Me and My Gal

Raoul Walsh was one of the greatest directors of the '30's and '40s, mainly because of the reason that his movies were always such of a high quality and so entertaining to watch. This is a movie from before the real glory days of Walsh and it seemed like he was still having difficulties with this movie to find its proper style and approach.

The different story lines with the different characters just don't always connect with each other. The movie also takes too long with its story to set up things and introduce its characters. The movie is already a real short one and it wastes too much time with its set up. It doesn't even become fully clear what this movie is truly going to be about until like half an hour before the end.

At first this movie even seems as if its going to be a comedy but not a really funny one though. It then picks a romantic approach and after that it turns more into a thriller/drama. This of course also makes the movie a fairly disjointed one and also works out bad for the movie its story, as well as its style.

It's mostly the last halve hour that still makes this movie a perfectly watchable enough movie. It's also then that the story becomes truly solid and the movie also turns into a more original one to watch. Before that the movie was mostly just being formulaic.

It really isn't Raoul Walsh best movie, also in terms of directing, editing and camera-work. It's a cheap and simple looking movie that lacks in style and a good main clear approach of the story. I can see and understand what Raoul Walsh tried to achieve and tried to blend some of the most successful genres of its time into one movie. It's an approach he much better executed in his later movie "The Strawberry Blond" and I'm sure that there are a couple of more better examples to mention but I haven't seen all Raoul Walsh movies obviously. It's not as if this movie is an horrible attempt and is one bad movie but it nevertheless can't be seen as a successful attempt either.

The movie also features Spencer Tracy in one of his earliest roles. His acting seemed modern for its time and he did a great job in this movie.

A movie that luckily gets better toward its end.

7/10

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Spencer Tracy's Fox films are an interesting lot and one can count himself lucky if he gets to see any of his early work. For some reason the films that he did at that first studio he was contracted to are rarely seen, some I suspect are lost. Fortunately Me And My Gal was not. And it's a real Irish treat.

Me And My Gal casts Tracy in a part that either James Cagney or Pat O'Brien would have scored brilliantly with at Warner Brothers. He's a happy go lucky tough Irish cop who falls for wisecracking waitress Joan Bennett. Joan's just fine, but Joan Blondell or Barbara Stanwyck would have been perfect casting.

Bennett has a sister Marian Nixon who is married to George Chandler, but fooling around with gangster Frank Walsh. When he makes a daring prison break he takes refuge in Nixon's house while Chandler who is a merchant seaman is away. Also in the house is Chandler's father a wheelchair bound paralyzed World War veteran played by silent movie pioneer Henry B. Walthall. Walthall has an interesting way of communicating to the outside world his thoughts that prove ultimately to be Walsh's undoing.

Some nice snappy dialog banter between Tracy and Bennett is what really moves this film along. At one point these two do a really great parody of Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill. It should be seen beside the film version of same that MGM did that same year with Clark Gable and Norma Shearer and one the Marx Brothers did in Animal Crackers. It's as funny as the Marx Brothers.

Tracy's role here is very typical of the kind of roughneck parts he did in his early years for the most part. He was even doing the same roles in his first few MGM contract parts. His advancement to becoming what many consider to be the screen's greatest actor ever came when Jeanette MacDonald asked for him to be cast as Father Mullin in San Francisco. That opened a career whole new vistas for him.

Still these early films do have a lot going for them. Write to TCM and get some of these out on DVD and shown on television. Let's hope many of them still exist.

This 1932 comedy casts Joan Bennett and Spencer Tracy almost 20 years before they teamed in FATHER OF THE BRIDE. Here, their youthful zest and energy create sparks that fly! Bennett is a wonder as the wise-cracking dame who works in a diner -- Tracy is his usual hard-boiled self -- many comic twists and turns keep your attention -- there's a cute episode where you hear what they're really thinking during a romantic scene ( this happens after Tracy mentions he's seen a film called "Strange Innertube"). There's a great supporting part for Glenda Farrell who sings a provocative number at a burlesque hall. As always Farrell is full of spunk. As is this movie -- full of laughs,m great tempo and direction. A must see.

"Me and My Gal" is an ingratiating pre-Code comedy-drama enhanced by spirited banter between Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett who play two young people feeling each other out as potential mates. Bennett is surprisingly good as a wise-cracking, down-to-earth waitress who speaks her mind and can easily hold her own against Tracy's New York City cop. The pre-Code era's lack of pretense about sexuality makes their impassioned kiss in the diner -- as the two knock over items on the lunch counter -- all the more humorous. Bennett, both impressed and amused by Tracy's kiss, responds: "If you're gonna kiss me like that, you're gonna have to marry me." It's a magical little moment that caused the passage of time since 1932 to drop away and left me there with them to enjoy the fun.

A sub-plot involves Bennett's newly married sister, a good girl who nevertheless can't resist her bad boy gangster ex-boyfriend. When he needs to hide from the police, she installs him in a spare bedroom, under the nose of her disabled father-in-law who is confined to a wheelchair, can't speak a word and communicates only by blinking his eyes in Morse code. Later, when everything gets resolved, Tracy tells the father-in-law that the daughter-in-law is a good kid at heart in spite of what she did, expressing pre-Code generosity for forgiveness and tolerance, even in sexual transgressions with gangsters.

Me and My Gal (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A New York cop (Spencer Tracy) fights with and then falls in love with a waitress (Joan Bennett) but things take a bad turn when her father and sister get involved with a gangster (George Walsh). This is a sometimes interesting pre-code that starts off as a (bad) comedy but then turns into a romance before once again changing into a drama. I do have to question the screenplay for trying so many things as the film seems extremely uneven and in the end I had to see it as a major disappointment considering the talent involved. The biggest problem is the screenplay that is all over the place and this includes a pretty bad start where we have to follow a drunk around for a non-stop gag that just keeps going and going and going. I'm going to take stab and say that this scene with the drunk runs at least ten minutes and then he keeps coming up for the next ten minutes. The joke pretty much has him not paying for meals, asking the cops to arrest a fish for stealing his worm or just being plain annoying. I'm really not sure if Walsh was having a kick with this stuff or what but it should have ended up on the cutting room floor. The stuff dealing with the gangsters is pretty uninteresting as well because they're brought into the story due to Bennett's sister, someone we really don't care about and since it isn't actually happening to Tracy's girl, there's no added drama thrown in. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why the movie was jumping around so much and a lot of the ending just feels tacked on for no good reason other than to have some action. What makes the film worth viewing are the performances by the two leads. The two work very well together as they both come off quite charming and entertaining. The snappy dialogue they get to throw at one another is a plus as is a nice sequence where they talk to one another while their "thoughts" also get told. George Chandler and Henry B. Walthall have small roles as well.