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The Big City is an improbable urban melodrama which takes place during a "taxi war" between honest independent cabdrivers and graft-ridden taxi monopolies. Looking for a scapegoat for a recent gangland bombing, crooked city officials deport the foreign wife (Luise Rainer) of rabble-rousing cabbie Spencer Tracy. Desperately seeking a reprieve for his wife, Tracy goes to the mayor, who is in the process of addressing a banquet of retired boxers. The ex-pugilists take Tracy's side, head down to the wharf to pummel the gangsters responsible for the bombing, and rescue Tracy's wife from being shipped back to her homeland. To avoid confusion with a 1948 MGM film of the same name, the 1937 Big City has been retitled Skyscraper Wilderness for television.