Clear All Wires!

"Clear All Wires!" is another movie about unscrupulous journalism. In this case it wasn't serious like "Scandal Sheet" (1932) or "Five Star Final" (1931). It was silly, it was stupid, it was bad.

The movie starred Lee Tracy which was already a negative. He played a lying, deceptive journalist who fabricated just about every bit of news report he turned in. The only reason he hadn't been found out is that he was an overseas correspondent so there was no other journalist there to fact check him.

I can only take Lee Tracy in small doses. His voice is annoying and his type of comedy is not for me. He played Buckley Joyce Thomas, a reporter for a Chicago newspaper. He could out-talk anyone and it seemed to work; especially on women. He didn't go anywhere without his faithful sidekick Lefty (James Gleason) who'd do anything for him.

***Side bar

Servants and assistants were extremely faithful back then according to Hollywood. Whether their employer could pay them or not they'd stick around, fully vested in the well-being of their employer. They'd even lie, cheat, and steal for them. Why do I find that hard to believe?

***End side bar

Buckley's antics got even worse when he went to Russia to cover the fifteen year anniversary of the Russian revolution. His attempts to make news there were as dangerous as they were brainless. If only it were funny.

Meanwhile, Buckley had at least three women hanging onto his coattail. He had Dolly (Una Merkel), his main squeeze and his boss's sweetheart. There was Eugenie (Lya Lys), a Russian paramour he'd forgotten about. And there was Kate (Benita Hume), the smart, decent woman who he largely ignored, but who would patiently wait until Buckley got around to recognizing she was the best thing for him. Those women are the worst.

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Snappy Lee Tracy's role in his first MGM movie "Clear All Wires" was almost prophetic in view of how he left the studio. At the end of 1933 MGM sent him to Mexico for "Viva Villa" where his behaviour on a balcony in front of a passing parade had him hustled out of the country and saw his MGM contract cancelled. But at the start of 1933 everything was rosy and in "Clear All Wires" he played a high powered newspaper correspondent who almost sparks an international incident when he has to create news out of a vacuum. The studio was extremely happy with him and his ability (like Glenda Farrell) to rattle off the rate of 40 words in ten seconds (Glenda was even faster - in "Torchy Gets Her Man" she gave a 400 word speech in 40 seconds!!) Anyway Tracy confided that he always slowed down his speech just before a rapid fire delivery to give the impression he was faster than he was!!

Buckley Joyce Thomas never lets a no news day stand in the way of a good story. Whether it's finding human interest in the taciturn answers of a peasant, a worker or a new woman of Russia or fast talking his way into the middle of a meeting between Stalin and Lenin, Buckley is always at the forefront, even if he has to side swipe his rival reporters to get the scoop. With his faithful sidekick "Lefty" (Russell Gleason in a pretty thankless role) and his girl, Kate (Benita Hume was lovely but could they have found another actress who had less chemistry with Lee - I doubt it!!!) he is always able to get out of any scrape.

To be honest this is definitely not my favourite Tracy movie - maybe it was just the dour setting and as another reviewer said poking fun at Russia may have been funnier in the early 30s than it is now. The person who comes off best is Una Merkel - but doesn't she always. Her leading lady parts gone and now doing what she did best - golden supporting parts where she mostly stole the show. She played Buckley's former flame who has found a new "daddie" - one who appreciates her voice and wants to see her renowned throughout the Continent. But Dolly is not at all shy about having Buckley in her life again. As usual Una takes whatever small morsel of a part she is given and runs with it, making even a line like "and if I wasn't wearing my shoes, they'd have stolen them too" sound like the funniest line in the movie!! - Buckley had promised her a luxurious "Orient Express" type train compartment but, believing his lies, she found herself on a freight train to Siberia!!!

Those of us who only know Lee Tracy from his late career Art Hochsteader, the former president in Gore Vidal's play and movie THE BEST MAN (Tracy repeated his Tony winning role in the film) are in for a treat in this FRONT PAGE-style farce on the newspaper trade from early in that career.

After a somewhat disappointing 93 performance Broadway run with Thomas Mitchell as the lead newsman, Sam and Bella Spewak (later to create KISS ME KATE with Cole Porter) brought their frantically paced farce West with two members of the Broadway Cast (John Melvin Bleifer as Sozanoff and Ari Kutai as Kastya - relatively minor roles). The resulting film would be a perfect double feature with Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur's classic FRONT PAGE, filmed just two years earlier.

