the audience applauded

Best movie ever!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Blistering performances.

**SPOILERS** Stuck in a dead end job covering the San Diego waterfront newspaper reporter Joe Miller, Ben Lyon, would want nothing better then leave that boring and no news worthy hick town for a place like Chicago or New York were the real action is.Joe does have one news story that he feels would break the ice, in getting him a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, and that has to do with the suspected smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants into the US by old salt and gin & rummy drinking Eli Kirk, Ernest Torrence. What stunned me about Kirk's smuggling operations is that not only is he, in every scene he's in, far too drunk to do anything especially operate a boat on the high seas but the Chinese he's smuggling end up very very dead! That's by Kirk stuffing them, alive, inside the stomachs of 20 or more foot long sharks where they end up either suffocating or drowning!It's only by chance that Joe runs into the very sexy Julie, Claudette Colbert, on the beach one evening skinny-dipping in the Pacific Ocean. As it turned out Julie just happens to be Old Man Eli Kirks' daughter! Getting romantically involved with the somewhat naive Julie in what his plans really are, to get the goods on her old man, Joe instead falls helplessly in love with her. This makes it very difficult for Joe to have Julie's father arrested by informing the US Customs Agents about his illegal activities but, as duty calls, he does it anyway. The way Joe, through circumstances beyond his control, does it not only ends up with Eli not only saving his life but having his daughter Julie, who at first dumped him, not only fall in love with Joe but in the end marry him!The movie, based on the 1932 best selling book by Max Miller, really doesn't make that much sense in explaining the bizarre round-robin relationship between on and off lovers Joe and Julie and the criminally minded, he's in fact responsible for at least two murders, and constantly drunk Eli Kirk. Were also given a bit of comedy relief by having Joe's friend the mooching and always drunk, like Eli, One Punch McCoy, Hobart Cavanaugh, who it would take only one punch, or slap, to flatten him.P.S There's a number of oddities in "I Cover the Waterfront" in that it was one of the last films not restricted by the Hollywood Hayes Commission on morality in films where it was implied, not shown thanks heavens, Julie or actress Claudette Colbert actually swimming nude on film. There's also the oddity of one of the movie's top stars Ernest Torrence never living long enough to see himself in it by dying at the age of 54, on May 15, 1933, just days before the film was to be released to the movie going public. And by far the biggest oddity of all about the film is that the composer of its haunting and hypnotic them song, also called "I Cover the Waterfront", Johnny Green was for some reason or another excluded from the movie's-opening as well as closing- credits!

With the title I Cover the Waterfront, I expected a social-conscience picture on the order of Warner Bros.' then contemporary I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. What I got was a part screwball comedy, part romance, part soap opera. Ben Lyon is the "I" in the title, a Joe Miller who hates his reporting job for a San Francisco paper because of non-event stories his boss keeps getting him. One of them is about a skinny-dipping woman named Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert) who is the daughter of Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), a man Miller is interested in because he believes Eli has smuggled some Chinese immigrants illegally. This being pre-Code, there are some scenes that wouldn't have made it past the censors after 1934 like the one where Lyon and Colbert tour an old torture ship and Ben tricks Claudette into getting chained into one of the ship's devices just so he can kiss her without resistance! And she likes it too! There's also a brief picture of a nude woman in another scene. Witty lines dominate the first half with the two leads while the conflict between Colbert, Torrence, and Lyon takes part in the next in mostly compelling fashion resulting in a pretty satisfying denouement for those who believe in heartfelt conclusions. Well worth seeing for Colbert enthusiasts. P.S. This was Ernest Torrence's final movie.

This is the one where Lyons takes Colbert on a visit to a "torture" ship, puts her in stocks, spread eagle, kisses here and then asks if she wants more "torture" to which she says "Yes, I can take it!" Approximately 35 minutes into the movie. This was pretty racy in it's day--not too shabby now either. For atmosphere for this sort of movie, I suggest "The Docks of New York"--another coast, of course, but I think it's a better movie--although it doesn't have the come-hither looks of Claudette Colbert. Waterfront movies need lots of atmosphere and this one has it. The ending is a bit trite, though--all of the fireplace and cats, but it is a good diversion picture and good example of it's period. I'd also recommend, if you like this, to try out "Anna Christie"--both the silent version and the sound version--"Garbo talks"--gimme a visky, ginger ale on the side and don't be stingy, baby"

The presence of luminous Claudette Colbert lifts this standard and somewhat dreary effort to an entirely different level. Her shocking entrance has her buck-naked after skinny-dipping in the ocean, where Ben Lyon holds her bathing suit hostage as Claudette hides behind a boulder. She demands to know how he found her in this remote beach. He tells her that a neighbor with a telescope objected to her nudity. "It must have been a woman," replies Claudette. "Yes," answers Lyon, "no man would object." Obviously, Claudette Colbert appears at the pinnacle of her legendary beauty, with her distinctive wide cheekbones complemented by her enormous eyes. Her wardrobe here is cheap yet sexy, often in tight sweaters, and her slim form cuts a glorious figure across the screen. She's cute in the best sense, never self-conscious or cloying, and it's easy to see why she'd take the nation by storm the following year in "It Happened One Night" and "Cleopatra." It's a joy to even watch her make toast in an adorable bit of business when she catchs an errant glob of jelly from dropping onto the table. One of the sweetest ad-libs I've ever noticed, done with humor and style.The movie itself offers other enjoyments too. Like the gnarled Ernest Torrance as Claudette's sea-salty father, who smuggles illegal Chinese immigrants into port -- sometimes inside the bellies of sharks! Naturalistic undertones abound when the viewer goes aboard this captain's ship, where it's an unfortunate incident when a Chinese man is chained and thrown overboard when the Coast Guard is spotted nearby. "He knew he was takin' a risk," is how the Captain justifies his actions.All-in-all a worthwhile effort, this movie has much to recommend it, although it is somewhat marred by annoying Ben Lyon as the lead. If another actor had essayed that role, perhaps Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy, the entire movie could have been lifted to greatness.