This is a movie about a shady auctioneer who is in love with his gift of gab, which our hero believes allows him to sell anything to anybody. This means much of the movie's brief running time is filled up with Pat O'Brien blabbing on, auctioneer style, about the peerless quality of his goods, the fairness of his pricing, his own inflated sense of self-regard, and (to his acolytes) the swell tricks he just pulled on some poor sap or other. If you like your petty swindlers to spew reams of bogus verbosity, this is the film for you.
Unfortunately, we're supposed to find our hero at least somewhat likable. Maybe Cagney could have pulled this off. Pat O'Brien, however, you just want to hit with an auctioneer's mallet. Ann Dvorak is given pretty good reason to revere the guy by the script, but, by the end of the film, it's hard to understand why she would not be joining the line of folks who want to murder the twit.
At least the movie makers had the wit to depict O'Brien as someone easily duped and he does not, ultimately, succeed in his big time schemes. And, like most Warners of the period, the film moves along pretty well. The problem here is the one finds with a lot of 30s Clark Gable films -- the lead character is a selfish cad in need of a sound thrashing, rather than a happy ending with the pretty female lead.
