TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1933)

Lee Tracy, born to play wised-up reporters flashing a press pass, was always something of a lowlife outlier at M-G-M, a mutt among the pedigree.  With supporting roles in A-list pics and leads in programmers, this final M-G-M role finds him top-billed as a disappointed everyman, a Manhattan pharmacist living above the shop with his little grey wren of a wife.  But when he bumps into an old pal who made good (Otto Kruger) and the guy offers to invest his small nest egg for him, he sees a second chance at the road not taken when he married for love instead of money.  Not so fast, says the missus.  Storming out, a traffic accident knocks him out cold and he imagines the successful life he missed out on.  It’s the old (even then old) alternate life scenario.  (IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46 still the best known example.)  Always with the same moral: the grass ain’t greener on the other side of the fence, be thankful for what you’ve got . . . even in the Depression.  Co-written with Ben Hecht, director Edgar Selwyn (a major B’way producer who dabbled in Hollywood*) does have the time frame to give this iteration interest (WWI thru early Depression days), but Selwyn never quite got the hang of film technique.  And tossing in the occasional montage to make things ‘filmic’ hardly helps.  (The same could be said of Ben Hecht’s attempts at directing.)  Yet the film just odd enough to be worth a look.  (Plus fun actor spotting.  Look!  Auntie Em and Uncle Henry from THE WIZARD OF OZ!)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Edgar Selwyn’s real Hollywood achievement came from ‘lending’ half his name to a certain Samuel Goldfish.  Once producing partners back in New York, the Goldwyn Company took the GOLD from Goldfish and the WYN from Selwyn for its official name.  And the men had a verbal agreement not to use the company name as their own.  Guess who didn’t hold to the bargain?  As Goldwyn famously said: ‘A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’  No wonder B’way wags said Goldwyn took the wrong halves of the two names.  He should have called himself Samuel Selfish.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For Lee Tracy in an A-list pic, DINNER AT EIGHT/’33.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/dinner-at-eight-1933.html