Here Comes Carter

Ross Alexander stars in "Here Comes Carter," a one-hour programmer from Warner Brothers.

Alexander was given roles that were rejected by the Warners stars. Here he plays a press agent, Carter, who is fired when an actor orders him to kill a story. Carter becomes a radio gossip columnist and doesn't get mad, he gets even.

He has two women interested in him -- a radio singer (Alexander's future wife, Anna Nagel) and Glenda Farrell, who plays a secretary.

If you look fast and hard you'll see Wayne Morris as a short-order cook and Jane Wyman as a nurse.

Alexander isn't very good, he's quite loud and brash.

Alexander's story is one of the most tragic in Hollywood. This was his second-last film before he blew his brains out at the age of 29. A successful Broadway actor, he was a closet homosexual.

At the time of his death, he was married to Anne Nagel, and it unfortunately affected her career as well, as his suicide was traumatic for her. She died penniless at age 50.

Not very good and, given the fate of the stars, a real downer.

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.

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.

This was the fifth Warner Brothers short that William Clemens directed; he also directed the Philo Vance, Nancy Drew, and the Falcon film series. We see right off the bat that lead Kent Carter (Ross Alexander - see his bio on IMDb for his tragic story) loves his secretary Linda, played by Anne Nagel, and she may or may not love him back. He gets tossed out of his job, threatened by thugs, and spends the rest of this short trying to get a job, keep a job, or stay alive. Glenda Farrell (from Little Caesar & Gold Diggers) is his assistant Verna Kennedy. The dashing Craig Reynolds (died at 40 in a motorcycle accident) is his nemesis Rex Marchbanks. We get to hear Nagel sing a couple songs, while Carter keeps outsmarting the bad guys. and all neatly wrapped up in 58 minutes. fun, simple caper.

"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.