Back in Circulation

This is a quite unpleasant picture which paints the newspaper industry in a particularly bad light. Joan Blondell plays a character different to the usual bubbly screen persona we're used to. Along with Pat O'Brien, she's a gutter journalist working at a muck-raking scandal rag ruining people's lives without any cares.

If you've seen Mervyn LeRoy's excellent FIVE STAR FINAL made in 1931 this will make you a little depressed. That film was a scathing attack on the disgusting and disreputable practices of the gutter press but six years later it looks like its message was ignored. It's not just the fact that nothing seems to have changed, this picture presents its protagonists as nice, fun-loving regular guys and even tries to inject some elements of comedy. There's no condemnation of these unpleasant people, they don't change, they're the same scumbags at the end as they are at the beginning. The unfunny comedy relief doesn't help - it actually feels quite out of place and a little disrespectful.

After destroying someone's life, Joan Blondell's character does try to make amends but not because she thinks it's the right thing to do, she does this just to make herself feel better about herself. She and Pat O'Brien do put in what feel like authentic performances which does let you engage with them - although you don't really want to.

It's a reasonably well made picture but there's an undercurrent of sourness to this.

... even when you figure in that given the decade, the studio, and the stars - Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell - that you know exactly what kind of film that this is going to be - that being a film with lots of snappy dialogue, akin to the precodes of five years before, but with the rough edges removed to pass the censors.

Timmy Blake (Joan Blondell) is a reporter for the New York Express, a paper run by Bill Morgan (Pat O'Brien), who also is Timmy's boyfriend, and the audience does need to be told that a few times, as these two show zero affection for each other, but do show lots of anger, more like a divorced couple still working together. They are both completely amoral in regards to their profession, in pursuit of a story, regardless of who it hurts.

One night Morgan gets an anonymous note saying that prominent automobile manufacturer Vernon Wade did not die of a heart attack, but instead was murdered by poison. His funeral is planned the next day and he is scheduled to be cremated immediately afterward. Head scratching moment number one - Morgan and Blake go to the town where the funeral is being held and, on the strength of nothing but their fast talking, get the coroner to agree to call off the funeral and perform an autopsy on Wade. The autopsy does turn up that Wade was indeed poisoned using a poison that the Wades did have around the house.

Next is the search for the murderer which, oddly enough, is being headed up by Blake and Morgan rather than the police. The widow is being strangely enigmatic about all of this, and slowly clues arise that point to the widow (Margaret Lindsay) as the murderer. She is arrested and tried for the murder, but this is where things get weird. Suddenly Timmy Blake, ace reporter, grows a heart and a conscience and becomes convinced that the widow is innocent when the clues she dug up were what indicted her in the first place. But for some reason the widow, although she says she is innocent, refuses to assist in her own defense. Complications ensue.

This one was better than I expected precisely because it takes such an odd turn during its last one third, and the mystery is compelling. This was made during the two year period that James Cagney was absent Warner Brothers while they were locked in a contract dispute. And although O'Brien was very good in his role, his seemed like the kind of part that would have gone to Cagney had he been available at the time.

Although reporters are barred from the scene, a deadly train wreck doesn't stop enterprising Joan Blondell (as Timothea "Timmy" Blake) from covering the story. Pretending to be a doctor, Ms. Blondell gets the scoop. Her editor and love interest Pat O'Brien (as William "Bill" Morgan) gets an anonymous tip stating that an automobile manufacturer did not die of heart failure, but was poisoned. He assigns Blondell the story and she suspects beautiful widow Margaret Lindsay (as Arline Vivian). We wonder why Blondell is interested in Mr. O'Brien and, even more, why he seems so uninterested in Blondell. The plot unravels between two dubious letters. The main reason to watch is Blondell. She is strong and sexy in this film. And, although second-billed, Blondell is the star.

**** Back in Circulation (9/25/37) Ray Enright ~ Joan Blondell, Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay, John Litel

There were a few films in the '30s that set the stage for a lot of imitations. One was "It Happened One Night," which gave rise to dozens of films about heiresses, and the other was "The Front Page" from 1931, about a reporter and an editor. "Back in Circulation" is the latter, from 1937.

