Jimmy Bates is a master orator, a fast-talking Carnival Barker and con-man whose vows are as honest as his slogans. Director Gregory La Cava and great DP Bert Glennon do their best to make Lee Tracy’s speechifying visually engaging, but the story is as flat and uninteresting as the two leads, as Tracy and the spitfire Lupe Velez have no chemistry together. Their relationship verges on domestic violence as he bullies, threatens, screams and slaps her into submission and when one considers the power imbalance in the relationship (she the product and he the seller) we see their marriage as nothing more than indentured servitude.
Jimmy (Lee Tracy) sells his product Teresita (Lupe Velez) as a novelty, from a half-naked burlesque queen, then posing her as the illegitimate lovechild of a small-town stranger, to a mystic Princess from the Far East (hilariously, with her eunuch Butler!). They flee rural Appleton to the Big Apple with the sheriff hot on their tails, and Jimmy soon manipulates a Broadway producer Merle Farrell (Frank Morgan) into signing an exclusive contract. Love and chaos ensue. As Teresita begins her romance with Farrell (he’s married, she isn’t) it should be no surprise as he is kind and soft-spoken, the polar opposite of her current beau Jimmy. It’s a bemusing performance from Frank Morgan and just a bit endearing too. But the story is meant to reunite the two top-billed stars, and all is fair in love and war. And blackmail. Which isn’t very funny as Lee Tracy fails to imbue his character with, well, character. He’s just a loudmouth asshole who fails to learn from his mistakes as long as he can finagle a profit.
There are a few nice compositions from Glennon such as the carnival brawl which he shoots in medium long shot chaos, dirt and fists flying, or the opening scene of an extreme high angle shot of a circus performer diving into a smallish tank of water. In one take without edit. Cool. Or the nudist parade down a busy NYC street with literally thousands of people within the composition in long shot (not rear-projection or a composite shot. I wonder how Glennon and La Cava coordinated it!). But the major flaw is in the screenplay and story arc, which collapses under the weight of verbosity.
Final Grade: (C-)