User Reviews

Whether leading a jury to find in favor of his client, getting the big scoop or telling John Barrymore that he sagged like an old woman, Lee Tracy was always someone to keep your eye on, whether you are the D. A. trying his case, the victim of his tell all journalism or even just as a member of the audience. You don't want to miss a minute of anything he says, because it seems so fresh like it wasn't written, plain spoken as only a big city smart aleck like Tracy could say. Here, he calls boozy doctor Frank Morgan a "drunken bat", and it seems to roll off his lips as if he was the one who thought of it. If Tracy didn't ad-lib, then he must have had writers clamoring to write for him, because his delivery is superb.

Tracy's character here is an attorney commonly referred to as an "ambulance chaser", and along with Morgan, his racket includes veteran trickster Charles Butterworth who gets settlements for accidents he sets up. He meets his match in the wise to his ways Madge Evans who sets him up to bring him down, getting the key information from a drunk Morgan. This leads to a confrontation where Tracy blames him for the leaks, leading to tragic consequences and tearing Evans up for her part in it.

It only briefly sinks to melodrama, finding its best moments when it is comic. One of Tracy's clients is the newly widowed Greta Meyer who upsets his plans by planning to get married days afterward. "He was an old miser", Meyer says matter of factly as fiancée Herman Bing comes in. This script is right on target, even getting a dig in at Hitler, showing that the Hollywood propaganda machine was ready even just as Nazi Germany was rising. Sometimes a great film doesn't have to be excellent. It just has to have the spark to immediately gain and keep your interest.

"The Nuisance" is a comedy drama and slight romance that portrays a seedy side of the law profession and justice of the early 1930s. Lee Tracy plays the fast-talking shyster attorney, Joseph Phineas Stevens. He has a crew of crooked collaborators in his ambulance chasing operation. Madge Evans enters the picture as Dorothy Mason, another streetcar accident victim - so Joe thinks. He wants to use her, as he has other accident clients, to sue the streetcar transit company.

But, as Joe falls for Dorothy, his future as an attorney becomes threatened. She was hired by the streetcar company to go undercover and expose Joe's operation as fraudulent. But, Dorothy starts to fall for Joe, and things get more complicated. Toss into this, Joe's old friend and medical shyster, Dr. Buchanan Prescott, played by Frank Morgan, and things get pretty hairy for Joe. Charles Butterworth is a top associate for Joe, as Floppy Phil Montague.

Dorothy is the first person to learn from Joe how and why he became the crooked attorney he is. He relates to her his first experience out of law school, when he believed in justice and helping people. His first client was a man who had lost a leg, and who had a real claim for damages. But, Joe says, he lost the case on a technicality, and the opposing attorney was John Calhoun, the attorney for the streetcar company. So, Joe has been out to get Calhoun and his company ever since. But in his quest for vengeance and "justice," Joe has become exceedingly greedy, and he often hurts and goes against his clients.

Joe also doesn't mind taking some clients to the cleaners who were guilty of things such as robbery or theft. In one such case, his client is Aloysius P. McCarthy, played by Nat Pendleton. As a streetcar operator, McCarthy had been caught steeling nickels from the company. The company caught him with 450 nickels in his lunch pail. When Joe found out that McCarthy had $200 in savings, he took the case. The math is a little strange, as their exchange shows when Joe visits McCarthy in jail. McCarthy says, "I can't figure it. I only stole 50 bucks, and you want two hundred and seventy. So I lose 220 bucks for pinching 50. It don't make sense." Joe replies, "Technocracy, my boy. Technocracy."

That may have been Joe's way of saying, "Crime doesn't pay," but Tracy's character never comes right out and says that. So, what happens with Joe and Dorothy? The ending doesn't really say. Does he straighten up or not? Does she leave or stay? This movie was right in the middle of the Great Depression, yet there's no sign of people out of work in the film. This is a good example for modern audiences of some of the Hollywood efforts to entertain people while taking their minds off the economic crisis of the time.

