This is another racket busting movie, à la Smashing the Rackets and Racket Busters. The category of rackets here is "fortune tellers and specious stock promoters". The faux psychics steer credulous marks toward unscrupulous mining stock promoters. A typical 1930's racket would have honest businesses pay membership dues to protect themselves from the crime organization itself. In Crime Ring the businesses are not honest so they seem to get value for their money - the organization helps eliminate non-member competition and offers legal help.

The hero of the story is reporter Joe Ryan (played by Allan Lane) who is working with the DA's office. With the help of actress Judy Allen (Frances Mercer) and her ventriloquist friend (Inez Courtney) he sets up an elaborate sting operation. Judy is emplaced in a fortune teller's apartment and is approached by the crime ring. Joe then plays the innocent who is suckered by Judy to buy stock. Joe is made by the gangsters and kidnapped but is saved by cops who have been secretly tailing him.

Clara Blandick (Aunty Em from The Wizard of Oz) plays a wealthy widow who almost falls for a specially crafted fortune telling scam. Joe convinces her that all is not on the up and up and she helps catch the bad guys. A lawn jockey is a significant plot device, leading Joe to say at the end: "Don't thank me, thank the little darkie in the driveway".

Another familiar face: Byron Foulger.

Clara Blandick

Byron Foulger

TLDiTD

Bill Norman (Allan Lane), son of  milk magnate Rufus Norman (George Irving), has decided he wants to be some sort of ichthyologist or marine biologist instead of going into the family dairy business. His dad refuses to fund this expensive hobby but makes a wager with Bill that if he can work at the dairy for one month, flawlessly, then he will let Bill use the family yacht for six months for a South American marine science expedition. Bill accepts, thinking he will be an executive, only to find out that he will serve the time as a milk delivery man. Bill nevertheless performs his job cheerfully and on his route meets Sheila (Joan Fontaine), who appears to be a maid. Sheila is in fact a debutante, although her family is currently short on income. Sheila starts dating Bill thinking he is a lowly milkman, who in turn thinks Sheila is a lowly maid. This the reverse of the plot of Hold That Kiss, where both parties are working class but pretend to be upper class.

The movie opens with Billy Gilbert playing a fish monger involved in an auto accident. He doesn't do the same kind of routine I was so fond of in Happy Landing or My Lucky Star.

Familiar faces: Cecil Kellaway plays the Norman family butler, and thirty years later played Monsignor Ryan in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Hedda Hopper played Sheila's mother. Also, Allan Lane was the voice of Mr. Ed.

Joan Fontaine and Allan Lane

Billy Gilbert

Cecil Kellaway

George Irving and Hedda Hopper

This Marriage Business with Vicki Lester, Allan Lane, and Victor Moore.  Victor Moore played the main creditor in the last movie I saw, She's Got Everything.  He has a wonderfully low-key acting style.  I wonder whether the director would have to keep asking him to speak up.  The female lead is played by Vicki Lester, which was the name adopted by Esther Blodgett in A Star Is Born, the first version of which was released in 1937.  As far as I know there is no relation.

Okay, the movie...
While pursuing an eloping heiress, reporter Bill Bennett (Lane) stumbles across a small town marriage license clerk named Jud Parker (Moore).  Parker claims that no couple that he has issued a license to has ever gotten divorced.  Bill plays up this angle in his newspaper story and soon the small town is a booming elopement destination.  Bill falls in love with Parker's beautiful daughter, Nancy (Lester), but she already has a boyfriend, plus she is not sure of Bill's motives or character. Also, there are gangsters, an illegal casino, corrupt politicians and Parker is framed for murder.

Familiar face: Jack Carson as 'Candid', Bill's photographer.

Here's something you don't see today... a date involving pulling taffy:

Bill watches Nancy and her boyfriend pull taffy

A rambling Western about liar/con-artist/sharpshooter "Bonanza Bill" Barker (Harry Carey).  First he tries to fleece a New York financier into investing in a bogus gold mine.  When he is handed his hat he decides that he is not skilled enough to operate in the big city, so he heads back to El Paso.  He quickly runs afoul of both the law and the not-to-be-trifled-with McQuinn family.  The McQuinns leave town swearing vengeance, and the Judge grants the chance of reprieve if Bill can use his talent with a gun to bring in the Tonto Kid, a local "most wanted".  Never one to let a crisis go to waste, Bill decides that he will go "where the railroad is headed" and armed with a law book and his silver tongue sets himself up as the mayor of fledgling railroad town Martinez, Arizona.  There are numerous complications: the Tonto Kid turns out to be an old pal of Bill's; Bill meets his estranged daughter who is unwittingly engaged to a member of the Kid's gang; the Brothers McQuinn hatch a scheme with some Indians to legally deprive the town of access to the river.

Familiar faces: Clarence Kolb as the New York business man; the Tonto Kid was played by Tim Holt, who prospected along with Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; not a familiar face, exactly, but Bill's daughter's ne'er-do-well fiancé was played by Allan Lane, the voice of Mr. Ed.