With the title I Cover the Waterfront, I expected a social-conscience picture on the order of Warner Bros.' then contemporary I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. What I got was a part screwball comedy, part romance, part soap opera. Ben Lyon is the "I" in the title, a Joe Miller who hates his reporting job for a San Francisco paper because of non-event stories his boss keeps getting him. One of them is about a skinny-dipping woman named Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert) who is the daughter of Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), a man Miller is interested in because he believes Eli has smuggled some Chinese immigrants illegally. This being pre-Code, there are some scenes that wouldn't have made it past the censors after 1934 like the one where Lyon and Colbert tour an old torture ship and Ben tricks Claudette into getting chained into one of the ship's devices just so he can kiss her without resistance! And she likes it too! There's also a brief picture of a nude woman in another scene. Witty lines dominate the first half with the two leads while the conflict between Colbert, Torrence, and Lyon takes part in the next in mostly compelling fashion resulting in a pretty satisfying denouement for those who believe in heartfelt conclusions. Well worth seeing for Colbert enthusiasts. P.S. This was Ernest Torrence's final movie.