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*** This review may contain spoilers ***
First off, a confession. I'm a massive Lee Tracy fan. From the moment I first saw him in the classic 1933 satire Bombshell, playing a wisecracking moral vacuum of a publicity man, I was transfixed. Since then I've tracked down every Tracy film I can, and from soapers (You Belong to Me, Carnival) to political drama (The Best Man) to social fantasy (Turn Back the Clock) to pure comedy (Blessed Event), they're all so very, very good. And Tracy is invariably sensational.I'll Tell the World, from 1934, is one of the star's best, playing like a less cynical take on the previous year's Clear All Wires! As so often, Tracy's a reporter who takes to outrageous means to scoop his rival (Roger Pryor), whilst trading epithets with a grumpy editor (Willard Robertson). And as usual, his exuberance and skulduggery gets him the inside track on the stories that matter. There's a hilarious opening bit here that sees Tracy tracking a downed zeppelin to a remote, snow-capped cabin. By the time he returns to the office the next day, his boss has already moved on to the next story. Robertson tasks Tracy with following an elderly Archduke who's being targeted by terrorists, and our story proper begins. As with Roberta and Tovarich, the film also concerns itself with a European princess (Gloria Stuart), estranged from her homeland, and with whom Tracy falls in love.The movie begins with its tongue firmly-in-cheek and the gags running thick and fast. But while there are plenty of sharp one-liners in the second half (including a hilarious running joke about phones that ropes in Walter Brennan), there's also suspense, intrigue and a generous helping of romance. In fact, I've never seen Tracy so sincere. He's usually playing up so relentlessly that there's barely time to convince his girl he's on the level before he's off again, doing whatever it is he's just promised not to. Here he plays it square with Stuart and the results are extremely affecting.Tracy was a special actor, with a dynamism and charisma that no-one since has really matched. This film is an ideal showcase for his considerable talents. But while I've enjoyed some of Gloria Stuart's performances (The Prisoner of Shark Island, Wanted! Jane Turner - also opposite Tracy - The Whistler, and the James Cameron version of Titanic, where she played Old Rose), I've often found her a slightly bland presence. Here she's utterly superb, articulating her character's dilemmas with subtlety and honesty. There's a good supporting cast too, including Walter Brennan as a bicycle repair man moonlighting as a phone engineer, Herman Bing as a waiter, Ward Bond playing a pilot and an impossibly young Leon Ames appearing as Tracy's agency contact - he's billed as Leon Waycoff and is wearing more eye-shadow that Stuart.I'll Tell the World is exceptionally difficult to get hold of, but I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys classic comedy. The script is zingy, Edward Sedgwick's direction is smart and unobtrusive and the plot moves like wildfire. This one comes with a warning, though - once you've seen Tracy do his thing, you'll want to get hold of everything he's ever done.
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