Love Is a Racket

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?

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.

A "pretty good" starring role for the dashing Douglas Fairbanks jr, who had good movies and bad movies. Here, he is a newspaper reporter Jimmy Russell, trying to catch a gal who cannot seem to settle down. Co stars are Ann Dvorak (Merrily we Live and Three on a Match) and Frances Dee (Little Women, Human Bondage), and Lee Tracy (Dinner at Eight), who has a most interesting biography on his page on IMDb. Oddly, we don't really know much about his character in this movie... he's just kind of there. Dedicated black- and- white- movie watchers will see Eddie Kane and Gino Corrado, who play waiters at Sardi's restaurant – they were assistants or sidekicks in just about every movie made since dirt was invented. Of course Russell (Fairbanks) has an adversarial relationship with his newspaper boss (although this film probably pre-dated most of the others that used that ploy).... and there are a couple of other hard to believe things going on here, but I won't spoil any plot monkey-business. Watch for the cool telephone gadget at the very beginning....and a long, lecture on love and life at the very end.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. decides that "Love is a Racket" in this 1932 film directed by William Wellman and also starring Ann Dvorak, Frances Dee and Lee Tracy. Fairbanks Jr. is Jimmy Russell, who writes a Broadway beat column. He's in love with a young actress (Dee) who finds herself in debt to a criminal and asks Jimmy for help.

The story is okay, with a twist at the end. What impressed me the most is how underrated Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is. He's just wonderful here, as he has been in many other films - perhaps he never got that one breakthrough role. He was in an era of stultifying competition - Errol Flynn, Brian Aherne, David Niven, Ronald Colman - but acting-wise, he was very versatile, talented and charming.

The acting overall is quite good and doesn't suffer from some of the melodramatic work seen in early films.

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.