Now I’ll Tell

Fox Film Corp.; producer, Winfield Sheehan; screenplay written and directed by Edwin Burke; story, Mrs. Arnold Rothstein. 1934.

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Murray Golden); Helen Twelvetrees (Virginia); Alice Faye (Peggy Warren); Robert Gleckler (Al Mositer); Henry O’Neill (Tommy Doran); Hobart Cavanaugh (Freddie); G.P. Huntley (Hart); Shirley Temple (Mary Doran); Ronnie Cosbey (Tommy, Jr.); Ray Cooke (Eddie Traylor); Frank Marlowe (George Curtis); Clarence Wilson (Davis); Barbara Weeks (Wynne); Theodore Newton (Joe); Vince Barnett (Peppo); Jim Donlan (Honey Smith); Charles Sellon (justice of the peace); Samuel T. Godfrey (manager of gambling house); Jack Baxley, John M. Sullivan, Tom McGuire (bookmakers); Donald Haines (messenger boy); Cosmo Kyrle Bellew (Oakley Evans); Selmer Jackson (Decker); Lane Chandler (friend); Charles Moore (black attendant); Irving Bacon (attendant); Charles Dow Clark (telegrapher); Claire Du Brey (maid); Catherine Perry (Marion); Leon Waycoff (Max); Larry McGrath (referee); Frankie Dolan (referee); Patrick J. Moriarity and Georgia O’Dell (fight fans); Allan Fox (timekeeper); Paddy Sullivan and Red Stevens (preliminary fighters); Gordon De Main (fight announcer); Lenita Lane (Virginia); George Davis (elevator operator); Mae Madison (waitress); Harry C. Bradley (Judge Farth); Dorothy Phillips (Mrs. Farth); Louis Payne (butler); Alice Calhoun (Mrs. Doran); Joseph Crehan (doctor); Lucile Browne (nurse); Edwin Stanley (Coffey); Billy Franey (messenger); Lew Harvey (gangster); Bob Ryan (chauffeur); Wesley Giraud (boy); Walter Armitage (Drake); Claude King (captain of ship); Mary Forbes (Mrs. Drake); Alden Chase, Jack Mower, Edward Keane (gangsters); Gertrude Astor (Freddie’s wife); James Flavin (cop); June Vlasek, Blanca Vischer, Ruth Peterson (women at beach); Frank Melton (photographer); Ruth Warren, Eddie Kane, Brooks Benedict, Freddy Howard, Boothe Howard, Eddie Hart, Charles Williams, Tommy Dugan, George Lloyd, James Murray, Clay Clement, Dorothy Christy, Jack Norton, Susan Fleming, John Marston, Robert Ellis, Inez Norton, John Sheehan, Ned Norton, Stanley Price.

Credits: Assistant director, Jack Boland; photography, Ernest Palmer; 2d camera, Bud Mautino and Robert Mack; camera crew--New York background shots, Sol Halprin and Larry Williams; settings, Jack Otterson; film editor, Harold Schuster; gowns, Rita Kaufman; music director, Arthur Lange; sound, William D. Flick; production manager, E.W. Butcher; still photography, Emmett Schoenbaum.

Song: Fooling with the other woman’s man, words and music by Lew Brown and Harry Akst. ...:

Credits supplied from: AFI catalog, 1931-1940. Originally distributed by Fox Film Corp.

Playing time on release was 75 or 87 min., according to: AFI catalog, 1931-1940.

Summary: "In 1909, at the Saratoga racetrack, gambler Murray Golden convinces the man at the betting window to trust him for a $200 bet on the strength of a telegram sent to him purportedly by multi-millionaire Harry Payne Whitney, which gives a tip on a horse. Murray, in fact, earlier composed the wire himself. Although the horse does not win, Murray invites the party he is with to join him in a celebration. One of the women in the party, Virginia, decides to marry Murray, although she has no idea how he makes his money. Murray has ambitions of hobnobbing with the leaders of society, and he lives by the creed that one should do anything one can get away with. In 1914, on their fifth anniversary, Murray, who now runs a successful gambling house in New York, promises Virginia, who is bored and lonesome, that he will quit the business as soon as he has made $500,000. That night, Murray meets cabaret singer Peggy Warren, the girl friend of Al Mositer, a gangster whom he orders to leave, and at her instigation, they begin an affair. Although the evening’s winnings put Murray’s income over $500,000, he tells Virginia that he wants to continue until he makes ’real’ money so that he can do other things. By 1919, Murray has given Peggy a $100,000 trust fund and a Park Avenue apartment, but he remains in love with Virginia. Upon learning that Mositer has fixed a championship fight by paying one of the fighters, Eddie Traylor, to take a dive, Murray pays the other fighter, George Curtis, to go down in an earlier round and then places a bet with Mositer. After the fight goes the way Murray planned, Virginia, who has attended with a friend, overhears talk that Peggy has been Murray’s girl friend for years. She starts to pack, but Murray convinces her that his cohort Freddie is the man involved with Peggy. Murray then promises to quit gambling and go into the insurance business. During their discussion, Murray gets a call telling him that Traylor has been found murdered. Five years later, Curtis, who was broken up by Traylor’s death, is an alcoholic. After Mositer tricks him into admitting that Murray convinced him to take a dive, Mositer vows revenge. As Murray, now ostensibly in the insurance business, visits his boyhood friend, Tommy Doran, who is now a police detective, to try to bribe him for a client, he gets a call from Freddie telling him that Virginia has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom by Mositer. Murray orders Freddie to pay anything and hurries back to town in a cab with Peggy. He urges the driver to speed, and the cab crashes into a truck killing Peggy. Virginia, who is released unharmed, tells Murray that she will seek a divorce in Paris to regain her self-respect. In 1928, Murray, nearly broke, loses $50,000 to Mositer in a card game. When he gets a telegram that Virginia is returning from Europe, he thinks she is coming back to him. Feeling that his luck is changing, he pawns her jewelry, which he has kept in the safe-deposit box, to gamble in a crap game. Virginia tells him that she is marrying another man and that she came back to get her jewelry. Still in love with her, Murray promises to get the jewelry back. He takes out an insurance policy, and then tries to win the money to buy back the jewelry from Mositer in a crap game, but loses over $200,000 to him. When Murray tells Mositer that he is going to reveal to the district attorney that Mositer killed Traylor, Mositer shoots Murray, who then confesses that he arranged to die so that should he lose, the insurance money could be used to buy back Virginia’s jewelry. Tommy brings Virginia to Murray’s hospital room and encourages her to lie to him. After she tells Murray that she’s coming back to him, Murray dies. ... The main character in this film is based on the gambler Arnold Rothstein, who, according to modern sources, acted as a go-between for businessmen and criminals in their dealings with New York politicians and police. Rothstein was reported to have devised the Black Sox scandal during the 1919 World Series. He was shot during a poker game and died two days later, 6 Nov 1928, without revealing his killer. [Variety, May 29, 1934, p. 12] noted that at the time of the film’s release, Rothstein’s murder was still unsolved and commented that the character ’Murray Golden,’ ’resembles the noted Broadway gambling man in his moods and methods, many of which will be recognized by those who knew or studied him’"--AFI catalog, 1931-1940.

Topics(s): Rothstein, Arnold, 1882-1928 --Drama. Gambling --New York (State) --New York --Drama. Boxing --Corrupt practices --New York (State) --New York --Drama. Adultery --Drama. Organized crime --New York (State) --New York --Drama. Popular music --United States --1931-1940.

Genre(s)/Form(s): Gangster films and programs. Features.

Credits heading(s): Burke, Edwin, b. 1889. writing, direction

Database: Film and Television Archive