As far as we know, the Broadway run of CLEAR ALL WIRES did not provide any moments as romantic as THE FRONT PAGE's Opening Night - when MacArthur asked Helen Hayes to marry him - but barely five years after the movie came out, the Spewaks and Cole Porter used CLEAR ALL WIRES (with the addition of a comic reluctant diplomat character) as the basis for their musical hit LEAVE IT TO ME, which introduced Mary Martin to Broadway - and Broadway has had a love affair with HER ever since.

Una Merkel plays the Mary Martin part (Dolly) in the movie and even bears a striking resemblance - but she doesn't get to sing "My Heart Belongs To Daddy!"

CLEAR ALL WIRES' politics (Stalin and even an expendable Romanoff life are less important to Tracy's character than a headline) are a bit muddy, but the farce scarcely gives you time to think about them. It's 1933 and all Director George W. Hill and the Spwewaks care about is getting the next laugh - which they do with satisfying regularity - either the next laugh or the next turn that leaves you stunned with the sheer audacity. A fun 78 minutes.

Lee Tracy plays a typical '30s reporter in "Clear All Wires" from 1933.

What's a typical '30s reporter? Fast-talking, glib, manipulative, will do anything to get a story -- and who better to play him in his MGM debut than Lee Tracy?

In "Clear All Wires," Tracy's character, Buckley Joyce Thomas, isn't averse to making the news either, or embellishing it. According to him, he's dying of thirst in the desert at one point when in fact, he's being treated like a king.

When he returns to Chicago, he runs into his publisher's girlfriend, Dolly (Una Merkel) - she calls her benefactor "Daddy" -- and, with his boss out of the room, Buckley makes plans to meet her that evening. His publisher isn't an idiot. Buckley is then dispensed to Moscow immediately.

There, he takes over another reporter's suite (and later his identity) and, with his assistant (James Gleason) tries to get some major interviews.

Then Dolly shows up, and the publisher fires him for conduct unbecoming. Desperate, he tries to marry a fellow reporter, Kate (Benita Hume) who is insulted because she really does love him. Now he really has to do something to keep his job.

It's a very fast film probably trying to be madcap, but it's a little too talky for that, having been a play starring Thomas Mitchell. But Lee Tracy is excellent. Always theatrical in his approach, this was his kind of role.

This material has a place in Broadway history. It was made into a musical, "Leave it to Me," which was Mary Martin's debut in the Una Merkel role. And what did she sing? "My Heart Belongs to Daddy."

The portrait of newspaper reporters in '30s films is hardly complimentary, for the most part. Fast talking, glib, often quite amoral, anything goes for a story, including fabricating one, if necessary.

Broadway actor-turned-Hollywood-actor Lee Tracy was simply one of the best at playing this kind of unscrupulous breed. With his machine gun nasel voiced delivery and strong facial comic reactions, Tracy was always curiously likable no matter what scheme his characters, in this case American reporter Buckley Joyce Thomas, may have connived.

Clear All Wires, made while he was briefly at MGM in 1933, captures the actor very much in his fast talking prime. The film is fast and hectic, with more than capable support from James Gleason as Tracy's faithful henchman, ready to do anything, including literally shooting someone, if it will help his boss, as well as Una Merkel, as a former paramour of the reporter who now, rather inconveniently, has become the girlfriend of his boss.

Above all, though, this comic adventure, which starts in the Moroccan desert (look for Mischa Auer as a sheik), gradually shifting to Moscow where, of course, anything goes for a news story, is Tracy's show.

At one point, ironically, his character is fired for "conduct unbecoming a gentleman." This would actually foreshadow events in the actor's own life, for the following year he would be fired by MGM on the on-location set of Viva Villa!, bringing to an end, unfortunately, Tracy's time in major Hollywood productions, for his own "ungentlemanly behaviour" from a Mexican balcony.

And it was a loss, not only for the actor but viewers of '30s films, when Lee Tracy was afterward relegated to working with lesser material in smaller studios. It would never again be quite the same for him, though he would storm back on stage and then screen thirty years later with strong Oscar-nominated character work as the U.S. President in Gore Vidal's The Best Man. That, however, would be a distinctly older, grim Tracy just a few years shy of his death from cancer.

Clear All Wires gives the viewer the opportunity to see the young Tracy still in his prime, and he's fun to watch, even if the material, ultimately, may not be quite as funny as it is smartly paced.