This movie has one brief scene that is of historical significance. It may be the very first jab by a Hollywood movie studio at Adolf Hitler and Naziism. When Floppy goes to telephone Joe about Mrs. Mannheimer wanting to get her family doctor to look at her fiancé, Willy, she says, "And all good doctors is German." Floppy's reply to her is, "I understand all that's been changed since Hitler was elected."

While the German people had not elected Hitler, through political machinations he had just become the dictatorial head of Germany. Hitler ran for the presidency in the early elections of 1932, as head of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), also called the Nazi party. He lost to Paul von Hindenburg, who was reelected; but by November, other elections had given the Nazis the largest number of seats in the Reichstag - the lower house of the German parliament. Still, it didn't have a majority to be able to form a government. So, former leaders, including the outgoing chancellor, urged President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor. He did that on Jan. 30, 1933. On March 23, the parliament passed the Enabling Act which allowed the government to issue laws outside of parliament, and that, in turn, led to the complete Nazification of Germany.

This movie was shot during the spring while these later events were taking place in Germany. So, when the movie premiered on May 26, 1933, in New York City, Hitler had been the head of the German government for four months, and Naziism had been entrenched in the law of the land for two months.

No publicity agent could have created a more high flying life for Lee Tracy than the one he was living. An "actors" actor and born to play in those very racy pre-coders, he first found fame in the hit play that combined gangsters and showgirls - "Broadway". It ran for 603 performances. He then played Hildy Johnson in "The Front Page" and it was claimed he never missed a performance. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood, always on the lookout for new and different personalities beckoned. He could have been MGM's answer to James Cagney ( with a lot of humour thrown in) but his high living caught up with him and by 1934 the studio were washing their hands of him.

Only in the early thirties could they make a comedy about "ambulance chasers" - and make it side splitting - people knew how to laugh then. "Ambulance chaser" shyster lawyer, J. Phineas Stevens wants to uphold the rights of every "forgotten man and forgotten women" - even if they want to be left forgotten!! With the help of an always intoxicated doctor, Prescott (Frank Morgan) and his pal "Floppy" Phil (Charles Butterworth) who is always willing to step in front of traffic, a bottle of Mercurochrome on hand, they stage accidents, always arrive first at real ones with a bunch of paid "eye witnesses" ready to swear that the drivers were doing the wrong thing. Stevens finds pretty Dorothy Mason (Madge Evans) sprawled at the site of a train wreck. He thinks she is just another pretty victim - in reality she has been hired by John Calhoun (John Miljan) head of a street car company, to try and find evidence to get Stevens disbarred. After the death of Prescott, she realises that Calhoun is just another mercenary corrupt official.

The story line wouldn't fill a page but Tracy's lines have the rapidity of a machine gun - I found I was laughing non stop. Although Morgan is excellent, the pathos of his playing does seem a bit out of place. Madge Evans, as usual, makes a pretty but intelligent romantic diversion and Charles Butterworth is just wonderful as Steven's slippery sidekick. You may recognise Virginia Cherrill (she was the blind girl in Chaplin's "City Lights") as the flirtatious Miss Rutherford and Nat Pendleton as a dopey street car conductor brought before the court for stealing nickels and dimes.

Highly, Highly Recommended.

Lee Tracy is perfect as an ambulance chaser who plagues a streetcar company with phony lawsuits that prove so successful, the business strikes back with an undercover beauty (Madge Evans).

This sharply written comedy/drama takes a tragic turn at one point, and the Tracy-Evans relationship gets convincingly intense toward the end when one of the characters runs afoul of the law.

"The Nuisance" boasts strong performances from Tracy and Evans, with standout support from Frank Morgan as an alcoholic doctor who's Tracy's partner in unethical behavior and from Charles Butterworth as a con man.

Strongly recommended to all Tracy fans.