Movies like "The Lemon Drop Kid" are so bad they tire me out. I've gotten less exhausted running a 5k. It didn't help that Lee Tracy was the star. He's one of those funny types that you either like or you don't. I'm firmly in the "don't like" camp with regards to Lee Tracy, Jimmy Durante, Frank McHugh, and Jack Oakie. They all have a particular schtick that annoys me. Lee's thing is being a fast talker. Oh, they're alright as co-stars or smaller roles, but I don't like them as the lead actor.
Lee Tracy played the Lemon Drop Kid aka Wally Brooks, a conman and a thief. He had to split from Baltimore when he conned an old guy out of $100. He fled to a little town called Kibbsville where he found a sweet woman named Alice Deering (Helen Mack) and settled down. It would've been cute if it wasn't so revolting.
To start with, Wally forcibly kissed Alice when he was a guest at her home. They hadn't known each other ten minutes and he took it upon himself to kiss her. She did the respectable thing and slapped him, but still she was like every other woman in that her indignation stopped right after slapping him. In other words, there were no other repercussions: she didn't scold him or kick him out--just a simple slap which means "I'm a lady."
After that interaction Alice got word from the town's phone operator that the police were looking for Wally. Alice decided to keep that information hidden. She'd only known the guy a few hours at most and she was protecting him from the law. She had no idea what he was wanted for, but she surmised that he couldn't be bad because he gave pa a ride home. Truthfully, all it was was small-town-girl-gets-breath-taken-away-by-big-city-guy.
Eventually it came time for the two to get married. Still, Alice didn't know Wally's past and, what's more, she didn't want to know. She wanted to be blissfully ignorant, leaving Wally a blank canvas for her to paint an imaginary picture upon of who she was in love with. Even when Lee tried to tell her, she shut him up, afraid that he'd ruin the ideal image of him she'd created in her head. This was a common occurrence of both men and women in 30's movies as if not knowing about a person makes the love purer. Personally, I think it's reckless and stupid. Furthermore, I don't think that you can say you truly love a person unless you know all there is to know about them. Otherwise you're in love with a fictional character. I say test your love and find out what there is to know. If you find out he's Ted Bundy and you still stick with him, then that's love.
The point of this banal romance was that Wally would have to go straight and live a square life in order to be with Alice, which meant that he would probably be met with the demons of his past life at some point to test his strength and commitment to Alice.
The two got married and six months later Alice was pregnant. As we all know, she would never say the word "pregnant" on screen. We have to use silly context clues to figure that out. Alice was such a child that after whispering her secret to her friend Maizie (Minna Gombell) she went and hid, too shy and embarrassed to tell her own husband. He found her ducking behind a cabinet like a guilty toddler where he had to kiss her to reassure her that everything was alright.
That was yet another trope of 30's movies I couldn't stand: women afraid to tell a man they were pregnant. And I don't mean that they were afraid to say the word pregnant (that was a cinematic no no) because they would use euphemisms like "I'm having a baby" or "you're going to be a father" or "our family is growing," etc. I mean that women were afraid as though the news would be too much for the man to bear and they dare not upset him or scare him off. Alice's case was even more extreme than most. Firstly, they were married, and what do married couples do but have kids? Secondly, it's a known fact that she had to have sex with him in order to get pregnant, so the fact that she was too shy to tell him she was having a baby is puzzling, and it portrays a false type of innocence like they still believed in storks. She looked like a frightened mouse at the prospect of telling Wally he knocked her up.
To further paint Alice as this innocent and fragile creature, she got sick during her pregnancy. It was almost ladylike and dainty for a woman to faint while pregnant (they fainted for everything). Alice not only fainted, but she contracted a life threatening illness as well. No, that wasn't normal, but it was necessary for the plot of this film.
The doctor told Wally that he'd have to take her to a specialist if he wanted to save her, which meant Wally would need money. And this is where his past revisited him. The only way Wally knew how to get real money was by hook or crook. He chose to rob his boss, Martin Potter (Clarence Wilson). It was all for naught because Alice died right after giving birth. While Wally was still grieving, the police arrested him for the Potter robbery. Just like that he'd lost his wife and his freedom.
A couple years passed and Wally was in prison being a bad inmate because he was angry at the world. The warden guessed correctly that a visit from his baby boy would liven him up and give him something to live for. Wally had nowhere to go but up. And that's what he did. He got out of prison on parole and found that Mr. Griggsby (Robert McWade)--the old man he conned back in Baltimore-- had not only dropped the charges against him but gifted him $4,900 ($5,000 less the $100 Wally stole), and reunited him with his son. I have to say, as much as the movie sucked to this point, I was happy to see Wally back with his son. I may have hated the movie, but I'm no black heart.
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