Here Comes Carter

This amusing but overly frantic second feature comedy stars Ross Alexander as a Hollywood press agent who is fired from his job flacking at a movie studio and becomes a radio reporter on Tinseltown, dishing the dirt. Alexander co-stars with future wife Anne Nagel, but the show is stolen by Charley Foy and by Glenda Farrel as a hard-boiled secretary at the radio station.

Ross Alexander is an interesting performer, but his manner in this role is a little too loud when he opens his mouth, half Walter Winchell and half Ted Lewis, although when he lies back on his heels for a reaction shot, he seems made for the movies. Alexander was being cast in Dick Powell's cast-offs at this point and his director here, Clemens, doesn't add much to this one-hour featurette.

Except for early glimpses of up-and-coming stars like WAYNE MORRIS (as a fast food counter man) and JANE WYMAN (barely visible), HERE COMES CARTER is strictly routine stuff with ROSS Alexander cast as a brash and very smug newsman, a central character you can't help dislike.

GLENDA FARRELL trades barbs with him as a tough talking secretary in her usual brisk manner. The foolish plot is something about a man who loses his job because of an indiscreet column blasting a colleague, handsome CRAIG REYNOLDS. He then has to spend the rest of the story planning his comeback.

Alexander gives a one-note performance, full of brash mannerisms and nothing else. ANNE NAGEL, who became his future wife in real life, plays his secretary with a lovely singing voice with aspirations of her own. Neither one went on to establish themselves in films, Alexander taking his own life shortly after marrying her and Nagle's career stifled by B-films and serials for the duration of her career.

With roles like this, it's no wonder Alexander was highly dissatisfied with the turn his career was taking.

"Here Comes Carter" is one of those cinematic throwaways that Warner Bros. (and the other major studios) ground out back in the pre-television days. It stars Ross Alexander, a likable young performer and closeted homosexual who killed himself at the age of 29, Glenda Farrell back when she was still a knockout and Anne Nagel who was a better actress than most of the glamour girls on the Warner Bros. lot. The plot doesn't make a whole lotta' sense. One minute, Carter is a movie studio publicist, the next he's an imitation Winchell, broadcasting Hollywood gossip. There's a subplot about a gangster's plan to bump off Carter but that gets lost in the shuffle. One suspects that the screenwriters were making this thing up just in time to send pages of script to the sound stage where the movie was already filming. Yet, in its own hackneyed way, "Here Comes Carter" is fun.

This is one of the few films that the very tragic Ross Alexander made before he ultimately killed himself at age 29! He only made 17 films and this is his next to last feature. As another reviewer recommended, read his IMDb biography for more on Alexander.

Kent Carter (Alexander) is out of work and eventually finds a job writing for a radio star. However, one day this star is too drunk to go on the air and with no other choice, they let Carter go on instead. Carter's on the air style is much like Walter Winchell...but even more scandalous and muckraking! Naturally, he irritates a lot of people and soon folks start threatening to sue...but his information is the truth AND the folks at home love him. Soon he's a big star and along with this his ego grows tremendously. Eventually, his ticks off not just movie folks but the mob...as well as his girl who is ashamed of him. At one point, Linda tells him she'd rather 'see him cleaning sewers' instead of doing a radio show like he's been doing! What's going to become of all this?

If a movie could make the star in it bigger, this probably wasn't the one for Alexander. His character is too brash, self-absorbed and unlikable--much like the sorts of guys Lee Tracy excelled at portraying--a guy who actually created a niche for himself playing these sorts of jerks. I am sure this film had little to do with his suicide but it certainly didn't help Alexander in his career. The film is enjoyable but a slight and easy to skip time-passer from Warner Brothers.

By the way, early in the film you'll see Wayne Morris as a fry cook...before he became a star with the studio.

In his brief career Ross Alexander as was the lot of so many B picture actors got the castoffs that the players higher up on the Warner Brothers food chain discarded. Watching Here Comes Carter you can see folks like James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and Dick Powell doing the role of the fast talking press agent turned gossip columnist who's got a grudge to settle with a ham actor.

Even in the Thirties the audience had seen all this before. When actor Craig Reynolds tells him to kill a story involving wife the public doesn't know he has, Alexander says no and Reynolds gets him canned.

Our resourceful hero is down, but not out. By sheer chutzpah, Alexander gets himself a position as a Walter Winchell like radio commentator and manages to settle a few scores before this less than an hour long film has run its course.

Ross has two girls in pursuit of him, radio singer Anne Nagel and secretary Glenda Farrell. Watch the film if you want to see who he winds up with. Also note that Wayne Morris has a small bit part as a short order cook and future Oscar winner Jane Wyman is in an even briefer part as a nurse.

Poor Ross Alexander died by his own hand shortly after meeting and marrying Anne Nagel. But the studio system already had someone in line for his parts, a young radio announcer named Ronald Reagan was waiting in the wings. Now that was a career that went somewhere.

Alexander's character had an annoying habit of punctuating each tidbit of gossip with a 'ho-ho' to his audience. The critics gave this film the old heave ho.