Here, the reporter is beautiful Joan Blondell, as sparkling and energetic as ever, and her editor is Pat O'Brien (who also appeared in "The Front Page"). Blondell is Timmy, a crafty reporter good at getting in on the most important stories, no matter what she has to do. O'Brien is Bill Morgan, who knows Timmy is the best and is constantly sending her out.

When a wealthy man dies, Bill receives a letter saying he was poisoned, so he dispatches Timmy to investigate. She's able to stop the funeral and convince the medical examiner to do an autopsy. Turns out he was poisoned, and suspicion falls on his wife (Margaret Lindsay). The paper goes after her in a big way, but after Timmy spends some time with her, she begins to suspect that the widow is innocent and hiding something. This puts her at odds with Bill.

Thanks to Blondell's performance, this movie manages to come off, though it isn't the tightest script. It flip-flops between comedy and heavy drama, and the alliance is uneasy.

John Litel and Regis Toomey are featured. Lindsay gives a '30s-style performance, and today it sticks out as being melodramatic. That was the style, and that's the way many roles were written. This was on its way out of style due to stars like Bette Davis.

Entertaining. Always a pleasure to see Blondell in a film.

This is in many ways typical of the comedy/drama/love story/mystery/social message low budget very entertaining movies that Warner Brothers so excelled at in the 1930's. Having been done before in some variation as The Front Page, Front Page Woman, and One Fatal Hour, 1937's Back In Circulation is equally entertaining. Most notably due to the delightful Joan Blondell, a very engaging and effective actor. Her wonderful performance in Back in Circulation makes this one of my favorite movies from this era.

Like all of the other incarnations of this basic premise, this screenplay has its own unique set of characters and circumstances. Joan Blondell plays "Timmy" Blake, the star reporter for The Morning Express, who is possessed of an utterly inexplicable crush on her boss, Bill Morgan (Pat O'Brien), your basic jerk, and we are told that she has in the past gone to great lengths to get the scoop, including stealing evidence and committing perjury. During the course of our story, however, her conscience begins to catch up to her when she finds herself convinced of the innocence of wealthy Arline Wade (Margaret Lindsay), a woman accused of murder that is all but convicted in the pages of The Morning Express. Naturally it is Timmy's cleverness and resourcefulness that gets the story in the Express in the first place, and it is she who must solve the mystery in order to extricate Ms. Wade from a miscarriage of justice. This is all done with appropriately placed poignancy and lighthearted comedic overtones. Timmy belting a sleazebag gigolo unconscious with her perfect right hook ("Beg pardon?") and her screaming "fit" in the street during the scene that leads us into the movie's conclusion are particularly hysterical.

Yes, the story is full of laughably implausible peculiarities (it is obvious movie producers of that era did not consider their audiences as savvy as those of today). On what planet would a struggling reporter living in a two-room apartment be able to afford a closet full of designer gowns and a maid?! These were real reporters, mind you, not the pampered addle-brained news spokes-models of today. It is likewise ridiculous to imagine that a reporter armed with nothing more than an anonymous note (another plot hole, we never are told where this note originated) could walk into a coroner's office and have a burial stopped and demand an autopsy be performed. It's a testament to how entertaining this film is that you don't really notice this sort of thing until after the movie is over and you've had time to think about it.

I am unsure how Pat O'Brien scored top billing in this vehicle, as it would be lost without brilliant and beautiful Joan Blondell, who appears in nearly every scene and certainly outranks O'Brien in both screen time and importance to the plot. The cast is filled out quite nicely with familiar faces from Warner Brothers stable of commendable talent, including John Litel, Ben Welden, and Granville Bates as the coroner. Also keep your eyes on the uncredited generic reporters that make up the press pool in the Plattstown sequences, one of them is DeWolfe (later William) Hopper, who in twenty years time would become Paul Drake on the TV series "Perry Mason".