Blessed Event

Columnist Moxley (Ned Sparks) returns from vacation to chew out his substitute (Lee Tracy as Alvin Roberts) for printing outrageous society gossip, Miss Stevens (Ruth Donnelly) steering clear, when the editor Miller (Walter Walker) arrives with a surprise ruling, in director Roy Del Ruth’s Blessed Event, 1932, from Warner Bros.

Often mentioned but seen now for the first time 30-minutes into the picture, Dick Powell as radio band-leader Bunny Harmon, the frequent target and general enemy of gossip columnist Alvin (Lee Tracy) offers a tune by Joseph Burke, Al Dubin and Irving Kahal, then an insult as he hands off to Alvin, who counters, in Warner Bros.’ Blessed Event, 1932.

Off to a flying start in the definitive Lee Tracy pre-Code picture, his first starring role, as novice newsman Alvin, from the advertising department, filling in for a vacationing columnist, having discovered the trick of fabricating news of prominent pregnancies, Ruth Donnelly as Miss Stevens, Mary Brian as society writer Gladys, in Blessed Event, 1932, from a play by Manuel Seff and Forrest Wilson.

Fast-talking pre-code actor Lee Tracy stars in a thinly disguised portrait of rising gossip columnist Walter Winchell, Blessed Event (1932).