The Lemon Drop Kid

1934
Approved
1h 11m

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Helen Mack and Lee Tracy in The Lemon Drop Kid (1934)

Con artist and racetrack tout Wally Brooks hands a lemon drop to a man in a wheelchair, saying it will cure whatever ails him, then persuades the man, a millionaire named Griggsby, to bet $1... Read allCon artist and racetrack tout Wally Brooks hands a lemon drop to a man in a wheelchair, saying it will cure whatever ails him, then persuades the man, a millionaire named Griggsby, to bet $100 on a horse. Wally knows this horse can't win and intends to pocket the cash. The horse ... Read allCon artist and racetrack tout Wally Brooks hands a lemon drop to a man in a wheelchair, saying it will cure whatever ails him, then persuades the man, a millionaire named Griggsby, to bet $100 on a horse. Wally knows this horse can't win and intends to pocket the cash. The horse does win, so Wally and his partner Dunhill, alias "The Professor," take it on the lam.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.4/10

YOUR RATING

5User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

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Trivia
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since. However, because of legal complications, this particular title was not included in the original television package and was not televised until many years later.

Quotes
Alice Deering: You two were at the opera, I suppose?
Wally Brooks: Listen, please. It was like this - the track was too fast, he got mud in his eye, he'd probably been ducking under too much of the gay and frisky and the old my dear - the gay and frisky meaning the whiskey and the old my dear meaning the beer - so I figured if I jockeyed home, he could duck into the fields of wheat, meaning the sheets and sorta bury his head on the weeping willow - meaning the pillow - and sleep it off.

Connections
Version of The Lemon Drop Kid (1951)

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Featured review

6/10

Lee Tracy Does Not Sing "Silver Bells"

Racetrack tout Lee Tracy gets a final warning from the cops at the track. He then swindles Robert McWade out of a C-note and has to run for it to a tiny town where Henry B. Walthall's daughter, Helen Mack and he soon fall in love. However, when she's expecting their first child, she develops complications, and employer Clarence Wilson won't lend him the money to get her the high-powered medical she needs. So Tracy steals it from him. She dies giving birth to their son, and he goes to prison.

That's the set-up and it certainly doesn't sound much like the Bob Hope Christmas movie that introduced "Silver Bells." Instead, the musical numbers are Tracy in a banjo duet of "Dinah" and William Frawley singing "Carolina in the Morning" -- he had introduced the Gus Kahn standard in THE PASSING PARADE OF 1922 at the Wintergarden Theater.

It's from a story by Damon Runyon, but although Tracy slings the lingo in beginning, it still settles down to a pure melodrama, where the script pulls its emotional punches. There's a soppy streak of sentimentality in all Runyon, the sense that his characters are essentially harmless and funny. Here, it's the "real" world that's cruel and hard, especially when Tracy's kid turns out to be Baby Leroy, who as a lover of WC. Fields' comedy, I have a strong dislike for.