During his years as a contract director at Warner Bros., William Wellman made his mark early with the influential gangster drama The Public Enemy (1931) but didn’t have another major box office success until after he left the studio and directed A Star Is Born (1937), produced by David O. Selznick and distributed by United Artists. Yet, during his tenure with First National Pictures/Warner Bros., Wellman churned out a number of energetic, fast-paced entertainments which are often overlooked by admirers of his work but stand out from the assembly-line programmers they were intended to be. Among the highlights from this early period are Night Nurse (1931) with Barbara Stanwyck, the grim Pre-Code drama Safe in Hell (1931) and Love Is a Racket (1932) starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as a newspaper columnist working the Broadway beat. The latter film is not only a fascinating time capsule of its era, with glimpses of then-popular New York City nightspots such as Sardi’s, but also presents an unapologetic, cynical view of reporters who often resort to any means necessary to score a front-page story.
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Cinema Sojourns 