A Fella's Got a Better Chance in the Dark

Me and My Gal (1932)
directed by Raoul Walsh
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched on the Criterion Channel

Spencer Tracy, who I never particularly liked, but who looked like my maternal grandfather (who I loved), pronounces "burlesque" as "burley-cue", nicely adjacent to a Charles Portis character ordering a "fill-it minion" at a steakhouse. Other poetry peppered throughout "Me and My Gal" includes "palooka", "bloater" (a smoked herring), "hoosegow" (for jail), "stewbum" (the local rummy), and the recurring expression "a pretty fresh bezark" (pronounced "bee-zark"). Nothing could make me happier than listening to a screwball-era beauty like Joan Bennett—whose last role was the vice directress of the dance academy in Suspiria—whisper such sweet nothings into my ear, and she's a pleasure in every one of her scenes.

This is one of those movies where the same four people keep running into each other a little more regular than they might outside of the pictures, but also a Depression-era gem in line with the great socialist rhetoric of the studios at the time. It begins with a touching, heartbreaking moment when a destitute stranger on the New York docks attempts to drown his dog—who he can no longer afford to care for—by tying a ship pulley to the dog's collar. Tracy promises to look after the poor pooch, and does, and later delivers a long soliloquy about what a great president Al Smith might have made.

From the lips of hair-trigger beat cops-turned-detectives to God's ears—Robert Caro would be proud. That, plus a Thief-esque bank job in which an acytelene torch is used to drop into the vaults via the floor of the family who lives above the safe. I guess it's only in the movies anymore that people eat at a place called Ed's Chowder House and tell the men they love to "park that wad of gum", so that's where I'll continiue to hang my hat.

"Married women don't cheat... much!"