Marie Galante (1934)

I thought I knew all of Spencer Tracy's films since I reckon him as one of the all-time great and consummate screen actors, but this one was a new one to me, and if it hadn't been released to DVD, I doubt whether I would ever have seen it.  Not that it was all that marvelous, although Tracy was his usual able self playing a "doctor" who is really a government agent in the Panama Canal zone trying to root out a saboteur.  The interesting thing here -- and remember that this film precedes World War II -- two of the potential suspects were a German, a very nazi-like Sig Rumann, and a Japanese.  Incidentally the Japanese turned out to be one of the good guys.  The love interest was a French actress called Ketti Gallian who again was new to me, and not surprising since she made only a sprinkle of films in the 30s and 40s.  The photo under her name on the DVD cover was oddly not of her, but of Helen Morgan a well-known cafe singer of the period, who appeared in the film as -- what else? -- a singer; so that was something of an added bonus.