I Cover the Waterfront

 

(1933)
Directed by James Cruze
Written by Wells Root, from a novel by Max Miller. Additional dialog by Jack Jevne
Starring Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, Hobard Cavanaugh
IMDB Entry

Ben Lyon is pretty much forgotten today, but he was a busy leading man in the 1930s, appearing in over 30 films during that decade. He usually played a bland but likeable hero, and I Cover the Waterfront seems to be a typical example of his work.

Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is a reporter working the waterfront beat. He finds it dull, as he explains to his friend McCoy (Hobart Cavanaugh). He gets a report that a woman is swimming naked and goes to check it out. He finds Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert), who is the daughter of Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), who Joe suspects of being up to shady deals -- like smuggling Chinese into the country.*

Joe decides to romance Julie to find out what her father is doing. But Eli keeps his unsavory side secret from her, and Joe begins to fall in love with her for real. 

You can see why Lyon is not remembered. He's not bad, but there is nothing about him that stands out, and the fact that he was never in a classic movie didn't help modern audiences to see his work. On the other hand, Claudette Colbert became a major Hollywood star and brought a strong presence to her role.

The character of Eli Kirk is an interesting one. He shows compassion for the Chinese he is smuggling into the country but throws the same man overboard to drown when he needs to get rid of the evidence. It's a mixture of thoughtfulness and cruelty which makes it easy to understand why Julic believes he had done nothing wrong.  He does show cocompassioned for his daughter and for Joe in the end.

James Cruze was a successful director from the silent days, including movies with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Wallace Reid.** 

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*History lesson -- this was during the time of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which limited and even banned Chinese from entering the US.

**Reid is best known for his death due to morphine addiction, which brought the issue to the general public.