In spite of a big, obvious hole in the plot, "Big City" is a very good drama and crime film. It's also a story about strong family ties, true friendships, sacrifice and love. Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer star as Joe and Anna Benton. Theirs is a wonderful love story within this picture. The setting is New York City of the mid-1930s, with a taxi war between a big cab company (Comet, in the movie) and independent taxi owners.
Joe and Anna are married, very happy and much in love. Their acting is superb throughout, and shows the talent of both actors. Especially amusing and heartwarming is their affectionate clowning and joking with one another. Joe is an independent taxi owner, with Anna's brother, Paul (played by Victor Varconi). Anna and Paul come from a European country. We never find out which one, or how or where she and Joe met and married. A likely explanation to fill this hole would be that Anna and Paul were able to emigrate to the U.S. and that Joe and he became taxi partners and Joe married Anna. But, now, they are just six weeks shy of being married three years when her U.S. citizenship through marriage would be granted.
The independent taxi owners and drivers are closely knit, which enables them to survive the efforts of the sole huge cab company to run them out of business. The owner of the Comet taxi company, John Andrews (played by Oscar O'Shea) thinks there's room for the independents as well as his company. But he has hired a safety and protective service that is run by Beecher. William Demarest plays the villainous character who has some thugs on the Comet payroll, especially to create incidents with the independents.
Paul gets a job with Comet to get on the inside and find out how they set up and alert their drivers to gang up on the independents. Only, Beecher has his own plant among the independents. So, when they learn of Paul's plan, Beecher has a bomb rigged in the Comet warehouse to kill Paul. The big hole in the story occurs with the crime. Paul pulls into the garage and one of Beecher's thugs at the garage entrance pushes the button to explode the bomb. Some of the roof caves in, but Paull is not inside the locker room where the bomb was planted. So, he starts to stagger out, and the thug shoots him three times. The thug then breaks the fire alarm glass, and some men on the street rush to the night-time scene. Paul's body is clearly lying just inside the driveway. The hole is that in the ensuing investigation, there's no mention of Paul's shooting or investigation of who did that; but there is a scene of Paul's funeral.
The district attorney himself investigates the crime because he and the mayor want to prevent an out and out taxi war. By the wildest stretch of anyone's imagination, Anna is fingered for having sent the bomb. She had sent Paul's raincoat and a sweater in a box that was delivered that very night. This makes no sense at all. Why would she kill her own brother whom she loved? Did she then have a hired gunman there to gun down Paul? Why was there no further mention of his shooting or who shot and killed him? This indeed is a big hole in the film.
So, skipping over that big hole, the DA and mayor don't want a big brouhaha that might lead to a taxi war, so they plan to deport Anna. That would end the whole matter, and they can do it before her citizenship is final. Anna is put on a ship in a small, crowded room with other women being deported. But she is very far along in her pregnancy (another slight hole in the time since she told Joe, and the fact that she didn't appear to be pregnant), and ill. Joe is worried and goes out to collect enough money to have her moved to a separate room by herself once the ship sails. He plans to follow her to her country, wherever that is, in a few weeks. But, in his scrambling to get enough money for this, he discovers that Buddy was the Comet plant in their ranks, and Buddy tells him the whole story.
Joe and Mike (Eddie Quillan) race against time, with Buddy in tow, to find the D,A, and then the mayor to stop the ship from leaving with Anna. They finally break in on the annual Jack Dempsey dinner. Buddy spills the beans about the crime and Beecher's whole operation, and Joe pleads with the mayor to hurry to stop the ship and save his wife who's about to have their baby.
The next race is the whole dinner room clearing out and racing to the docks. They arrive in time to take Anna off the ship and put her in an ambulance. And while she's giving birth there, the Comet drivers arrive in large numbers and start a fisticuffs' with the independents. But the latter are aided by the mayor's dinner party attendees who include former world boxing champions, wrestling champs and even football players. In on the fun are Jack Dempsey, James Jeffries, Max Rosenbloom, Man Mountain Dean, Jim Thorpe, George Godfrey, Bill Montana, Rex 'Sonny' Baker, and Cotton Warburton.
