another studio - Fox - even had a filmed version of the same basic plot - "Advice to the Lovelorn" starring Lee Tracy.
The basic plot of all of these films is that a newspaper's managing editor/star reporter gets in trouble with paper's owner over some article written about graft or crime without any proof and the owner punishes said reporter by putting him in the job of writing the "advice to the lovelorn" column. The reporter has a contract so he can't quit, and in the meantime he is ridiculed by the entire newsroom. Then the demoted reporter solves some big crime/conspiracy that is at the root of why he got put in the dog house in the first place and ends up back on top. Plot devices vary in each film, but that is the long and the short of it.
In this case the plot device relevant to the time is a black market on rubber via used tires that for some reason requires a lonely hearts club as a front (???). The villains would have been smarter to use a less public place for a criminal enterprise, but I digress. Tires were rationed during WWII because of the war in the Pacific theatre and the resulting shortage of rubber.
This film makes up for the "retread" of a plot by giving WB workhorse actor George Brent the lead in a film he dominates. Plus the film makes good use of a couple of great character actors of the 1930s - Roscoe Karns for snark and Gene Lockhart for a bit of enigmatic duplicity.
What tips the viewer off to the fact that we are watching a B? The opening scene is supposed to be a long shot of a penitentiary during a nighttime thunder storm. It is actually a drawing! No expensive exteriors in this little film!
Worth 77 minutes of your time, even if you have seen the versions that came before and after.
This film has a variation of a plot that Warner Brothers released several times, first as an A- list, and subsequently as B films. The original film was "Hi Nellie" in 1934 with Paul Muni in a rare comic role. Another studio - Fox - even had a filmed version of the same basic plot - "Advice to the Lovelorn" starring Lee Tracy.
The basic plot of all of these films is that a newspaper's managing editor/star reporter gets in trouble with paper's owner over some article written about graft or crime without any proof and the owner punishes said reporter by putting him in the job of writing the "advice to the lovelorn" column. The reporter has a contract so he can't quit, and in the meantime he is ridiculed by the entire newsroom. Then the demoted reporter solves some big crime/conspiracy that is at the root of why he got put in the dog house in the first place and ends up back on top. Plot devices vary in each film, but that is the long and the short of it.
In this case the plot device relevant to the time is a black market on rubber via used tires that for some reason requires a lonely hearts club as a front (???). The villains would have been smarter to use a less public place for a criminal enterprise, but I digress. Tires were rationed during WWII because of the war in the Pacific theatre and the resulting shortage of rubber.
This film makes up for the "retread" of a plot by giving WB workhorse actor George Brent the lead in a film he dominates. Plus the film makes good use of a couple of great character actors of the 1930s - Roscoe Karns for snark and Gene Lockhart for a bit of enigmatic duplicity.
What tips the viewer off to the fact that we are watching a B? The opening scene is supposed to be a long shot of a penitentiary during a nighttime thunder storm. It is actually a drawing! No expensive exteriors in this little film!
Worth 77 minutes of your time, even if you have seen the versions that came before and after.