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William Lee Tracy (April 14, 1898 – October 18, 1968) was an American actor. He was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1964 film The Best Man. In 1929, Tracy arrived in Hollywood, where he played the role of newspapermen in several films. He, for example, played a Walter Winchell-type gossip columnist in Blessed Event (1932). Tracy also starred as the columnist in Advice to the Lovelorn (1933), very loosely based on the novel Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West; and he played a conscience-stricken editor in the 1943 drama The Power of the Press, based on a story by former newspaperman Samuel Fuller.
Tracy played "The Buzzard," the criminal who leads Liliom (Charles Farrell) into a fatal robbery, in the film version of Liliom (1930). He also played Lupe Vélez's frenetic manager in Gregory LaCava's The Half-Naked Truth (1932) and portrayed John Barrymore's agent in Dinner at Eight (1933), directed by George Cukor.
Lee Tracy's flourishing film career was temporarily disrupted on 19 November 1933, while he was on location in Mexico filming the Wallace Beery vehicle Viva Villa! According to the actor and producer Desi Arnaz, in his published autobiography The Book (1976), Tracy stood on a balcony in Mexico City and urinated down onto a passing military parade. Elsewhere in his autobiography, Arnaz claims that from then on, if one watched other crowds of spectators, they would visibly disperse any time an American stepped out onto a balcony. However, other crew members there at the time disputed this story, giving a sharply different account of events. In his autobiography, Charles G. Clarke, the cinematographer on the picture, said that he was standing outside the hotel during the parade and the incident never happened. Tracy, he said, was standing on the balcony observing the parade when a Mexican in the street below made an obscene gesture at him. Tracy replied in kind; and the next day a local newspaper printed a story that, in effect, Tracy had insulted Mexico, Mexicans in general, and their national flag in particular. The story caused an uproar in Mexico, and MGM decided to sacrifice Tracy in order to be allowed to continue filming there. The young actor Stuart Erwin replaced Tracy. The film's original director, Howard Hawks, was also fired for his refusal to testify against Tracy. Jack Conway replaced him.
Comedy · Drama
An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.
6.81933
Horror · Thriller
A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.
6.01932
Comedy · Romance
A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.
6.51933
Drama
A carousel barker falls in love with a young woman. Both are fired from their jobs, and when the young woman becomes pregnant, the carousel barker tries to help pull off a robbery, which goes wrong. Because of the robbery, he dies, and after spending time in hell, is sent back to earth for one day to try to make amends. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
6.81930
Comedy · Drama
An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.
6.81933
Horror · Thriller
A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.
6.01932
Comedy · Romance
A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.
6.51933
Drama
The other party is in disarray. Five men vie for the party nomination for president. No one has a majority as the first ballot closes and the front-runners begin to decide how badly they want the job.
7.31964
Mystery · Crime
A car accident traps two men inside a car near the water. With the tide coming in, they discuss the circumstances that led up to the accident.
5.91947
Crime · Drama
A gossip columnist helps a Broadway ingenue who's beholden to a penthouse gangster.
5.41932
Drama
A carousel barker falls in love with a young woman. Both are fired from their jobs, and when the young woman becomes pregnant, the carousel barker tries to help pull off a robbery, which goes wrong. Because of the robbery, he dies, and after spending time in hell, is sent back to earth for one day to try to make amends. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
6.81930
Crime · Comedy
In order to use the publicity to get re-elected, a judge sentences a notorious gangster to fight in the war.
5.71930
Comedy · Romance
A carnival pitchman (Tracy) finagles his girlfriend, a fiery hoochie dancer (Vélez), into a major Broadway revue under the auspices of an impresario (Morgan).
5.11932
Drama · Crime
A fast-talking reporter befriends a young woman and her male companion who are wanted for a policeman's shooting.
Drama
During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war effort. His friend, a small town patriotic editor, is brought in to find the culprits.
6.51943
Drama · Comedy
A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press.
