Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

From my favorite movies..

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

In the opening scene of this movie, the title character is crying because she is pregnant. Her rich boyfriend promises to marry her, but he quickly deserts her by leaving town. The plot summary for this movie identifies this boyfriend as Jimmy, but that is a mistake. We never see the rich boyfriend again.Jimmy, on the other hand, is a clean-cut medical student who is not rich at all, which is why he has to work as a bellhop. Jimmy loves Molly, but she rejects him. She is attracted to a gangster, and goes off with him instead, getting involved in a few of his crimes, and handing her daughter over to an orphanage. When she runs into Jimmy a few years later, he still loves her and wants to marry her and be a father to her daughter. At first she agrees to marry him, but she actually desires Scotty, a hardboiled reporter who promises only that he will show her a good time for a while and then dump her. She likes the idea. In fact, this makes her realize why her own mother abandoned her when she was a child, because when a woman really wants a man, nothing else matters, not even her own child. Jimmy walks in while they are kissing, and she tells him she has decided to run off with Scotty instead.In the last reel, Scotty has a change of heart, promises to help her fight the charges against her for her involvement with the gangster, and then marry her. That a movie should feature a fallen woman who would reject the love of a good man like Jimmy (twice) and knowingly choose men who are scoundrels instead is amazing enough. That she should end up living happily ever after by doing so is a story that could exist only in the pre-Code universe. Or in real life.Trivia: this may be the first movie in which the person shooting a gun and the person being hit with the bullet are in the same frame.

Molly Louvain (Ann Dvorak) is knocked up and abandoned by a rich guy. So she takes up with a dirty crook (Leslie Fenton), then a naive bellhop (Richard Cromwell), and finally a cynical reporter (Lee Tracy). She's the Goldilocks of love. Fun Pre-Coder from WB is a nice showcase for lovely Dvorak, one of classic Hollywood's most under-appreciated talents. She dyes her hair blonde in this. Gotta say she looked better as a brunette. This is also the movie she met her first husband Leslie Fenton. The two married not long after this was released. Lee Tracy doesn't show up until a half hour or so into the picture but things pick up once he does. His scenes with Dvorak are filled with snappy banter and excellent chemistry. The movie really takes off when these two are together.

Fast little Warners item, from a play by Maurine Watkins--who wrote the source material for "Chicago," and this hard-boiled B is very much cut from the same cloth, with big-city corruption, tough-talking dames, and vice not always unrewarded. Ann Dvorak, always good in this sort of part, is the girl from the wrong side of the tracks whose attempts to crash high society are thwarted, and ends up a fugitive, for reasons she's not quite guilty and not quite innocent of. She's also an unwed mom, and not entirely an unsympathetic one, this being a year before they started fully enforcing the Production Code. Lee Tracy plays, as he was born to play, a fast-talking, fast-thinking newspaperman, and watching him at his peak is sort of like watching Cagney--he's so lively he's impossible not to like, even playing a reprobate like this. The story doesn't quite hang together: If Molly was really abandoned by her mom at seven, as she states early on, she's only 16 at the start of the film, which makes no sense at all. And while nobody, not even Tracy, is able to recognize the peroxide version of Molly as the same on-the-lam gal in the picture they have of her, her infant daughter does, at once. The tone's uneven, too, veering between melodrama and uneasy comedy. But Dvorak and Tracy are so watchable, and the supporting cast (Richard Cromwell, Guy Kibbee, Frank McHugh) so quintessential early-'30s Warners, it's a fine time-waster.

The great Ann Dvorak wraps this up with her special brand of magic. It's really a shame she isn't more well known today. A lot of that seems to be because she didn't really have the ambition to stay on top after her initial burst of stardom which is a shame, she was always an arresting screen presence. Here as a woman more sinned against than sinner she is compelling and once she switches to platinum hair very striking. Her troubles are common ones faced in many pre-code dramas but she handles them with grit and skill. Her large expressive eyes tell volumes. Lee Tracy is abrasive but that was his usual persona so if your a fan he isn't bad, I've always found him an acquired taste. Efficiently directed by Curtiz this zips right along even if the ending is a bit of a letdown.