I Cover the Waterfront

I Cover the Waterfront is a 1933 American PreCode romantic drama film directed by James Cruze and starring Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, and Hobart Cavanaugh.

San Diego Standard reporter H. Joseph Miller Ben Lyon has been covering the citys waterfront for the past five years and is fed up with the work. He longs to escape the waterfront life and land a newspaper job back East so he can marry his Vermont sweetheart. Miller is frustrated by the lack of progress of his current assignment investigating the smuggling of Chinese people into the country by a fisherman named Eli Kirk Ernest Torrence. One morning after wasting a night tracking down bad leads, his editor at the Standard orders him to investigate a report of a girl swimming naked at the beach. There he meets Julie Kirk Claudette Colbert, the daughter of the man hes been investigating.Meanwhile, Eli Kirk and his crew are returning to San Diego with a Chinese passenger when the Coast Guard approaches. Not wanting to be caught with evidence of his smuggling operation, Kirk orders his men to weigh down the Chinaman and lower him overboard to his death. The Coast Guard, accompanied by Miller, board the boat but find nothing. The next day, Miller discovers the Chinamans body which was carried in with the tide, and takes it as evidence to his editor, who still remains skeptical of Kirks guilt. To get conclusive evidence, Miller tells him he plans to romance Kirks daughter Julie in order to break the smuggling operation. ........

Source: Wikipedia