In 1937, the team of Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell starred in a winning newspaper comedy/drama called "Back in Circulation" which is really good for your standard Warner Brothers newspaper story. Two years later, they are back making news, but it is your standard lower B entry, coming just as Blondell was preparing to exit Warner Brothers after 10 years and over 50 films. Had this been a follow-up to "Back in Circulation", it could have dealt with the marital issues of O'Brien and Blondell, taking in teen Bobby Jordan after Blondell exposes his older brother for being a racketeer. The film opens up like a typical "Bowery Boys" film; In fact, it even has the same opening shot of a lower east side tenement district where the overcrowded streets filled with street vendors is in full swing as Jordan's mother is upstairs dying and asks to see her son.
The missing older brother (Alan Baxter) shows up just as Jordan is hauled off to a foundling home, but Blondell soon exposes the racket that Baxter is involved in and Jordan is taken into her and O'Brien's home, initially vowing revenge against Blondell for her part in Baxter's downfall. But cheery Blondell and lovable O'Brien soon make Jordan come to love them, with O'Brien going as far as to buy Jordan a camera and take him out on stories with him to help him find a future. Baxter suddenly contacts his baby brother out of the blue which leads to Jordan getting innocently mixed up with Baxter's criminal pals and being accused of committing a crime himself.
This isn't really a bad film, but it is so typical in the canon of Warner Brothers crime dramas that it just becomes simply ordinary and a bit of a letdown. It's the nadir in Blondell's Warner Brothers career, much like "King of the Underworld" was for Kay Francis the very same year at the end of her contract. The focus really is on Jordan who gives a truly great performance, likeably tough and taking no nonsense from the other local toughs who steal his camera in his first scene in the film. There's a train crash sequence here that O'Brien and Jordan go to that is nearly identical to the one that Blondell went to in "Back in Circulation", making comparisons to that better film all the more obvious. I had hoped to like this film more, but found it disappointing when compared to other similar films put out by the tough Warner Brothers in the 1930's.
The missing older brother (Alan Baxter) shows up just as Jordan is hauled off to a foundling home, but Blondell soon exposes the racket that Baxter is involved in and Jordan is taken into her and O'Brien's home, initially vowing revenge against Blondell for her part in Baxter's downfall. But cheery Blondell and lovable O'Brien soon make Jordan come to love them, with O'Brien going as far as to buy Jordan a camera and take him out on stories with him to help him find a future. Baxter suddenly contacts his baby brother out of the blue which leads to Jordan getting innocently mixed up with Baxter's criminal pals and being accused of committing a crime himself.
This isn't really a bad film, but it is so typical in the canon of Warner Brothers crime dramas that it just becomes simply ordinary and a bit of a letdown. It's the nadir in Blondell's Warner Brothers career, much like "King of the Underworld" was for Kay Francis the very same year at the end of her contract. The focus really is on Jordan who gives a truly great performance, likeably tough and taking no nonsense from the other local toughs who steal his camera in his first scene in the film. There's a train crash sequence here that O'Brien and Jordan go to that is nearly identical to the one that Blondell went to in "Back in Circulation", making comparisons to that better film all the more obvious. I had hoped to like this film more, but found it disappointing when compared to other similar films put out by the tough Warner Brothers in the 1930's.