For those who like "It Happened One Night", read = fans of great quotes, the boozer/ace/snoopy journalist flicks, or Claudette Colbert's big doe eyes, it's a must see film.

Add to that the titillating and graphic aspects of the film, which was made only one year before the 1934 amendment of the Hayes motion picture production code* and you have a film or media history lover's paradise. I'm talking same-sex bed sharing, white people being restrained, graphic deaths, explicit techniques for breaking the law; the works.

That's pretty much where the plot twists begin and end, but it's enough to keep a viewer, uh, captive.

Anyway, the film is based on a book by a reporter who wrote about the shipping and fishing docks on the Pacific Ocean in the 1930s.

There's unemployment and there's the black market; there's those who survive by any means necessary, and those who just sink for lack of work. And then there's journalistic integrity somewhere in the hazy mix.

With an editor who won't leave him alone because the leads are constantly rolling in, wannabe investigative reporter Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) can't get a decent night's rest from his waterfront beat. Forced to cover everything from bootleggers to herring stench, mob arrests to nude swimmers, he's got no choice- he'd be out a job if he doesn't jump when the boss says so.

His pantheon of sources, all characters, comes to include the daughter (Claudette Colbert at her sassy best)of his favorite mark for reporting: Eli Kirk, a kingpin of the docks and bootlegger extraordinaire.

Seeing his in with Kirk's daughter, Julie, Miller dogs the seafarer, convinced he can pin him with illegal immigration of Chinese workers (whose lives are quickly extinguished by smugglers if the KGB-like Coast Guard should come their way, sirens blasting).

Miller's editor, unlike the fish in whose bellies Kirk so often carries his bottles, doesn't bite, reminding his ace that he needs to prove it with facts, not hunches.

So Miller sets out to use Julie, the captain's daughter, to prove it.

Alas, as can be expected, love gets in the way. And he soon learns she may not bargain easily when it comes to her father.

Will Miller be able to unearth the smugglers and get the girl or will he lose his editor's patience, steamy love affair, and his job in the process?

The movie's got more life, wit, and zest in presenting determination and desperation by far than Grapes of Wrath (the movie).

*From Wikipedia: 1934 changes to the Code

The Motion Picture Association of America responded to criticism of the racy and violent films of the early 1930s by strengthening the code. An amendment to the code in June of 1934 prohibited any reference in a motion picture to illicit drugs, homosexuality, premarital sex, profanity, prostitution, and white slavery.

On the San Diego coast, hard-nosed reporter Ben Lyon (H. Joseph "Joe" Miller) suspects nasty seafaring Captain Ernest Torrence (as Eli Kirk) is part of a smuggling racket. Indeed, Mr. Torrence is cleverly shipping illegal Chinese immigrants to California. But, neither Mr. Lyon nor the local Coast Guard can catch him in the act. And, Lyon's editor wants him to cover stories like the report of a nude woman swimming in the ocean. Wearing only a bathing cap, but conveniently posed behind a large rock, the naked woman turns out to be beautiful Claudette Colbert (as Julie). When Lyon learns Ms. Colbert is Torrence's daughter, he decides a quick romance with the attractive Colbert might net him the proof he needs to bag the crook.

This story, while flawed in a couple of important ways, is full of clever touches. The opening credits are noticeably well-done, in a "newspaper" style, they explain "I Cover the Waterfront" will be about, "The unique and personal experiences of a newspaper reporter covering a Pacific waterfront." Lyons and Torrence contribute fine, dependable characterizations. Colbert isn't entirely believable as Torrence's salty daughter; but, this could have been fixed with some slight script revisions. For example, Colbert could have been reconnecting with her father, after a long absence. Still, Colbert looks great from any angle.

Director James Cruze handles his players marvelously, with the most delightful scene occurring when Lyon takes Colbert on a date to the torture chamber of the "Prison Ship Santa Madre" and engages in her some bondage. "I can take it!" says a satisfied Colbert. Not so successful is the moment when Lyon slits a shark open to reveal an immigrant inside, which defies credulity. Sly innuendo is provided by "One Punch" Hobart Cavanaugh (as McCoy), Lyon's drunken companion. When Lyon pokes him in bed, Mr. Cavanaugh sheepishly catchphrases, "Not tonight, Josephine!" (remember, Lyon's character is named "Joseph"). "Women are all alike," he says later, "When you need them most, they are conspicuous by their absence." Credit writers Max Miller, Wells Root, and Jack Jevne.

******* I Cover the Waterfront (5/19/33) James Cruze ~ Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, Hobart Cavanaugh

**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!