It's a real crowd-pleaser, snappy and "adult" in the zippy sense of the era. Our hero:

Looks like a burn victim. A lesser Cagney, but there could only be one. Our heroine:

She had a classic Hollywood story:

Following her sophomore year in 1929, she went on summer vacation with her mother and older sister to visit family in the Los Angeles, California area. She began working as a movie extra as a lark. Her big break came when, still an extra, she was offered the lead opposite Maurice Chevalier in Playboy of Paris.

She married Joel McCrea and they stayed married. Anyway: ths movie starts out in a boudoir, where a model is eating crackers in bed. As the photographer says, when they see this, eating crackers is all they'll do in bed.

Then we go to a beauty pageant, because: skin! Your announcer:

Never found him funny in movies. Droll, but never funny. Have to admire him for finding that niche and doing what everyone expected, though.

Anyway, more of her, and for good reason:

It's completely gratuitous, and I love it. This is 1933: form-fighting suits that ride up. This is before the Hays act, and it has to be one of these thing that made some men in the audience think what a time to be alive. Hub-fargin'-hubba.

So who was she? June Brewster.

A minor supporting actress of the 1930's, whose only claim to fame (or notoriety) was being married to Guy McAfee. McAfee was a former L.A. vice squad captain, turned proprietor of an illicit gambling den, the Clover Club on Sunset Strip, which was equipped with gaming tables that could be flipped over and hidden during raids. This did not, ultimately, stop a successful raid by the police.

McAfee, with wife June in tow, duly left for Las Vegas, where he acquired the Pair-O-Dice Nightclub and Casino on Highway 91. He purchased several other lucrative properties during the 1940's: the Frontier Club, the Mandalay Lounge, the Pioneer Club, the SS Rex (which became Benny Binion's Horseshoe), and, most famously the Golden Nugget in 1946. At the time of his death fourteen years later, McAfee was considered one of the most successful operators in the history of America's gambling capital.

Take a look at this mug:

She outlived him by 35 years. There has to be more to that story. If you're curious, she ended up . . . as the basis for a character in a video game.

ANYWAY, we move right away to an earthquake, where our shooter gets footage as things are falling down. From Sex to Comedy to Sex to Destruction! In the middle of the carnage he meets . . .

A hard-boiled gal reporter who's not above conniving our hero to get her story. Of course they'll end up together, but first they have to shoot in a hospital that's falling apart. Check out the pace of this - eight cuts in 11 seconds.

We also meet a drunk reporter who has a wall fall on him during another disaster - a brewery explodes - but that's before our hero runs off to a flood in Louisiana. (We have also seen footage of race cars crashing, spectacularly.) In short, it's a formulaic, sensationalist, sentimental 30s flick - which is to say it's great.

This is how a real man reacts when his best gal throws him over for a soft-hand banker's boy who's taking her back home to the south to raise babies:

Of course it doesn't work out that way; he rescues the gal in the end, and the ace reporter stands by the brownstone giving an interview about her capture.