In I Cant Give You Anything But Love Baby Broderick Crawford plays a sentimental gangster who abducts songwriter Johnny Downs and forces him to write a love ballad It is Crawfords hope that the song will reach out and touch his longlost childhood sweetheart I Cant Give You Anything But Love Baby was based on James Edward Grants short story Trouble in B Flat echoes of the basic premise later resurfaced in the 1957 A picture The Girl Cant Help It