There's a sub-genre of movie which could be called "a bunch of stories going on at a night club" films. I think they come out of musicals, where you'd have all these plots in the one location to justify songs.
This isn't a musical per se - it doesn't have time, clocking in at only an hour - but does have some dance sequences. Busby Berkley was involved and you can tell because you've got shots of chorus girls and their legs with POV shots through them.
This is a pre-code movie so it's a bit racy - low cut tops for the girls, there's a gay character (an effeminate man) at the club, lots of drinking, a sympathetic depiction of a dead man's mistress.
It's weird that the hero role is a drunken rich playboy - Universal were probably keen to find a lead role for Lew Ayres, who'd been in All Quiet on the Western Front. He's more comfortably cast than Boris Karloff, who plays the nightclub owner, who presumably they were looking to cast in something, anything after Frankenstein. Still Karloff's Karloff and it's fun to see him. Mae Clarke, then during her brief vogue as a star, pops up as the female lead. George Raft has an early role as a womaniser.
This start off fun, with all that movement and action but slowed down and became silly. Ayres is such a weak wet hero - I didn't believe it for a second when he punched out Raft. I did believe he would fall for Clarke, who is warm and lovely. It's a bit yuck how Ayres blames everything on his greedy bitch of a mother.
The ending feels really rushed and awkward and hilariously over the top with these gangsters rocking up and shooting Clarence Muse (whose wife has just died) and Boris Karloff and his wife (another shrewish bitch) and going to shoot Ayres and Clarke and then being shot by a cop. I wish Raft's role had been bigger - I kept expecting him to come back at the end.
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