Back in Circulation (1937)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Powerful

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

"Back in Circulation" is very much a film like "The Front Page" or "His Girl Friday". So, if you liked them, you're bound to enjoy this Joan Blondell picture.The oddly named 'Timmy' Blake (Blondell) is a journalist with a bent towards the sensational and sleazy. Through much of the movie, her mantra seems to be 'anything for a story' and her sleaze-loving boss (Pat O'Brien) encourages as much muck-raking as possible...all in an effort to boost circulation. However, after spending much of the story pushing for an investigation into the death of a rich guy by poisoning, she suddenly has a crisis of conscience....though I was at a loss to figure out why considering her actions through the first 2/3 of the movie! Still enjoyable...just not completely consistent.By the way, if you do watch the film, take a look at Timmy's two right crosses. That woman packs a terrific punch!

There were a few films in the '30s that set the stage for a lot of imitations. One was "It Happened One Night," which gave rise to dozens of films about heiresses, and the other was "The Front Page" from 1931, about a reporter and an editor. "Back in Circulation" is the latter, from 1937.Here, the reporter is beautiful Joan Blondell, as sparkling and energetic as ever, and her editor is Pat O'Brien (who also appeared in "The Front Page"). Blondell is Timmy, a crafty reporter good at getting in on the most important stories, no matter what she has to do. O'Brien is Bill Morgan, who knows Timmy is the best and is constantly sending her out.When a wealthy man dies, Bill receives a letter saying he was poisoned, so he dispatches Timmy to investigate. She's able to stop the funeral and convince the medical examiner to do an autopsy. Turns out he was poisoned, and suspicion falls on his wife (Margaret Lindsay). The paper goes after her in a big way, but after Timmy spends some time with her, she begins to suspect that the widow is innocent and hiding something. This puts her at odds with Bill.Thanks to Blondell's performance, this movie manages to come off, though it isn't the tightest script. It flip-flops between comedy and heavy drama, and the alliance is uneasy.John Litel and Regis Toomey are featured. Lindsay gives a '30s-style performance, and today it sticks out as being melodramatic. That was the style, and that's the way many roles were written. This was on its way out of style due to stars like Bette Davis.Entertaining. Always a pleasure to see Blondell in a film.

This is in many ways typical of the comedy/drama/love story/mystery/social message low budget very entertaining movies that Warner Brothers so excelled at in the 1930's. Having been done before in some variation as The Front Page, Front Page Woman, and One Fatal Hour, 1937's Back In Circulation is equally entertaining. Most notably due to the delightful Joan Blondell, a very engaging and effective actor. Her wonderful performance in Back in Circulation makes this one of my favorite movies from this era.Like all of the other incarnations of this basic premise, this screenplay has its own unique set of characters and circumstances. Joan Blondell plays "Timmy" Blake, the star reporter for The Morning Express, who is possessed of an utterly inexplicable crush on her boss, Bill Morgan (Pat O'Brien), your basic jerk, and we are told that she has in the past gone to great lengths to get the scoop, including stealing evidence and committing perjury. During the course of our story, however, her conscience begins to catch up to her when she finds herself convinced of the innocence of wealthy Arline Wade (Margaret Lindsay), a woman accused of murder that is all but convicted in the pages of The Morning Express. Naturally it is Timmy's cleverness and resourcefulness that gets the story in the Express in the first place, and it is she who must solve the mystery in order to extricate Ms. Wade from a miscarriage of justice. This is all done with appropriately placed poignancy and lighthearted comedic overtones. Timmy belting a sleazebag gigolo unconscious with her perfect right hook ("Beg pardon?") and her screaming "fit" in the street during the scene that leads us into the movie's conclusion are particularly hysterical.Yes, the story is full of laughably implausible peculiarities (it is obvious movie producers of that era did not consider their audiences as savvy as those of today). On what planet would a struggling reporter living in a two-room apartment be able to afford a closet full of designer gowns and a maid?! These were real reporters, mind you, not the pampered addle-brained news spokes-models of today. It is likewise ridiculous to imagine that a reporter armed with nothing more than an anonymous note (another plot hole, we never are told where this note originated) could walk into a coroner's office and have a burial stopped and demand an autopsy be performed. It's a testament to how entertaining this film is that you don't really notice this sort of thing until after the movie is over and you've had time to think about it.I am unsure how Pat O'Brien scored top billing in this vehicle, as it would be lost without brilliant and beautiful Joan Blondell, who appears in nearly every scene and certainly outranks O'Brien in both screen time and importance to the plot. The cast is filled out quite nicely with familiar faces from Warner Brothers stable of commendable talent, including John Litel, Ben Welden, and Granville Bates as the coroner. Also keep your eyes on the uncredited generic reporters that make up the press pool in the Plattstown sequences, one of them is DeWolfe (later William) Hopper, who in twenty years time would become Paul Drake on the TV series "Perry Mason".

This is a prime example of a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be. The first half of the film is a snappy little screwball comedy, obviously inspired by "The Front Page" (just like about a zillion other newspaper comedies), in which star reporter Joan Blondell tries to cope with hard-driving editor Pat O'Brien. It isn't brilliant, but it's good enough to get by. The second half is a typical Warners social crusading film of the thirties, an expose of the dangers of yellow journalism. This half doesn't work very well at all, partly because Margaret Lindsay's performance is wooden, and partly because the change in tone is so abrupt that you're liable to suffer from whiplash. O'Brien and Blondell are both cast to their strengths, and they work well together. This film was never going to be a masterpiece, but it might have been modestly successful if it had maintained the tone of its first half. As it is, the movie just doesn't work. Warners couldn't help themselves; they never passed up an opportunity to hoist the gauntlet of a social crusade. Sometimes they did it well, but in this case they should have let well enough alone.