Synopsis
He puts the unfair sex on the spot
A gossip columnist helps a Broadway ingenue who's beholden to a penthouse gangster.
Love Is a Racket
1932 Directed by William A. Wellman
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Alternative Titles
Norton-szálló Rejtélye, Such Thing Happens
Popular reviews
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-"Where are you going?"
-"Me? I’m going to get what was commonly known among the ancient Athenians as swaggled."
-"Certainly! It’s a nice night for it."The way Lee Tracy says the word "certainly!": ⭐️
Yenning Ann Dvorak: ⭐️⭐️
Hoodlum Warren Hymer’s unabashed delight at juvenile practical jokes: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.’s exquisitely mussed hair: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A denouement that would have been impossible under Joseph Breen and his minions: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐
Doug and Lee calling each other "babe": ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐
Unimpeachable evidence as to why I’m not to be trusted with stars. 🤷♀️ (Okay, I’m not so far gone - yet - that I'm actually claiming this is a fiver, but every moment that features the Fairbanks-Dvorak-Tracy trifecta is magical.)
From Doug’s…
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I strongly suspect my enjoyment of this vastly outdistances its quality, but it's a blast. William Wellman's pacing is excellent, the cast is great, and the mob enforcer with the soul of a clown is way funnier than he has any right to be. Elsewhere, the affection between Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Lee Tracy is immensely charming, Ann Dvorak is as warm and modern as ever, and Lyle Talbot has never been a more magnificent dirtbag (though he's not around anywhere near enough). 71 minutes well spent!
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“You’re as pretty as a little red wagon.”
Milk racket! Rubber checks! Douglas Fairbanks Jr as a murderer for love! And Ann Dvorak playing the “I was here all along” gal pal. Douglas the Younger is a schmaltzy gossip columnist pawing “fancy face” Frances Dee, increasingly frustrated he can’t get past second base. Some real sicko vibes from Fairbanks as he jokes about pinning women down on the sofa, and choking them when they stand him up for dates.
Lyle Talbot is playing gangster, somewhat unconvincingly. Cecil Cunningham is playing “Aunt Hattie,” a cynical ex-Floradora girl (more convincingly). Lee Tracy does a lot of funny stuff with his hands while Fairbanks gets the majority of the alliterative dialogue. Aggressively pre-code…
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'Well I'll be a double-jointed son of a B... Bulgarian acrobat..' (Lee Tracy as Stanley Fiske)
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Brief Synopsis: A Broadway columnist (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) tries to keep his girl (Frances Dee) from the clutches of a mobster (Lyle Talbot).
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Verdict: Fairbanks, Jr. was a late replacement for James Cagney in the role of a Walter Winchell-esque/'devil-may-care' gossip columnist in William A. Wellman's hugely enjoyable comedy thriller, and he performs with the extreme charm that seemed to come effortlessly to him. Doug could easily have become a much bigger star than he was but I always got the impression he didn't have quite the same ambition to succeed as his famous father. In this particular delightful picture, Lee Tracy… -
You've seen every element of the plot before, it's the normal fast talking reporter mixing it with broadway gangsters and show girls thing.
But Wellman gives the whole thing a room to breath that is practically Hawksian but if anything has more range. The friendships and the relationships convince, the performances are excellent, Fairbanks is a little over the top at times but you buy it as a gossip columnist character who is over the top sometimes and it fits in with the well sketched out lead we get. Lee Tracy is genuinely excellent here, well rounded and funny and lived in and Frances Dee and Ann Dvorak do nice stuff with roles that could have been incredibly thin.
It…
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-"Who goes there - friend or enemy?"
-"What’s it to you?"
-"Well, if you’re a friend, you’ll pour me some coffee, and if you’re an enemy, you’ll pour me a drink."I call foul. You can’t give me the chummy threesome of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Ann Dvorak and Lee Tracy, then expect an objective assessment. I’m only human.
Doug the Younger is a blend of charm and cynicism as columnist Jimmy Russell, keeping tabs on Broadway gossip and maintaining a bachelor pad that doubles as a “sweet little free municipal speakeasy.” At the moment, he’s wrapped around the pretty finger of a wannabe starlet (gorgeous Frances Dee - the movie literally opens on her gams), while (just as gorgeous) one-of-the-boys…
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The story was only so-so, but I felt the acting was close to brilliant and deserves praise. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. never felt more at home then his role as the lovesick reporter. The Fairbanks always have a tendency to be over the top in their performances. It runs in the family. But this was a case where it was just right. While always a joker, he's never taken comedy as serious as this, while also delivering the emotional parts without making it into soppy trash.
Lee Tracy was excellent as his sidekick friend who could also take the jokes as the more serious bits, interacting with Fairbanks like they'd been life long friends. But this picture wouldn't have been anything… -
Blessed Event, Advice to the Lovelorn, Okay America!... In 1932 and '33, the American screen was saturated with films in which sarky, hard-boiled newspaper columnists - invariably patterned after gossip peddler Walter Winchell - locked horns with slimy Pre-Code gangsters. I'm not complaining, that is literally the best premise for a movie ever. And here's another.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. is our hero, a debonair, slightly effete man-about-town, dining at Sardi's, nursing hangovers and writing up Broadway rumours for a New York paper. His comrades-in-arms are my favourite actor of all time, Lee Tracy - who was very soon to make the part of an unrepentant smear-factory his and his alone - and Ann Dvorak, the sparky secretary who's pining after…
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What a fun film! We have another yarn about a gossip columnist, but he's not malicious or nasty. Apparently this was intended for James Cagney, but Douglas Fairbanks Jr brings a ease and charm to this that set the character apart from the kinds of pugs that Cagney played. Lee Tracy is great as his pal, and though Ann Dvorak didn't get enough to do, she was a bright spot whenever on screen.
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Love is a Racket didn't fully click for me, and I'm not quite sure I can say why, but even at that, this has a really fun sort of ensemble cast, and I think it feels a lot more natural since without the code, this really didn't have to pull a lot of its punches. I think maybe my issue is more that it feels like a lot of those come in the last half hour or so of the film. The middle of the film didn't hold me as well.
It's not a film I'll remember too strongly I don't think, but it is a solid enough entry. Lot of that comes from the performances being effective and there's a decent set of chemistry between them all so it never felt too stiff.
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"So you've gone and went and fallen in love with the gal, huh?"
A charming pre-Code that is much more charm than plot, Love Is a Racket survives almost entirely on the personalities of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ann Dvorak, and Lee Tracy. I would watch an entire film about just the three of them running their own newspaper, but unfortunately their camaraderie is frequently broken up by a shady mobster and a flaky goldigger here.
It's no great masterpiece, but with an economical run time and a several good quips, Love Is a Racket is certainly a peppy little film. It's worth a watch just to see Lee Tracy get slammed in the face with a pillow by Ann Dvorak.
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Love is a Racket may be only 71 minutes but it honestly felt quite a bit longer to me. One of the biggest issues I had was Frances Dee and Douglas Fairbanks Jr had practically no chemistry. Ann Dvorak and him had great chemistry, but she’s not in this as much as she should.