Now I'll Tell

This is supposed to be the story of the life of Arnold Rothstein, gangster and gambler, who was killed over a gambling debt in 1928, with the name changed to "Murray Golden", and played by Spencer Tracy. Except it plays fast and very loose with the truth. There were several versions of this story told during the early era of talking film besides this one, the best known being "Street of Chance" starring William Powell and "The Czar of Broadway" with John Wray in the title role.

Spencer Tracy played tough guys in the precode era before he ever got to MGM, but he always brought quite a bit of empathy to even the hardest guy he played, and this role is no exception. The film has Murray Golden starting out small with small cons at a racetrack, eventually opening a high class gambling house where he starts to make the big dough, and then he gets into fixing sporting events, with one particularly tragic event being portrayed on screen.

All the while he considers his wife, Virginia (Helen Twelvetrees), to be his good luck piece. But she is just a bird in a gilded cage. She has no friends because Murray doesn't want her mixing with the kind of people he deals with and nice people stay at arms length, they have no children, and Virginia just sits home alone night after night.

The main struggle running through the film is the antagonistic relationship Murray Golden has with Al Mossiter (Robert Gleckler), a fellow gambler. This feud starts when Mossiter claims he has been cheated in Golden's gambling house. The end result is Golden making Mossitor look like a fool and a coward even though Golden pays Mossiter his gambling losses.

Mossiter loses his mistress to Golden (Alice Faye in a very early role), and loses every gambling encounter with Golden until Golden's luck runs out, specifically, his wife runs out. The film really sentimentalizes Golden's end in a way that is pure fiction, but it IS some clever Hollywood writing.

With Hobart Cavanaugh as Golden's long time superstitious associate who looks like he would be more at home running a country store, Henry O'Neill as Golden's childhood friend who grew up to be a cop and is the only one who can tell it to Golden straight, and Shirley Temple in a bit part as O'Neill's daughter.

If you're looking for any kind of tell all story about the legendary Twenties gambler and racketeer Arnold Rothstein, Now I'll Tell isn't the film for you. The book it was based on by his widow who was obviously wanting her late husband to be seen in the best possible light. Fox Films further obliged the widow by even changing the name of the protagonist to Murray Golden.

But as for the story of Murray Golden, his character is excellently essayed by Spencer Tracy who got few enough times at Fox to show his acting chops. Usually he was in B adventure films as a rugged hero. Here he is as amoral character as you might find in a Warner Brothers classic gangster film. In fact had the film been made at Warner Brothers the lead would have been perfect for James Cagney.

There are two women in Tracy's life, his loyal wife Helen Twelvetrees and his sexy mistress Alice Faye. Twelvetrees sticks by Spence until the affair is really tossed in her face. As her character wrote the book on which the film is based we see the film through her eyes.

As for Alice Faye this was her second film, her first George White's Scandals had not yet been released when she was shooting this one. Faye is in her platinum blond Jean Harlow period and she's given a really outstanding song in this film which both reflects her personal life and character in the film, Fooling With The Other Woman's Man by Harry Akst and Lew Brown. Alice even got to record it, she did some records of her early film songs before Darryl Zanuck put the Kibosh on his musical stars doing records.

At the time of the film Faye was gaining more notoriety for being named as a co-respondent in a divorce proceeding of Rudy Vallee and one of his wives. Alice was a female vocalist for Vallee's Connecticut Yankees Orchestra and when Rudy was signed to appear in the aforementioned George White Scandals film version, Alice got to appear as well. Fox executives liked what they saw and Vallee who was usually not one to let a chance to make a nickel go by, let Faye out of her contract with him to sign with Fox. Maybe it was for old times or past good times sake, but the rest is history.

In a biography of Alice Faye she mentions that she was awed by Spencer Tracy's acting ability, but put off by his drinking and the crude passes he made at her. Tracy was going through a bad time of it in his marriage, but it didn't effect his performance on screen an iota.

Up to this point I haven't seen too many of Spencer Tracy's Fox films, but of the few I have seen this is one of the best, could be ranked in with some of his best work at MGM.

Nowadays, Now I'll Tell is promoted as an early Shirley Temple movie, but if you're watching it for her, you'll be severely disappointed. She's got sixty seconds of screen time. This is a Spencer Tracy movie, and not a good one. This is a movie that should have cemented his career as unlikable jerks and relegated him to B-pictures forever after. Instead, he went on to play leading men for decades.

In this drama, Spencer is married to Helen Twelvetrees and rises in the ranks of the seedy gambling world to own his own casino. Winning fortunes isn't enough for him, he insists on taking bigger and bigger risks, dabbling in horse racing, boxing rigging, and getting involved with dangerous mobsters. Helen doesn't want any part of that lifestyle, and since they don't even have children, she has no comforts in her lonely life. Spence, in the meantime, does anything he pleases, including keeping mistresses. His latest cutie-pie is Alice Faye, a nightclub singer, and he puts her up in an apartment, covers her in furs, and gives her a hundred-thousand-dollar trust fund. Alice completely lives up to her promoted image of "the singing Jean Harlow" in this movie. She looks so much like her, it sure served 20th Century Fox well for ten years! Her black feathered costume while vamping "Foolin' with the Other Woman's Man" looks very similar to Jean's negligee in The Girl from Missouri.

I didn't like this movie for the plain reason that I don't like Spencer Tracy. He's so unlikable and so conceited, I could hardly stand to watch his scenes. If Edward G. Robinson were in the lead, it would have been an infinitely better movie.

Just saw this film at a private screening - based on the life of a real gangster - featuring a young "Spence" who is absolutely dynamite. He plays a charming scoundrel who works his way up financially within the underworld via running a gambling joint - fixing fights helping wealthy businessmen out of fixes, etc. And Alice Faye is "Harlowlike" in her second screen role. If you like or love Spencer Tracy - this is a must see film. Sadly, the film survives from a pieced together reconstruction - based on a work print - and thus is a little rough around the edges - with numerous splices which mars some of the dialogue. Nonetheless - a real treat.

As I write these comments, the repercussions from the O.J. Simpson book/TV show/media blitz over his "If I Did It" book are still rumbling through the news. This movie is based on a 'work of fiction' by the widow of Arnold Rothstein, the notorious gambler who may have fixed the 1919 World Series -- the infamous 'Black Sox Scandal.' Of course, the wife of the gambler is portrayed as open, loving and entirely unaware of the slimy side of her husband's dealings. Watching this movie, thoughts of self-serving bits of keyhole fictions kept popping up, making me generally disgusted with it, its chipper moron of a heroine and annoyed at Spencer Tracy's, as usual, straightforward and excellent portrayal of a bad guy. While it can work, here, with the general sense of disingenuity that beclouds the entire proceedings, the effect is disgusting.

This is a shame, because Tracy is surrounded by actors and actresses who actually can get in a scene with him and inhabit the same universe -- all too often in this period, Tracy seemed to be the only genuine human being in these productions. Henry O'Neill is fine as the old friend of Tracy's who is now an honest cop and is intent on putting him in jail, and who will not even accept a toy for his daughter, played by Shirley Temple. It's also fun to watch Alice Faye, who is in her platinum blonde phase, playing a voracious gold digger. After the Code began to be enforced, she would turn into a sweet-tempered lady on the screen. But they can't save this smarmy whitewash job.