The picture ends with the baptism of Joe and Anna's baby boy and dozens of men smiling in attendance, as the Orthodox priest calls out a long list of baptismal names - those of all the men at the Christening.
Joe and Anna are married, very happy and much in love. Their acting is superb throughout, and shows the talent of both actors. Especially amusing and heartwarming is their affectionate clowning and joking with one another. Joe is an independent taxi owner, with Anna's brother, Paul (played by Victor Varconi). Anna and Paul come from a European country. We never find out which one, or how or where she and Joe met and married. A likely explanation to fill this hole would be that Anna and Paul were able to emigrate to the U.S. and that Joe and he became taxi partners and Joe married Anna. But, now, they are just six weeks shy of being married three years when her U.S. citizenship through marriage would be granted.
The independent taxi owners and drivers are closely knit, which enables them to survive the efforts of the sole huge cab company to run them out of business. The owner of the Comet taxi company, John Andrews (played by Oscar O'Shea) thinks there's room for the independents as well as his company. But he has hired a safety and protective service that is run by Beecher. William Demarest plays the villainous character who has some thugs on the Comet payroll, especially to create incidents with the independents.
Paul gets a job with Comet to get on the inside and find out how they set up and alert their drivers to gang up on the independents. Only, Beecher has his own plant among the independents. So, when they learn of Paul's plan, Beecher has a bomb rigged in the Comet warehouse to kill Paul. The big hole in the story occurs with the crime. Paul pulls into the garage and one of Beecher's thugs at the garage entrance pushes the button to explode the bomb. Some of the roof caves in, but Paull is not inside the locker room where the bomb was planted. So, he starts to stagger out, and the thug shoots him three times. The thug then breaks the fire alarm glass, and some men on the street rush to the night-time scene. Paul's body is clearly lying just inside the driveway. The hole is that in the ensuing investigation, there's no mention of Paul's shooting or investigation of who did that; but there is a scene of Paul's funeral.
The district attorney himself investigates the crime because he and the mayor want to prevent an out and out taxi war. By the wildest stretch of anyone's imagination, Anna is fingered for having sent the bomb. She had sent Paul's raincoat and a sweater in a box that was delivered that very night. This makes no sense at all. Why would she kill her own brother whom she loved? Did she then have a hired gunman there to gun down Paul? Why was there no further mention of his shooting or who shot and killed him? This indeed is a big hole in the film.
So, skipping over that big hole, the DA and mayor don't want a big brouhaha that might lead to a taxi war, so they plan to deport Anna. That would end the whole matter, and they can do it before her citizenship is final. Anna is put on a ship in a small, crowded room with other women being deported. But she is very far along in her pregnancy (another slight hole in the time since she told Joe, and the fact that she didn't appear to be pregnant), and ill. Joe is worried and goes out to collect enough money to have her moved to a separate room by herself once the ship sails. He plans to follow her to her country, wherever that is, in a few weeks. But, in his scrambling to get enough money for this, he discovers that Buddy was the Comet plant in their ranks, and Buddy tells him the whole story.
Joe and Mike (Eddie Quillan) race against time, with Buddy in tow, to find the D,A, and then the mayor to stop the ship from leaving with Anna. They finally break in on the annual Jack Dempsey dinner. Buddy spills the beans about the crime and Beecher's whole operation, and Joe pleads with the mayor to hurry to stop the ship and save his wife who's about to have their baby.
The next race is the whole dinner room clearing out and racing to the docks. They arrive in time to take Anna off the ship and put her in an ambulance. And while she's giving birth there, the Comet drivers arrive in large numbers and start a fisticuffs' with the independents. But the latter are aided by the mayor's dinner party attendees who include former world boxing champions, wrestling champs and even football players. In on the fun are Jack Dempsey, James Jeffries, Max Rosenbloom, Man Mountain Dean, Jim Thorpe, George Godfrey, Bill Montana, Rex 'Sonny' Baker, and Cotton Warburton.
The picture ends with the baptism of Joe and Anna's baby boy and dozens of men smiling in attendance, as the Orthodox priest calls out a long list of baptismal names - those of all the men at the Christening.