At the start of BLESSED EVENT, Ned Sparks is returning from a vacation. He is the columnist who writes the society/gossip column at the newspaper. He left the column in the hands of his assistant, figuring that there was nothing outlandish that could happen. Sparks is soon sputtering, as he is asked by the newspaper editor to accept a new assignment writing obituaries. It seems that the assistant, Lee Tracy, has redesigned the column. Instead of the staid, boring columns giving the comings and goings of polite society (what boats they took to Europe, who is vacationing in Florida or the West Coast),he is telling of all the naughty things these people are up to. In particular, if he hears of a rumor that some prominent people are having a little baby out of wedlock, he prints the rumor (carefully mentioning it as a rumor - to avoid libel suits) as a "Blessed Event". Hence the film's title.

Tracy keeps Ruth Donelly, Sparks secretary, as his own. He makes the column a really successful one, just as Walter Winchell did in real life in the 1920s. Winchell, who was one of the top gossip columnists of the 1920s - 1950s (his leading rivals were probably Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Sheila Graham - but they were basically connected with Hollywood personalities only, while Winchell included politicians, writers, artists, Broadway figures, socialites, and gangsters). Winchell knew many people - he even got involved in criminal history, when he was instrumental in the surrender of Louis Lepke Buchalter (head of "Murder, Inc.") to the authorities in 1939. Winchell's reputation is not very clean these days - he could be vicious if he did not like the politics or personality of one of his subjects. He would be ferociously anti-Communist in the 1940s and 1950s, although he also was anti-Nazi in the war years as well. The character of the unscrupulous Hunsekker in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (the Burt Lancaster role) is based on Winchell.

This film was made in his early years as a columnist, so Tracy plays him for laughs, and even makes him a bit of a crusader. He does pursue Dick Powell, a popular radio crooner, rather extremely. This is because he knows Powell is a phony, and Tracy does not like crooners. Later, though, it turns out that Tracy's mother does like Powell, and one wonders if that is the key to Tracy's feelings. On the other hand, he is leading a public spirited crusade against a crooked mobster and construction company head, Edwin Maxwell. That does raise our estimation of Tracy a bit.

But his methods are always questionable. Maxwell tries to frighten Tracy into silence, sending his henchman Allan Jenkins to threaten him. Tracy makes a cylinder copy of a confession by Jenkins to a murder, and after making sure the cylinder has been taken away to safety, frightens Jenkins by telling him what he has on him, and reminding him of the death of Ruth Snyder in the electric chair in 1928. His morality is also tested, when Isobel Elsom comes to him with some personally shameful information, and Tracy has to decide if he should keep quiet or use it in his column.

The speed of the film, the pungency of the dialog and its humor make it worth an "8" out of a possible "10". Tracy's performance reminds us of how wonderful an actor he was, and makes his odd career misfortune all the sadder to think about for what could have been a great career rather than a fine one.

Lee Tracy is one of the lost joys of the pre-Code era. He mostly played newspapermen (he was Hildy Johnson in the original Broadway production of The Front Page) with a sideline in press agents, and whatever his racket he epitomized the brash, fast-talking, crafty, stop-at-nothing operator. He makes Cagney look bashful, skating around in perpetual, delirious overdrive, gesticulating and spitting out his lines like an articulate machine-gun, wheedling and needling and swearing on his mother's life as he lies through his teeth. He was homely and scrawny, with a raspy nasal voice, and he always played cocky, devious scoundrels, yet you find yourself rooting for him and reveling in his sheer energy and shameless moxie. Audiences of the early thirties loved his snappy style and irrepressible irreverence; they loved him because he was nobody's fool. He's a rare example of a character actor—that guy who always plays reporters—who through force of personality, and the luck of embodying the zeitgeist, had a brief reign as a star.

In BLESSED EVENT he plays Alvin Roberts, a character based so closely on Walter Winchell that Winchell could have sued--but he probably loved it. When we first meet Alvin, he's a lowly kid from the ad department who has been given a chance to sub for a gossip columnist and gotten in trouble for filling the column with dirt—primarily announcements of who is "anticipating a blessed event" without the proper matrimonial surroundings. Soon he's become an all-powerful celebrity and made scores of enemies, including a gangster willing to bump him off to shut him up. There's a subplot about Alvin's ongoing feud with a smarmy crooner, Bunny Harmon, played by Dick Powell. Anyone who finds Powell in his crooning days repellent will appreciate Tracy's merciless vendetta. Actually, I think Powell is being deliberately irritating here—even in Busby Berkeley films he's not so egregiously perky and fey. He does sing one good song, "Too Many Tears" (a theme throughout the film),and a wonderfully witless radio jingle for "Shapiro's Shoes."

