A truck driver "too lazy to work and too nervous to steal" gets mixed up in racketeering. Naturally his underhanded business practices make him a pillar of the community.
Acting
Tracy's magnetic laziness—charismatic even when doing absolutely nothing.
Direction
Rowland Brown's punchy, proto-noir visual style in just 72 minutes.
Writing
Dialogue so dry it could start a fire: 'I'm too lazy to work and too nervous to steal.'
Director
Rowland Brown
Spencer Tracy
Daniel J. 'Bugs' Raymond
Marguerite Churchill
Dorothy Stone
Sally Eilers
Daisy De Lisle
Bob Burns
'Arkansas' Smith (as Robert Burns)
John Wray
Kenneth Stone
Warner Richmond
'Nails' Markey
George Raft
Jimmy Kirk
Leon Ames
Hood
Oscar Apfel
Police Detective Capp (uncredited)
Ward Bond
Cop in montage (uncredited)
Dannie Mac Grant
Newsboy (uncredited)
Edgar Kennedy
Cop (uncredited)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Spencer Tracy was so broke he took this role for $150/week; it launched his MGM contract. The truck explosion was real—no budget for effects, so they just blew up an actual truck.
Released months before the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Hays Code crackdown, this epitomizes the brief window where Hollywood could openly mock law, order, and American institutions.
US
