The Nuisance

I'd seen this before but was still knocked out by it. This holds true for "The Half-Naked Truth" too. To my great surprise it does not, for me, with "Blessed Event." The first time I saw that, I couldn't believe its brilliance. The second time, several years later, it still looked good but packed no real punch. (Tracy is also excellent in "Bombshell" with the sensational Jean Harlow and, decades later, in "The Best Man.") This movie is funny, starting, and touching. It moves with ease from one of these to another. Frank Morgan, another extremely versatile performer, is very touching as the alcoholic doctor who works with ambulance-chasing lawyer Tracy on his schemes.

All the supporting cast is good, with special mention given to Charles Butterworth as floppy, the con many who was faking being hit by cars before Tracy meets up with him again and will probably be doing it till he finally really does get run over.

J. Phineas Stevens is THE NUISANCE, an ambulance-chasing, authority-defying, woman-ogling lawyer. Pushy & loud, he's the first at the scene of any accident, handing out his cards & demanding his clients' rights. Both charming & crooked, Stevens usually wins his court cases with street smarts & trickery. But now his powerful legal adversaries have baited a trap, using a very pretty young woman as a spy, to catch Stevens while up to his old tricks.

Lee Tracy was perfectly cast in the title role of this fun, forgotten film. With his energetic, go-get-'em, in-your-face acting style, always mixed with a hint of the shady character, Tracy was ideal as talent agents, reporters or shyster lawyers. With his new stardom cemented at Warners, Tracy arrived at MGM in 1933 and immediately appeared in 5 films. He was well on his way to becoming a major star, MGM's answer to Cagney, when he had a spectacular fall from grace in 1934. He spent most of the rest of his career at minor studios, never reaching his full potential. Today he is all but forgotten, but those fortunate enough to see his films find him to be one of the most refreshing & enjoyable movie actors of the early 1930's.

Here, Tracy receives good support from his co-stars: beautiful love interest Madge Evans, a girl with a secret; Charles Butterworth, funny as an accident faker; Samuel S. Hinds, John Miljan & David Landau as Tracy's enemies; Greta Meyer & Herman Bing, hilarious as an amorous Teutonic twosome. Virginia Cherrill has a tiny part as one of Tracy's alluring clients. Movie mavens will spot Nat Pendleton as a street car guard. And Frank Morgan is nothing short of wonderful as the pathetic old alcoholic doctor who loves Tracy like a son and helps him with his schemes.

Lee Tracy is excellent as a shady lawyer who recruits clients at accident scenes. When possible, he reaches the scene moments ahead of the ambulance; when necessary, he arranges the accident itself. Swooping in, he informs his clients what their injuries are, whisks them off to the hospital, and lines up personal injury lawsuits that range from dubious to downright phony and are driving the insurance company crazy. What can they do to stop him? Insurance man John Miljan has a plan….

Madge Evans is an accident victim who willingly falls in with a Tracy scheme—and it's as we are getting to know her character that the plot takes a welcome and exciting turn. Evans has the most developed and difficult role here; the question of which side she is on is one that not even she is sure she can answer.

Frank Morgan is outstanding but rather sad as a doomed alcoholic doctor who assists Tracy in his schemes. Charles Butterworth is sidekick and right hand man "Floppy," a professional accident victim who joins Tracy's team.

The dialog flies past, especially when Tracy delivers it; he's dashing, deceitful, villainous, charming—it's a larger than life character and Tracy fills the role perfectly. Overall, the picture is somewhat less than totally believable…but it's a lot of fun to watch and follow along.

Seeing The Nuisance for the first time cured me of at least one illusion I had. That Walter Matthau in his Oscar winning performance as Whiplash Willie Gingrich had created something original. Billy Wilder when he did The Fortune Cookie must have seen this undeservedly forgotten MGM film with Lee Tracy in the title role.

In fact I'll bet Matthau probably clerked in Tracy's office before taking the bar and learned everything well. Tracy is the shyster lawyer that shyster lawyers make jokes about. But he's cleaning out the insurance companies and in those Depression years they've decided to do something about it.

What they've done is hire Madge Evans, a female PI to fake an accident and become a Tracy client. But as things go in these films of course she falls for the guy.

Some other familiar faces populate the cast. Most familiar are Frank Morgan as an alcoholic doctor who treats Tracy like a son and helps Tracy with his fraudulent injury cases. And also there's the ever droll Charles Butterworth who makes a living faking being hit by automobiles for insurance settlements. He's running out of big cities to pull that racket.

Still if you watch The Nuisance you'll know what inspired Billy Wilder in The Fortune Cookie.

Sometimes when you run into an old, obscure movie, one of the credits will suggest whether it's worth watching. Take "The Nuisance," written for the screen by Sam and Bella Spewack, a team with a flair for sparkling dialogue whose Broadway credits include "Kiss Me Kate." In "The Nuisance," they provide Lee Tracy with the verbal firepoweer for his performance as a fast-talking, charmingly corrupt, ambulance-chasing lawyer whose pet target is the local streetcar company. With the help of Frank Morgan as a boozy medico with a gift for doctoring x-rays, he turns small accidents into big paydays. When the company hires lovely Madge Evans to entrap Tracy, the fun begins, building to a hilarious lesson in the antiquated laws of the land. (Watching one scene, I was reminded of the fact that it was still supposedly illegal to shoot rabbits from a moving elevated train in Manhattan even after all the El trains were torn down.) The result is a fast, frequently funny film with a surprisingly modern feel. In fact, despite scenes like a courtroom battle involving the fare to ride a streetcar -- five cents -- "The Nuisance" doesn't seem as outdated as the laws it satirizes