Bless This Precode Event

 We Need Columnists Like Lee Tracy

I have a question for broadcast authorities. Was anyone ever shot on live radio? It happens in Blessed Event and seems credible to me. Surely among hundreds of thousands of hours sent into ether orbit, blood was spilled. Certainly there were incidents on television, viewable at You Tube given stomach for them. Reporters/columnists of the roaring era were often mistook for skeet by a criminal element. They die regular in precode The Finger Points, Dance, Fools, Dance, others. To gather news was to assume risk, city streets dangerous as those of the frontier west. Audiences took much of precode for truth. I know I do, or at least want to. Blessed Event was hot, had 115 NY performances (2-12 to 5-21, 1932), was nakedly inspired by Walter Winchell. Roger Pryor as keyhole peeper “Alvin Roberts,” nee Winchell, intrigued latter enough to stop in with "a massive bodyguard" for his own peep. Any publicity was good publicity, so Winchell let the show alone, Hollywood meanwhile eager to adapt, that confirmed by five offers, Blessed Event ideal for on-lot dynamos. Paramount had the property in mind for Jack Oakie, Universal figured Lew Ayres to lead, and James Dunn was thought right by Fox. Most serious offers were floated by MGM and Warners, WB snatching the ball with $1,000 over Leo’s offer and getting Blessed Event for $66K.

Overworked and underpaid Jim Cagney was visiting New York and caught the play. Maybe he saw little to it, or was fed up at prospect of playing another go-getter, evermore ruction with Warners over money a factor as well. He'd come home, start Blessed Event, then pull out. Any player less potent would have been bounced offsite for such affront, but this was Cagney, urgency less to punish a star who ankled than find one who could fill in toot sweet. That would be Lee Tracy, late of The Front Page on NY stage, understudied by pre-star Cagney when Tracy starred in Broadway, Lee emerging as an East Coast doppelganger to West Coast Jim. He had been tried in pictures and figured for Cagney at faster clip. In fact, Tracy was quick enough with words to leave hinterlands at loss as to what this dervish was about. Too, he lacked romance, being smarmy to degree matched by demon scribes his stage/screen lot. Crowds doubted Tracy winning Fay Wray at the end of Doctor X or beauteous Mary Brian here. Still, it was raw energy Lee was selling, and at that, he was peerless.

 

The play supplied topper moments to spare. One where Tracy detail-describes electric chair ritual was morbid past what horror shows dealt, but crowds at urban caves lapped it like cats after cream (Blessed Event blessed both Warner Strands, Manhattan and Brooklyn), them hardened to what tabloids taught about reality of the streets. Such attitude seeped to states far afield and their hometown Bijous, caustic travelling fast. Columnist Tracy is a "heel" to extent of valuing success more than people, but viewers caught the drift, having come round to life as struggle if not an outright racket. Soft guys finishing last was understood as the way things were, Lee Tracy handy to confirm and invite emulation. Any notion of journalism as font of integrity was dashed by Blessed Event, but didn't every profession get its precode baptism in fire? (such as Wm. Powell/Warren William telling tough truth in Lawyer Man/The Mouthpiece).

How many “keyhole columnists” thrived in the 30’s? Winchell was a most noted, but had rivals (one to reckon with: Ed Sullivan). Did these men get death threats like Lee Tracy in the movie? If so, were any made good? I’m guessing that if Winchell took a beat-down, he kept it to himself. Not much image enhancement in having your head kicked in regular. Did Winchell really fear no one? Sampling I’ve seen of his columns make me wish there were anthologies of Winchell stuff. Of course it dates --- the whole point for me. He was what they called a “word-slinger.” Winchell began in vaudeville, knew how to entertain, his output gracious for that. Briefest squibs are his best, sort of like Dorothy Parker where once you get past her quotable quotes, there is same standard her stories and poetry had to meet, others in those crafts understood to be better, but she, Winchell, select few, carried sharpest rapiers.

Blessed Event as a play had Roger Pryor for the lead. I see him onscreen as a stiff, first exposure being where Karloff put Pryor and others in deep freeze for Columbia in 1940. On him, hot or cold didn’t much matter, but who’s to say he was anything other than a dynamo on stage? Some could conquer movies, others live performing. Not so many mastered both. Also from Blessed stage cast came Allen Jenkins, Isabel Jewell, and Lee Patrick, each to become familiars at Warners and type-casting elsewhere. Was legit a better source for character talent than fresh stars? Potential drafted from Pittsburgh of all places was Dick Powell, favorite of locals for three years he spent emceeing at presentation houses, his said to be razor repartee twixt bands and film (he sang, played instruments, too). Powell stole Blessed Event, said at least insiders with vested interest. His mile-high tenor is chucklesome to us --- he’d poke fun at it years later on television, long after tough guy Powell was accepted fact. Cheerful oddities Blessedly abounding: Ruth Donnelly as Tracy/Alvin secretary refers to “Tennyson’s brook,” we and he expected to pick up reference to nineteenth-century British poetry (Cagney dropped a same line to “President Roosevelt” in Yankee Doodle Dandy). Proof again that writing, watchers, the lot, were more cultivated than our sad lot now.

Lee Reminds Me of Bill Fields In This Capture

What precode gave was keyhole view of the news game. Since daily scribes wrote most tales of their trade, it was a cinch they’d flatter themselves, and each other. Winchell was happy as a clam with Blessed Event, handing it orchids wherever run, letting Warner use squibs at will. A tough game was reporting, but Alvin Roberts has a heart, if late-emerging. Score up Blessed Event for bounce unlike weighty lift of decades-later Ace In The Hole, where we’re invited not to enjoy Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, but instead wait for just dessert he'll be served. For such “brave” statement on media abuses, it seems to me Ace In The Hole chickens out at the end the way Blessed Event does not. Precode was the goods --- think the PCA would have let Blessed Event happen in 1951? Kirk Douglas driving all that way to tell Mr. Boot “you can have me for nothing,” before dropping headlong dead at his editor’s feet. Do please show me the door.

To save for last, then: Lee Tracy (pre-Hollywood, on stage, at left). I found fan mag profiles attacking drink rumors and aver of unreliability on Lee’s part, seemingly from a moment he detrained in California. He called it a crock framed by enemies afraid to show their face. Is it possible Lee had too much talent and energy for his own good? Cagney was as wired, but on screen only, being otherwise bookish and retiring. One could be jaunty and say Lee pi—ed away his standing, but that would require buy into accounts brought back from Mexico and Viva Villa location. I would have sent the naughty boy upstairs without supper, then had him back at work the next day. Besides, reliable sources say the thing never happened, or happened very different, and milder, than what was reported (mild version an obscene gesture from the street below, which Tracy returned). Enough of Lee --- his legacy is safe so long as Blessed Event unspools. Note above Schine’s Palace ad (Lockport, NY) where Blessed Event is featured with a one act comedy performed by the “High School Dramatic Class,” and there’s a six-person cast list, plus a director credited. Suppose College Bred was as funny as Blessed Event?