6.81932
Comedy · Drama
While recuperating in a hospital after he's hit by an automobile, a struggling shopowner dreams what his life might have been like if he'd made different choices twenty years earlier.
5.41933
Family
Various Hollywood performers put on a pirate-themed variety show on Catalina Island, with a number of amiable stars in the audience.
Action · Thriller
The city's District Attorney is murdered, and a newspaper reporter investigates. He starts finding out that everything wasn't quite as cut and dried as it appeared to be.
5.91942
Crime · Comedy
A true-to-life gangster movie stirs up an all out mob assault on Hollywood.
6.01938
Crime · Drama
A crop of millionaire inmates struggle to get accustomed to prison life, while inmate Nick Burton watches out for everyone's interests on the inside.
6.11940
Comedy · Documentary
Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.
7.21964
Thriller · Action
A carnival showman tries to keep Japanese spies from sabotaging the Panama Canal.
6.41945
Drama · Romance
A comedy-romance about rival brothers attending a military academy.
5.81929
Comedy · Drama
Fast-talker extraordinaire Tracy gives one of his quintessential wiseguy performances as a conniving ambulance chaser who falls in love with Evans, unaware she's a special investigator for a streetcar company he's repeatedly victimized.
6.01933
Drama
Charlie Dugan is a quick-thinking boss of a traveling circus playing small towns in Missouri and Kansas.
6.51939
Action · Romance
Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.
6.51937
Action · Adventure
A radio reporter sets out to rescue his ex-girlfriend when she is kidnapped by gangsters.
6.61937
Adventure · Action
Investigators set out to capture a gang of thieves transporting stolen cash through the U.S. mail.
6.01936
Drama
Button Gwinett Brown is a freshman congressman on a mission to rid Washington of corruption. He quickly runs afoul of the powerful Senator Norton...
7.51932
Crime · Romance
Jed Marlowe is a brilliant, scheming, unscrupulous criminal lawyer whose specialty is defending criminal he knows is guilty but gets them off through loop-holes or bribery. Then his daughter, misled by her father’s courtroom performance, but unaware of his back-room tactics, marries the killer her father has just unjustly save from the electric chair. What’s a poor father to do?
6.21939
Comedy
Los Angeles newspaper reporter Toby Prentiss is continually in trouble with his editor. He is demoted to running the paper's "Miss Lonelyhearts" advice column because he missed the scoop on a major earthquake whilst out on the town. Determined to be fired from the column he starts to give crazy advice to the readers, but this only makes him even more popular.
7.31933
Drama
5.91961
Crime · Drama
87th Precinct is an American crime drama starring Robert Lansing, Gena Rowlands, and Ron Harper, which aired on NBC on Monday evenings during the 1961–1962 television season.
7.81961
Drama · Comedy
Going My Way is an American comedy-drama series
5.81962
Sci-Fi & Fantasy · Crime
Lights Out was an extremely popular American old-time radio program, an early example of a network series devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural, predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum. Versions of Lights Out aired on different networks, at various times, from January 1934 to the summer of 1947 and the series eventually made the transition to television. In 1946, NBC Television brought Lights Out to TV in a series of four specials, broadcast live and produced by Fred Coe, who also contributed three of the scripts. NBC asked Cooper to write the script for the premiere, "First Person Singular", which is told entirely from the point of view of an unseen murderer who kills his obnoxious wife and winds up being executed. Variety gave this first episode a rave review ("undoubtedly one of the best dramatic shows yet seen on a television screen"), but Lights Out did not become a regular NBC-TV series until 1949.
6.01949
Martin Kane, Private Eye was an early radio series and television crime series sponsored by United States Tobacco Company.
7.31949
Crime · Drama
New York Confidential is a British-American crime drama series that aired from 1958 to 1959. The series aired in syndicated in the United States and was broadcast on London's local ITV station, Associated-Rediffusion, in the UK. It was co-produced by ITC Entertainment, Metropolis Productions, Inc., and Television Programs of America.
10.01959