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Fast Workers, also known as Rivets, is a 1933 pre-Code comedy-drama film starring John Gilbert and Robert Armstrong as construction workers and romantic rivals for the character played by Mae Clarke. The film, which is based on the unproduced play Rivets by John McDermott, was directed by an uncredited Tod Browning.The American Film Institute (1993). The American Film Institute Catalog Feature Films: 1931-40. Los Angeles, California, 1993.Herzogenrath, Bernd (editor). The Films of Tod Browning. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006, p. 11. The supporting cast features Virginia Cherrill and Sterling Holloway.
Bucker's anger builds over his perceived betrayal, and the next day while working at their construction site, he tries to kill his friend by sabotaging a walkway between two iron girders. As a result, Gunner falls, is seriously injured, and is given little chance to live. Wracked with guilt, Bucker tells Mary what he has done. She is furious. She tells him their brief marriage is over and that if Gunner dies she will make sure he is convicted of murder and is executed. She then openly admits her feelings for Gunner, as well as to her wanton past.
By the time Mary and Bucker arrive at the hospital, they learn that Gunner is now awake and will survive after all. Gunner deflects Bucker's bedside attempt to confess his murderous intent and in a roundabout way says he forgives him. Both men now turn their wrath on Mary, who is ordered out of the hospital room. After she departs, Bucker begins ogling the attending nurse, who smiles at him. Gunner now thwarts his friend's romantic intentions yet again by tossing a coin on the floor behind the nurse as she now leaves the room. Disgusted by the ploy, which intends to get her to bend over to retrieve the coin and insinuates that her affections can be bought, the nurse turns and glares at Bucker, thinking he had done it. "Please forgive him," Gunner pleads facetiously from his bed, "He was born with a dirty brain." The film ends with the reconciled friends squabbling once more over their differences in how they relate to women.
Reviews of the "dramedy" in leading trade journals and fan magazines in 1933 were largely poor as well. Harrison's Reports, a New York film-review service, found virtually nothing redeeming about the production, deploring its content, overall tone, and pacing. The weekly publication, which promoted itself as "Free From the Influence of Advertising", was at that time a popular source of film evaluations for theater operators. As part of its report, Harrison's cautioned operators that Fast Workers was "Unsuitable for children, , and for Sundays": Photoplay, the nation's leading movie fan magazine in 1933, simply stated in its terse review, "Mae Clarke fine in a dull tale about a two-timing skyscraper riveter (Jack Gilbert)". "Brief Reviews of Current Pictures / Fast Workers", Photoplay (Chicago), July 1933, p. 10. Internet Archive. Retrieved November 18, 2020. Another widely read fan magazine, Picture Play, summed up the film in even fewer words: "a sour and sordid picture". "The Screen in Review / 'Fast Workers'", Picture Play (New York, N.Y.), p. 61. Internet Archive. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
In their weekly reports to Motion Picture Herald in the spring and summer of 1933, theater owners in various locations in the United States personally complained about the film's plot and about the MGM production's poor drawing power at their box offices. Herman J. Brown, for example, owner of the Majestic Theatre in Nampa, Idaho, described Fast Workers as an "Unsatisfactory picture with a weak ending", noting it "Won't please" and "Business not good" during its screenings. "What The Picture Did For Me/ MGM/Fast Workers", Motion Picture Herald (New York, N.Y.), July 8, 1933, p. 47. Internet Archive. Retrieved November 17, 2020. Far from Idaho, Edith Fordyce, the proprietor of the Princess Theatre in Selma, Louisiana, advised her colleagues to present the film "on bargain night if you have to show it." Theater owner A. E. Hancock in Columbia City, Indiana specifically blamed Gilbert for the film's poor reception in his town. "The picture has some action and should have got money", insisted Hancock, "for Armstrong and Mae Clarke are liked but Gilbert is too much of a liability to put any picture over here." "What The Picture Did For Me/ MGM/Fast Workers", July 15, 1933, p. 82. Internet Archive. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
Despite the film's numerous detractors in the print media, The Boston Globe, The Hartford Courant, and The Film Daily were among the relatively few newspapers and trade publications in 1933 that recommended the MGM release to their readers, although with some reservations."New Films Reviewed / State and Orpheum / 'Fast Workers'", Daily Boston Globe, March 11, 1933, p. 8. ProQuest; "John Gilbert at Palace in Robust Role", The Hartford Courant (Connecticut), April 3, 1933, p. 16. ProQuest; "John Gilbert in 'Fast Workers'", The Film Daily (New York, N.Y.), March 18, 1933, p. 4. ("Fairly Amusing Most Of The Time"), Internet Archive. Retrieved November 18, 2020. There were also defenders and apologists for Gilbert in the media, reviewers who insisted that weak scripts were largely responsible for any perceived deficiencies in the actor's performance in Fast Workers and in most of his earlier "Sound film". Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Herald was one of his defenders:
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