Modest programmer from Warners sends young country mouse Eric Linden to big bad NYC with a modest inheritance for a cautionary tale. A gullible lad, Linden will lose it all to scheming older cousin Walter Catlett and his hard-drinking party pals including uncredited Humphrey Bogart still playing upper-crust wastrels in his failed first try at Hollywood. He’d soon head back to B’way and success with THE PETRIFIED FOREST. But the boy also loses his heart to Joan Blondell’s chorine which makes everything worthwhile; or would if not for that showgirl dying in his hotel suite during a drunken brawl while 'the gang's all here' and the lights are out. Yikes!, one night in New York and he’s already on the lam! Tinny stuff, and a bit obvious even for 1932, but Mervyn LeRoy’s rat-a-tat-tat megging keeps things up tempo while playwright Ward Morehouse manages a pair of eyebrow-raising adult sequences for Linden as he hunts for Blondell and gets picked up at a SpeakEasy by Jobyna Howland’s rich, lonely, dowager, looking for company and maybe a bit more. Then taking him on to a fancy nightclub where Clarence Muse shouts the Blues and gaming tables are one flight up. Too bad the rest of the little film isn’t nearly as arresting.
DOUBLE-BILL: Now largely forgotten, Linden can be seen at his best in what is probably his last good role, starring in Clarence Brown’s superb distillation of Eugene O’Neill’s AH, WILDERNESS/’35.
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