Quick Millions *** (1931, Spencer Tracy, Marguerite Churchill, Sally Eilers) – Classic Movie Review 10,784

Director Rowland Brown’s 1931 crime thriller Quick Millions stars Spencer Tracy as a go-getting lorry driver, Bugs Raymond, who gets involved with mobsters and takes protection money, and hits it big, falling for high-society beauty Dorothy Stone (Marguerite Churchill) even though he has a trashy but faithful girl, Daisy De Lisle (Sally Eilers), already.

Sidelining Daisy, he brings Dorothy’s brother Kenneth Stone (John Wray) into the rackets, and then his sidekick Jimmy Kirk (George Raft) kills the wrong man.

Spencer Tracy’s first star performance is splendid, and Raft is also first rate, along with Warner Richmond as ‘Nails’ Markey and Bob Burns as ‘Arkansas’ Smith. They help to lift high this snappy, excellent, little-known early Thirties crime drama about the perils of driving ambition.

Also in the cast are John Swor, Leon Ames, Ward Bond, Edgar Kennedy, Henry Kolker, Lee Phelps and Louis Mercier.

It is Tracy’s second film, following Up the River (1930), which is the only movie in which Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy co-star. 

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,784

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