Note: The movie below was Gail Patrick’s first part. She plays the just hired secretary in the assisted living facility now owned and operated by newly rich May Robson. Down the road, in 1938, Patrick landed the role for which old movie buffs remember her, the mean sister Cornelia in My Man Godfrey. For good or ill, that part typed her as The Haughty One for about 60 roles in the coming years, up to her last outing in Two in the Dark in 1948. Retirement drove her crazy, so in 1957 Gail Patrick Jackson created her own full-time job by becoming the executive producer for the greatest courtroom drama TV series ever, Perry Mason. Raymond Burr was to have ups and downs with her in the coming years about work loads and quality of scripts, but he reportedly said she was the soul of the series.
If
I Had a Million
1932 / 1:18
Tagline: “POVERTY AT DAWN...AND A MILLION AT DUSK!”
John Glidden is a captain of industry that detests his relatives so much that he hatches a nutty plan to disburse his estate. He draws names at random out of the phone book. He makes out a check for a million dollars. Then he delivers the check to the lucky duckies in person. “I want to give somebody a chance at happiness,” he says. “I don't care who - I just want somebody to have something worthwhile out of what I spent my life to accumulate.”
Whether the theme of “frustration vented” was witting or not, we don’t know, but one wonders about the year 1932. It was the worst year of the Depression. People were feeling sour with Prohibition, dust storms, the economic doldrums (the jobless rate was still 33%) and shocked at the kidnapping and killing of the Lindbergh’s baby son. If people wanted to blow off some steam, who could blame them?
Mr. Peabody is a brow-beaten husband who is now rich enough to take out his job dissatisfactions on the store’s inventory. Charles Ruggles is perfectly cast as the nebbish.
On the getting the check in a rowdy sailor’s bar, Violet Smith’s idea of happiness is to rent a hotel room and sleep alone, with only one pillow on the bed. In a Pre-Code gesture, she doffs her nylons and garters for the camera. It seems reasonable for a lady of the evening not to want to sleep in fishnets, for once.
Emily LaRue and her husband (W.C. Fields) can’t stand road hogs so they finance and command a fleet of jalopies to run road hogs off the road. This one, I daresay, will resonate with us post-moderns who endure a daily commute.
John Wallace, inmate of death row, receives his $1,000,000 on day of his execution. He mistakenly thinks the money will save him, but takes comfort in the fact his wife will inherit the fortune.
Steve Gallagher (Gary Cooper, perfectly cast) plays a marine who doesn’t believe the check is real. He signs the check over to a guy that runs a dog wagon who says, “I can't read or write but I can make marks nobody else can read.” The marines are shocked later when they see the guy well-dressed, with a new car, and stepping out with the waitress they were all interested in.
Mary Walker is an elderly woman tyrannized in an old folks institution by the supervisor who makes the inmates wear drab uniforms and ensures they have no privacy. Mrs. Walker gets her own back against tyranny with her million dollars. John Glidden, the captain of industry, is happy to give away the money because it enables him to make friends among Mary Walker’s elderly companions.
As we would expect in an anthology movie, the quality varies from segment to segment. For my money, W.C. Fields driving like the devil himself was funny and May Robson brought energy to the part of Mary Walker. Playing the millionaire, Richard Bennett has a lot of gusto and a voice that can shake rafters.
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