Two Seconds is a 1932 American pre-Code crime drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Edward G. Robinson, Vivienne Osborne and Preston Foster.

The title refers to the two seconds it takes the condemned person to die in the electric chair after the executioner throws the switch.

John works with his friend and flatmate Bud Clark, as riveters, on the girders of a skyscraper under construction, getting paid $62.50 a week, "more than a college professor".

Earlier, John had said to Shirley that he wanted a woman with educational aspirations: "Ain't no use both of us being dumb".

Shirley feigns respectability, telling John that she only works in the dance hall to support her sick parents, who live on a farm in Idaho and that she is educated ("I've got a year of high school, wish I'd have stuck it out").

Bud: "if a dame tells a guy she's going to a lecture that means one thing, she's got designs on him".

Liquor was illegal and managing to get "blind drunk" (sometimes literally, the substances being methanol, not alcohol) was something of an achievement.

The Justice of the Peace says John is too drunk to continue the ceremony, but Shirley bribes him with $10, and indicates that she already has a ring, which she has had for some weeks.

I can't climb ... when I get up there, my head swims, I get sick, afraid, I gotta hold on.

One minute he was standing there talking to me and the next he was flying through space, his fingers clawing, trying to catch hold of something and nothing for him to grab.

Lizzie, the cleaning lady (Dorothea Wolbert), tells Shirley that the landlady is after them for the rent.

A deranged John insists that he only wants $172 of the winning, then rummages in a cupboard to find his teacup, the one he had on his finger when he married Shirley.

At his trial, John states he should have been "burned" (electrocuted) when he was at his lowest, a "rat", living off Shirley, not when he had paid off his debts.

Mervyn LeRoy said in the 70s, when talking about the film, that at the time his production team were "highly organised".

Although he called it "a sordid and melancholy study" that was "glum and gruesome" and "minus any comedy relief", New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall also found a lot to like in Two Seconds.

"Edward G. Robinson contributes a remarkably forceful portrayal," he wrote, adding that the film was "adroitly done [and] compels attention."

He called LeRoy's direction "imaginative and lifelike" and praised the supporting cast: "Preston Foster plays Bud Clark, a rôle he also interpreted on the stage.

[3] Variety's 1932 review was less enamored: "General slowness and stodgy overdramatics won't draw the flaps, nor will a tragic finale help.

"[4] In later years, prolific critic Leslie Halliwell tersely called Two Seconds a "competent, pacy crime melodrama".

Later: "There I was trying to get you Peggy Joyce and you go and get yourself hog tied to a dance hall dame" (Bud Clarke).

Peggy Hopkins Joyce (May 26, 1893 – June 12, 1957) was an American actress, artist model and dancer.

In addition to her performing career, Joyce was known for her numerous engagements, six marriages to wealthy men, subsequent divorces, scandalous affairs, her collection of diamonds and furs and her generally lavish lifestyle.

Mass produced "Kewpie" dolls, the representation of a comic strip character, were prolific in the US at the time.

Bud is jokingly insinuating that John Allen will become childish: "I aint bunking with no lily".

Bud (Preston Foster) to girl in the street "why don't you let me sit across from ya, and squirt grapefruit juice in your eye, like they do in the movies".

That refers to the notorious scene in The Public Enemy, in which Cagney viciously mashes a grapefruit into the face of Mae Clarke at breakfast.

Shirley Day responds mockingly "Then the goose would stop laying the golden egg", as she was the only one bringing money into the house.

That is a reference to one of Aesops fables The goose that laid the golden eggs, an idiom used of an unprofitable action motivated by greed.

Latonia, once regarded as among the United States' top sites for racing was closed in 1939, during the Great Depression.

During that time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation (bootlegging) of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States.