Blessed Event
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Written by Howard J. Green from a play by Forrest Wilson and Manuel Seff
1932/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/FilmStruck
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Selected Critical Prose
Rapid-fire pre-Code comedy was one of the first send-ups of Walter Winchell.
Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) sells classified ads for a tabloid for $35 a week. When the gossip columnist (Ned Sparks) goes on vacation, Roberts is given the opportunity to take over for a week. He has an inside informer at the maternity hospital, which gives him the opportunity to announce impending “blessed events” – especially ill-timed or out of wedlock ones. Roberts’s hold-no-prisoners style leads to an increase in law suits and complaints but an even bigger rise in circulation and Roberts column becomes a regular feature. Before long, he is raking in the big bucks by hosting a radio show as well.
Roberts uses his column to roast crooner/bandleader Bunny Harmon (Dick Powell). When Bunny opens a new night club, he announces that Roberts is forbidden on the premises.Naturally, the newspaper man must take up the challenge. We also get a subplot involving a gangster that is none too happy at his own coverage in the column. With Ruth Donnelly great as Roberts’s long-suffering wise-craccking secretary.
Well, if for nothing else, I would be grateful to this movie for introducing the amazingly versatile Powell to the screen. Lee Tracy drank himself out of a career by the mid-30’s but was a bundle of entertaining energy, usually as a newspaper man or press agent, in a number of pre-Code films. He’s fine in this one – matched in talent by a number of wonderful Warner Bros. character actors, Tracy does an amazing rendition of the reality of execution on the electric chair in this. Recommended.
