Okay America!

This film unveils the power behind having a massive attentive audience at a media person's disposal. Lew Ayres plays Larry Wayne, a reporter/gossip columnist a la Walter Winchell in the 20s, 30s and 40s. Larry is both very smart and incredibly attentive to the pulse of city, as he welcomes all of his acquaintances with the phrase "What d'ya know?" He soaks it all up and ejects the best stories on his radio broadcast, which the whole city listens to.

Larry's secretary/assistant "Barton" (Maureen O'Sullivan) has an obvious crush on him and can't figure out why he rebuffs her advances with "don't go soft on me Barton". However, she keeps trying.

Larry is so in the know that he carries significant sway with not only his newspaper editor but also both the police commissioner and several underworld kingpins. They all fear him, respect him and hate him but will listen to any deals that he proffers.

However, things get really interesting when Larry sticks his neck out to act as a liaison between the cops and the mob in a sensationalistic kidnapping case. Almost anything can (and does) happen.

There is a lot of clever dialogue and witty banter throughout the story and some nice performances from Ayres, O'Sullivan, Louis Calhern, Edward Arnold, Walter Catlett and Alan Dinehart.

I was quite happy to watch this one on the big screen.

A previous IMDb reviewer complained about a poor print of this film. I was able to view a pristine print of "Okay, America!" from the personal collection of film historian William K Everson; that print is now in the New York University archives.

Lew Ayres stars as a brash newspaper columnist and radio broadcaster who's clearly based on Walter Winchell. Ayres starts his radio broadcasts with the catchphrase "Okay, America!" whereas Winchell started his broadcasts with (fake) Morse code and the greeting "Good evening, Mr and Mrs North and South America".

I had to laugh at one unintentionally funny scene in this movie. Ayres, as the surrogate Winchell, visits a nightclub featuring African-American performers, and he chats affectionately with a shapely black dancer whose skimpy costume is obviously inspired by the scanty outfit worn onstage by legendary black performer Josephine Baker. About twenty years after this movie was made, the real Winchell and Baker became bitter enemies -- Winchell famously calling her "Josephoney Baker" in his column -- so I was amused to see their fictional counterparts here on good terms.

The film's plot involves the abduction of a young woman whose father is the President's best friend and a member of his Cabinet. The powerful Production Code of 1930s Hollywood dictated that movies could not depict kidnappers succeeding in their crime, lest some audience member get ideas. A 1930s movie villain might get away with murder, rape and armed robbery, but never kidnapping (at least not in Hollywood).

This is one of those movies in which the virtuous hero is so deeply respected by underworld figures that they'll let him walk out of a deadly situation simply because his word is his bond, even though the crooks have plenty of incentive to kill him.

As the chief villains, Louis Calhern and Edward Arnold are in fine form despite some implausible dialogue. Calhern speaks his lines in his usual cultured accent and impeccable diction, yet his character uses poor grammar ("Larry don't talk"). Arnold's gentleman crimelord reads "Oliver Twist" but seems to consider Fagin the only objectionable character in this novel, suggesting that his lines were written by some scriptwriter who hadn't actually read "Oliver Twist". (That book has a couple of characters even worse than Fagin.)

As the loyal secretary who's secretly in love with her boss Ayres, Maureen O'Sullivan is excellent except for one odd lapse: I don't know whether to blame her, the director or the script. When Ayres and O'Sullivan visit a spooky location, O'Sullivan drops her clutch purse to register shocked emotions, but then she leaves without retrieving it ... thus reminding us that she's an actress handling a wardrobe accessory, instead of a real person with keys and money and I.D. in that purse.

Charles Dow Clark is good in a role that's irrelevant to the story, and Rollo Lloyd acquits himself well in a deeply implausible role. We never do learn how Lloyd's drunken ex-reporter manages to get that big scoop.

The taxicab that recurs throughout this Universal movie (Yellow Cab #79) also shows up in Columbia's film "Washington Merry-Go-Round".

The unnamed President in this movie is apparently meant to be the actual President in office in 1932, Herbert Hoover; a line of dialogue implies that he's Republican. Ayres's scene in the President's office shows the Chief Executive only in silhouette (implausibly standing up while addressing visitors, rather than sitting), intoning his lines in a stentorian voice totally unlike the real Hoover's.

