I saw a very poor print of this movie - bad visually and bad audibly, and it seems it is missing the first few minutes. But that is better than nothing.
This film tended to disappoint, but then I have to give it a break since I am viewing it with the benefit of hindsight. Here you have Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, two of MGM's brightest stars of the 1930's, and I instantly thought of them together in "Libeled Lady" five years later. That film this is not.
A sailor (Warren Hymer as Spike), has an address book full of the names of girls all over the world and what is good about them. Spike tries them all, but he keeps finding the same tattoo marking them for some other man and walking out in disgust. Finally, Spike finds out that the man who tattooed them is Bill (Spencer Tracy), another sailor who has been getting the best of him - and to be fair that is not a difficult affair - all over the world. The two have a fist fight but then become fast friends.
And then one night at a circus Spike sees Goldie (Jean Harlow) performing, and he is enamored all over again. Bill warns Spike against her, but is he just trying to get her for himself or is his friendship true? Watch (if you can find a copy) and find out.
There is just not nearly enough Spencer Tracy or Jean Harlow in this film and too much Warren Hymer, whose schtick I can only take in small doses. He is second billed under Tracy and probably gets the most screen time. Jean Harlow doesn't even appear until halfway through the film. Finally what Tracy you get is the wise guy he usually played before he left Fox for MGM and became the voice of integrity in most of the films he was in from that point forward.
What good can I say? Maybe it's a tribute to Tracy's acting acumen that I believe he is a near illiterate schmoe here and I also believe his roles over at MGM. Also, I think this might be the first film role where you see a bit of Jean Harlow's screen persona beginning to emerge. In Hell's Angels her part was overdone due to Howard Hughes' warped view of the trustworthiness of women. In Public Enemy she is playing a Texan in Chicago with a New York accent (????) but here you see that "tough dame" emerge that was so well done just a few months later. For this it is worth seeing and for those reasons I recommend it.
Just one more thing - towards the beginning Spike is in Odessa romancing a Russian girl. I have no idea how as an American he managed to traipse around Stalinist Russia without being apprehended by the secret police. Maybe it was because, in the words of HBO's Chernobyl, he "came off like a naive idiot. Naive idiots are not a threat."
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