Three decades in the life of a gambling racketeer (Spencer Tracy) is covered, from his days as a street punk to his rise to the head of a syndicate which he ruthlessly runs. Married to the long-suffering Helen Twelvetrees, he keeps a mistress (Alice Faye) on the side, and manages to lead a successful double life until tragedy strikes and his wife walks out on him. Of course, the reign of every great criminal (whether corporate or crime) must come to an end, and this film traces his rise and fall with great detail.
Probably one of Tracy's best Fox films, it is a well written and extremely well acted drama, Tracy giving multiple dimensions to his character who can deal with his enemies ruthlessly at one minute then become extremely compassionate the next. Twelvetrees, one of the most underrated and forgotten leading ladies of the 1930's, gets to rise above the shady dame roles she played a few years later at RKO, and makes her ladylike character extremely interesting. Alice Faye gets to sing one song as the likable mistress, and this is extremely interesting to follow her rise from the Harlow like platinum blonds she played in eras like this to her great musical star that exploded just the next year as Fox was making its transition with 20th Century Pictures.
This lacks the violence of Warner Brothers' gangster sagas and parallels some real life gangsters of the time, much like Universal's "Scarface", yet without the exploitation method of that stark and shocking drama.
Probably one of Tracy's best Fox films, it is a well written and extremely well acted drama, Tracy giving multiple dimensions to his character who can deal with his enemies ruthlessly at one minute then become extremely compassionate the next. Twelvetrees, one of the most underrated and forgotten leading ladies of the 1930's, gets to rise above the shady dame roles she played a few years later at RKO, and makes her ladylike character extremely interesting. Alice Faye gets to sing one song as the likable mistress, and this is extremely interesting to follow her rise from the Harlow like platinum blonds she played in eras like this to her great musical star that exploded just the next year as Fox was making its transition with 20th Century Pictures.
This lacks the violence of Warner Brothers' gangster sagas and parallels some real life gangsters of the time, much like Universal's "Scarface", yet without the exploitation method of that stark and shocking drama.
