The Murder Man (1935)

Newspaper stories like this one were popular beginning with "The Front Page" (1931) and including "Dance Fool Dance" (1931), "It Happened One Night" (1934), "Front Page Woman" (1935), "Love on the Run" (1936), and "Libeled Lady" (1936). My favorite newspaper stories include "Citizen Kane" (1941), "The Front Page" (1931),"All the President's Men" (1976), "Deadline USA" (1952) , "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), and "Ace in the Hole" (1951), and "Meet John Doe" (1941).This film doesn't have the acting, direction, or location to match any of these films. It does have Spencer Tracey and a good supporting cast that includes Jimmy Stewart (his second film), Fuzzy Knight, Lionel Atwil, Robert Barrat, and Virginia Bruce. And it does have a twist that comes out of left field. But when you consider the quality of the films being produced in 1935 ("Mutiny on the Bounty", "The Informer", "Anna Karenina", "The 39 Steps", "The Bride of Frankenstein", "David Copperfield", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Les Miserables", "Top Hat", and "A Night at the Opera") the film has little merit.

Spencer Tracy as a star New York reporter in a murder mystery that starts out as a fast-pace comedy and gradually turns dramatic.You'll recognize many of the faces in the supporting cast, even if you don't recognize the names. It's Jimmy Stewart's first film. He's "Shorty", the new reporter. Lionel Atwill gives the only performance in his life where he shows something resembling compassion, instead of his usual clipped authoritarianism.The cop at the merry-go-round is played by James Flavin. A native of Maine and a graduate of West Point, Flavin usually played Irish cops. Actually, he played nothing but Irish cops, and all cops in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s were played by James Flavin. Even the word "flavinoid" was coined to describe a person resembling a cop played by James Flavin. A performance that deliberately spoofs Flavin's notion of a cop is known in the trade as a "riboflavin," originally "rib of Flavin." You don't believe it? Look it up in Wikipedia.I'm trying to avoid any details of the plot because the solution to the mystery may come as a surprise.The first half hour is a shameless rip off of "The Front Page". Even the set design seems to replicate the press room in the play, or at any rate in "His Girl Friday." The pace isn't as fast in "The Murder Man" but still everyone rushes around, shouting fabricated stories into phones. It seems to call for bouncy Jimmy Cagney but he was busy at Warners and perhaps Tracy was better suited to the events leading up to the Big Reveal.Tracy's slouching figure is not exactly heroic. He's a star reporter, so they keep saying, but he disappears for days on end while on a major bender. At first his drunken impertinence is played for laughs. He and his editor at the New York Star grumble at each other, like Clark Gable drunkenly calling his editor a "big palooka" at the opening of "It Happened One Night." At first it seems like just another cheap movie with a fine cast, but after the writers have worked through their imitations and gotten the fake jokes out of the way, it turns rather interesting.

This movie includes the first significant starring role for James Stewart who has a supporting part as a newspaper reporter. The main focus of the movie is on Spencer Tracy who is the ace reporter for the New York Star newspaper who is good at reporting on murder cases. The movie starts off with a scene that involves two rather shady money financiers. You need to pay attention to what happens at the start because it is crucial to explaining the conclusion of the movie's storyline. The story involves a murder of one of the shady financiers and the trial of his partner for his murder. Spencer's character appears to have the jump on all of the other newspaper reporters when the headline news comes out during the murder trial. The trial ends with the conviction of the partner and he is sentenced to die. The movie then has a twist that turns the storyline completely in a different direction. Spencer's character makes a voice recording that explains the events that occurred at the start of the movie. Spencer plays a somewhat "bad" character which differs from his many other movie roles in this film. There also wasn't a final conclusion at the end of this movie, so it might leave some viewers disappointed. However, it was a very interesting movie with a surprise twist at the end.

This was one of the first features that Spencer Tracy did for his new studio MGM when they signed him in 1935. At his first studio, 20th Century Fox he was cast in a whole lot of routine action pictures as a two-fisted rugged type in whatever role he played. It's no different here, in fact until he played Father Mullin in San Francisco, Tracy's MGM career promised more roles of the same type.Here he's a newspaper reporter in the best tradition of The Front Page which this film borrows a lot from. He's called The Murder Man because he's the one the editor, Robert Barrat, call for when he wants coverage on any homicide. He's covering one in this film concerning an investment broker (con artist) who's accused of killing his partner. In fact Tracy provides key evidence for a conviction. The movie does have a surprise ending which I won't reveal, unusual for a film in the 1930s. That and the presence of Spencer Tracy and James Stewart make it worth viewing.This was the film debut of James Stewart. He has a role of another reporter on the same paper as Tracy. He was signed by MGM after appearing on Broadway in the play Yellow Jacket and garnering rave reviews. He's the same Jimmy Stewart that soon became an icon, but he didn't get much attention for the few lines he had here. He would have to wait for his next film appearance in Rose Marie to get moviegoers attention.