Blessed Event

A movie that I DVRed earlier in the month as part of TCM's Star of the Month salute to Dick Powell is Blessed Event. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so now you get the full-length post treatment on it.

This was Dick Powell's film debut, so he's not the star here, although he gets a relatively big supporting role. The star here is Lee Tracy, so you should probably already know what to expect. Tracy plays Alvin Roberts, who's working his way up the ladder in the newspaper business. He gets a chance to move up when Moxley (Ned Sparks), the guy who writes the gossip column, goes on vacation leaving Alvin to write it. Alvin has a contact at the maternity hospital to the stars, so he starts dropping hints in the column that various famous people are going to be having "blessed events".

This ticks off a bunch of people who don't want their private lives discussed like this. It also bothers his girlfriend Gladys (Mary Brian), who thinks Alvin should be doing more honest work. On the other hand, the column proves to be a hit as circulation increases massively. With that, he also gets a radio show.

As for Dick Powell, he plays crooner Bunny Harmon, who has a radio show of his own what with his brand of band music being perfect for the radio. Alvin doesn't like crooners, and especially Bunny, for no real reason. So Alvin and Bunny have a rivalry throwing barbs at each other although these aren't just friendly barbs: the two really dislike each other. One final person who dislikes Alvin is the gangster Gobel (Edwin Maxwell), who sends underling Frankie (Allen Jenkins) to try to get Alvin to lay off those notices involving the unnamed gangster.

Of course, Alvin is unable to do so, especially because one of the stories he breaks involves the gangster in a way Alvin doesn't realize at first. But when it does, Gobel has a plan to get Alvin, and the opening of Bunny's new nightclub might be just the way to do it. Bunny doesn't want Alvin there crashing the party, of course, while Alvin knows he's going to be there. Gobel could arrange for Bunny to be there and get killed....

Blessed Event is a fun little movie, although it's in many ways typical of the sort of thing Lee Tracy was doing in the pre-Code (and pre-public urination) portion of his career. So it's not bad by any means; it's more a feeling of having seen it before because it's really not treading any new ground. Sometimes, though, you want something comfortable, and if you want that out of a pre-Code, Blessed Event isn't a bad way to get that. Tracy is as good as always; Powell shows promise for his first film; and Ruth Donnelly is a lot of fun as Tracy's secretary.