Alvin's standard greeting is, "What do you know that I don't?" The answer is nothing—at least not for long. But he's surrounded by worthy foils. Ruth Donnelly is both tart and peppery as Alvin's harried secretary ("You want to see Mr. Roberts? Oh, you want to sue Mr. Roberts. The line forms on the left.") Allen Jenkins, who keeps saying he's from Chicago even though his Brooklyn accent could be cut with a steak knife, plays a mug sent by his gangster boss to threaten Roberts. In a mind-blowing scene, Alvin terrifies the tough guy with a graphic, horrifying description of death in the electric chair. Tracy plays this monologue with unholy gusto; if you're not opposed to the death penalty, you will be after this. There's a funny scene in which Jenkins has to pass time with Alvin's sweet, clueless mother, who is continually thwarted in her desire to listen to the Bunny Harmon Hour on the radio. The usual suspects fill out the cast, those character actors whose very predictability is their glory: Ned Sparks the perennial gloomy pickle-puss; Frank McHugh the perennial hapless nebbish; Jack La Rue the perennial menacing hoodlum. Director Roy Del Ruth (who also helmed the wildly entertaining BLONDE CRAZY) keeps BLESSED EVENT going like a popcorn-maker; the sly, outrageous zingers just keep coming.

Lee Tracy's career never recovered after he was fired from MGM for a drunken indiscretion committed in Mexico. But I doubt he could have lasted long as a star after the Code anyway, since his films are gleefully amoral, frequently demonstrating that crime—or at least lying, cheating and riding roughshod over other people's feelings—pays. Every Lee Tracy vehicle contains a moment when he realizes he's gone too far, usually when the girl he fancies bursts into tears and tells him off. (Here he crosses the line in a big way when he betrays a desperate young woman who begs him not to reveal her pregnancy.) He looks suddenly abashed, protesting, "Gee, if I'd known you felt that way…I'd give anything not to have done that…Baby, sugar, listen…!" But two second later he's back to his old scheming ways. A reformed Lee Tracy would be like Fred Astaire with arthritis. Not that he isn't a good guy deep down…well, maybe. He has charm, anyway: an impish grin and twinkly eyes and boyish blond hair, like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer. His reactions to sentimentality—to Dick Powell's cloying tenor or Franchot Tone in BOMBSHELL telling Jean Harlow he'd like to run barefoot through her hair—are delicious. He's salt and vinegar, no sweetening. In BLESSED EVENT Alvin has a fit when an editorial calls him the "nadir" of American journalism. Lee Tracy, on the other hand, represents is the zenith of the American newspaper movie.

A brash tabloid columnist turns his BLESSED EVENT style of gossip mongering into a sensation, but creates many enemies along the way.

This is the film that made Lee Tracy an authentic movie star - the role and the actor were perfect for each other. For the next couple of years Tracy would specialize in fast talking shyster lawyers, agents, reporters & flimflam men. In the process, he became one of the most enjoyable performers of the era, always fresh & entertaining. However, after misbehaving in Mexico while under contract to MGM, he would be banished to the Poverty Row studios to continue acting in minor films. Today, regrettably, he is almost forgotten.

But in pre-Code BLESSED EVENT Tracy is at the top of his form: exasperating, maddeningly irritating & wonderfully funny. Warner Brothers gives him an excellent supporting cast to bounce off of - acerbic Ned Sparks as a disgruntled tabloid reporter; peppy Frank McHugh as an overeager publicity agent; porcine Edwin Maxwell as a nasty gangster; and Allen Jenkins as a softhearted criminal (his ‘electric chair' scene with Tracy is a classic).

Boyish Dick Powell, in his film debut, seems an odd choice to play Tracy's nemesis, but there's no doubt about his charm & fine singing style, both of which would soon make him a major movie star.

Mary Brian is lovely as Tracy's girlfriend & Emma Dunn is sweet as his mother, but each tends to be a bit smothered by Tracy's oversized personality. His true co-star is tart-tongued Ruth Donnelly as his secretary. No slacker in slinging the dialogue around, she's able to match Tracy line for line.

Movie mavens will recognize Charles Lane as a reporter; Isabel Jewell, terrific as a much-abused showgirl; and hilarious Herman Bing as a chef - all of them uncredited.