Margaret Lindsay is effective in a tiny role as the kidnap victim who triggers all the fuss. One of my favourite character actors, Alan Dinehart, is here as Ayres's boss, earning a punch on the jaw for his efforts. Dinehart usually played shifty chancers or outright crooks; he's less plausible than usual here as an honest journalist. Russian actor Akim Tamiroff, in his first film role, is apparently already typecast as a Mexican (his character here is cried Pedro).

Too many Hollywood movies feature unbreakable heroes: the leading man gets beaten up in one scene, and in the next reel he's as good as new. That trend stayed in place until 'Chinatown', with Jack Nicholson sporting a bandaged nose for half the movie. I was impressed by a minor detail in "Okay, America!": about halfway through this movie, Ayres gets roughed up, and for the rest of the film he has a cut on his upper lip that's visible only in close-ups. (Or maybe Ayres cut himself in real life while this film was in production.)

There are a lot of good things in 'Okay, America!', but the film's main flaw is the casting of Lew Ayres in the lead role. Ayres was a bland actor: he's decent enough here, but there were several other Hollywood actors of this period (James Cagney, Lee Tracy, Pat O'Brien, James Dunn, Wallace Ford) who could have been brilliant in this role. To achieve such an influential position as a crusading broadcaster and columnist, this movie's hero would have needed to be a human dynamo, yet Ayres's performance never really catches that spark. O'Sullivan is better in a subtler role. Mostly because of Ayres's lacklustre effort, I'll rate this one only 6 out of 10.

OKAY America (1932) is a "Walter Winchell Theme Movie," one of several worth seeing.

Remember that in 1932, Walter Winchell was VERY important in the show biz world. He was a "wordsmith" of renown and enormous talent, and a showman extraordinaire.....his career went non-stop from the 20's until his death in the 70's. He was always thought important, and for good reason.

The high quality of the actor cast in OKAY America (1932) shows the investment big shots in Hollywood thought worth making in a movie about Walter Winchell.....Lew Ayres, Maureen O'Sullivan, Louis Callhern, others.

This is a quality movie, one of a group all based on the Walter Winchell character and phenomenon.

Over movie history, "Walter Winchell" type "theme movies" (the world of gossip column "tell all" newspaper reporters) were made, most of them well done because the subject (Winchell and his dramatic ways) is inherently dynamic, fast moving, and interesting.

BLESSED EVENT (1932 starring Lee Tracy appeared the same year as OKAY America (1932), and was based on a Broadway play from 1932 which dealt with "the world of Winchell" (without naming him directly).

Winchell himself appeared in WAKE UP AND LIVE (1937 Fox) playing himself "doing his thing" and the movie is wonderful, but also, mysteriously, hard to get, not ranked among the "great" 30's musicals, which it certainly was and is.

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)starring Burt Lancaster was an anti-Winchell movie of fame but was clearly a re-affirmation that Winchell was always interesting, always news for decades! Gathering various "Winchell theme movies" is worth doing. These movies are all good!

... In fact, this would have played better with Lee Tracy or James Cagney in the part of the Walter Winchell like Larry Wayne and Joan Blondell as his secretary who loves her boss from afar. Instead you have Lew Ayres as the sassy gossip columnist and Maureen O'Sullivan as his secretary, and they acquit themselves pretty well. Although, O'Sullivan got to show much more sass after she signed with MGM.

The print I saw was very bad, with faces often looking like light bulbs with dark holes where eyes are, so it is hard to evaluate lots of things, including the art design, but it was better than nothing. Still, I would have liked to get a better look at Margaret Lindsay as the kidnapped girl.

Wayne has a column and a radio show and is always plugging pieces of gossip about well known figures in both. The main plot - about Wayne getting involved with solving the kidnapping of the daughter of the wealthy best friend of the president - isn't long enough to fill the running time, so they have a scene where Wayne is confronted with a man who finds out his wife is cheating on him via Wayne's column and wants to shoot Wayne instead of his wife, and a shot of Wayne inside what looks to be The Cotton Club, or a facsimile thereof. It would be great to have a pristine print just to get a look at the inside of this club and at the costumes of the chorines.

So the main plot has Louis Calhern, believably enough, as a mobster. Not so believably, he uses his perfect diction to sling words like "ain't" and "mugs" like he is Ed Brophy. There is even a scene with the president, which we are told is a Republican, so this must be Hoover. Hoover had a midwestern accent, this president is only shown in silhouette and has a patrician tone - very un-Hoover. With a very unexpected ending and even a man who walks like a zombie, this initially formulaic seeming film got interesting in a hurry. I'd recommend it. Just have patience with the bad prints that are out there.