User Reviews

Critics called "Now I'll Tell" Helen Twelvetree's "comeback" movie but she hadn't been away! In 1932 she decided to enter the uncertain world of freelancing but apart from her first film, a glossy MGM production called "Unashamed", the others didn't set the film world on fire. With a new auburn toned hairstyle she was finally given a role in a movie that proved a big success - "Now I'll Tell". Based on a sensational book by Mrs. Arnold Rothstein, it supposedly told the story of her marriage to her famous gambler husband and his career and loves.

Initially, Virginia (Helen Twelvetrees) sees gambler Murray Golden (Spencer Tracy) as a vibrant risk taker, someone who wants to live life, but after several years of married life she has had enough. He has always promised that once he made $200,000 he would quit but the lure of more money is irresistible. Golden is an unscrupulous crook whose one constant in his life is his wife. Along the way he acquires a mistress (only for fun he says!!!), Peggy, a platinum blonde songstress, who as the years go by yearns for marriage. At a fixed fight, Virginia goes, hoping to surprise Murray but hears talk of his mistress. With the possibility of losing his wife he takes her to Paris and when they return, forsakes gambling for the insurance business. But the fixed fight comes back to haunt him. Traylor, the fighter who was originally paid to throw the fight accidentally knocks his opponent out in the second round (Golden has played a double cross) and later on is found dead. Mossiter is convinced that Golden had a part in the fix and Joe, the other fighter, confesses after being plied with drinks. Mossiter kidnaps Virginia in retaliation and as Murray rushes to save his wife his car is involved in a head on crash. Peggy, who he has not discarded, is killed and when Virginia finds out she makes the final break.

Spencer Tracy is excellent. It doesn't matter what type of role and in what type of movie - he didn't know how to be bad. In only her second film singer Alice Faye got very good notices. She was still in her Harlow period but managed to look like a blonde dream and definitely beautiful enough to turn Tracy's head. She also gets to sing the sultry "Foolin' With the Other Woman's Man". Faye had to wait a few years for stardom because of a little girl called Shirley Temple. She also had a small part in this movie but seeing she had just made "Little Miss Marker" she was on a fast train to stardom. Leon Ames, who was father to Judy Garland in "Meet Me in St. Louis" and Elizabeth Taylor in "A Date With Judy" played a small role as Virginia's friend. Tragic James Murray played almost less than a bit as a crook in one of his last films.

Highly Recommended.

Three decades in the life of a gambling racketeer (Spencer Tracy) is covered, from his days as a street punk to his rise to the head of a syndicate which he ruthlessly runs. Married to the long-suffering Helen Twelvetrees, he keeps a mistress (Alice Faye) on the side, and manages to lead a successful double life until tragedy strikes and his wife walks out on him. Of course, the reign of every great criminal (whether corporate or crime) must come to an end, and this film traces his rise and fall with great detail.

Probably one of Tracy's best Fox films, it is a well written and extremely well acted drama, Tracy giving multiple dimensions to his character who can deal with his enemies ruthlessly at one minute then become extremely compassionate the next. Twelvetrees, one of the most underrated and forgotten leading ladies of the 1930's, gets to rise above the shady dame roles she played a few years later at RKO, and makes her ladylike character extremely interesting. Alice Faye gets to sing one song as the likable mistress, and this is extremely interesting to follow her rise from the Harlow like platinum blonds she played in eras like this to her great musical star that exploded just the next year as Fox was making its transition with 20th Century Pictures.

This lacks the violence of Warner Brothers' gangster sagas and parallels some real life gangsters of the time, much like Universal's "Scarface", yet without the exploitation method of that stark and shocking drama.

Director: EDWIN BURKE. Based on the 1934 book by Mrs Arnold Rothstein. Screenplay: Edwin Burke. Camera: Ernest Palmer. Art director: Jack Otterson. Musical score: Hugo Friedhofer, Arthur Lange, David Buttolph. Music director: Arthur Lange. Songs: "Foolin' With the Other Woman's Man" (Faye) by Lew Brown and Harry Akst; "Harlem Versus the Jungle" by Lew Brown and Harry Akst. Costumes: Rita Kaufman. Sound recording: William D. Flick. Producer: Winfield Sheehan.

Copyright 7 May 1934 by Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy, 25 May 1934. U.S. release: 8 June 1934. Australian release: 13 June 1934. 7,889 feet. 87½ minutes.

U.K.and Australian release title: WHEN NEW YORK SLEEPS.

SYNOPSIS: The true story of Arnold Rothstein, gambler, as told by his widow. The story had previously been told in Paramount's Street of Chance (1930), starring William Powell as the gambling man and Kay Francis as his wife. Re-made in 1961 as King of the Roaring 20's with David Janssen.

NOTES: Academy Award for Shirley Temple "in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment during the year 1934". (Despite her prominence in the film's original advertising, Shirley's role is small.)

COMMENT: It's Spencer Tracy's film, but his portrait is somewhat hampered by one of those insistent scripts that continuously hammers home the message, "Crime does not pay!" Mrs Rothstein herself is played by the immaculate Helen Twelvetrees, while Alice Faye (in her second film) has a terrific role as the singer who has a yen for Mr A.

Although the movie has a great deal of curiosity appeal, it doesn't repay the viewer in entertainment value anything like Tracy's next film for Fox, Marie Galante (1934) which is so zestfully directed on a spare-no-expense budget by the great Henry King at his most accomplished.