Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Barbara Hale Week 2/4

Note: Welcome to the second of four reviews to celebrate Barbara Hale week. Best known for her role as Della Street in the TV series Perry Mason, she attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, aiming to be an artist. She modelled to pay tuition. She began her movie career in the 1940s. Her break was appearing with Frank Sinatra in Higher and Higher in 1943. Her ability to portray different characters with depth and authenticity contributed to her reputation as a skilled actress in both dramas and comedies.

The Jackpot
1950 / 1:25
Tagline: “The Prize-Winning Comedy of the Year!”
[internet archive]

This comedy is set in Indiana, in a town of probably 40,000 people since it can support a newspaper and two department stores. Bill, his wife Amy, and their two children are leading a stable life that many folks would give their eyeteeth for. But Bill glumly predicts his pattern of life is set. He assumes that he will live an adventure-free life until he is old, remorseful that nothing has ever happened to him. Why WWII wasn’t a big enough adventure for men in the Greatest Generation is left unexplained, but the upshot is James Stewart’s Bill is an antsy male like Dick Powell’s bored insurance guy in 1948’s film noir classic Pitfall.

Bill gets a glimmer of liberation. In the so-called Golden Age of Radio, giveaway shows were a popular type of program, often featuring quiz formats where contestants could win prizes. The prospect of winning the $24,000 jackpot sends Bill, Amy, and their canasta friends into frenzied dreams of getting, having, and living it up.  Bill exploits the small-city grapevine in order to obtain possible answers to the question that has stumped contestants for weeks. Plus, blind chance takes a hand in a miracle.

Proving once again that nothing is completely bad or completely good, even in victory, Bill and family get a quick lesson in tax laws, which back in the day bordered on confiscatory. An auditor tells them that the government will count as income the prizes worth $24,000, such as the services of the gay interior decorator, quarter-ton of beef, Palomino pony, collection of designer hats, furniture, portable bar, swimming pool, thousands of cans of Campbells and long trailer. Given Bill’s income of $7500 p.a. and his $500 in the bank, the $7000 tax liability could very well be a burden.

The look at postwar USA culture is skeptical but toothless. Bill feels mildly disgusted at the nervous conformity that compels parents to ferry their children to attend the boss's daughter’s birthday party. The four other couples, Bill figures, would jump out of their underwear at the idea of changing canasta night from Wednesday to Thursday evening. 

There is a modicum of genial satire on the culture of consumption as stoked by hard-sell advertising – idiotic jingles and all - on the radio. Granted, there is some bite in the victory scene when the consumption-mad adults don’t even notice that Bill’s little boy is crying for help because he’s gotten his head stuck between the spindles of the staircase. But only funny in the standard way we’ve seen many times are the grumpy and highly-strung teenage girl (12-year-old Natalie Wood) and Bill falling down the stairs (twice, no less).

James Stewart keeps his trademark folksy schtick to a minimum, which was fine with me. In about five A-movies before 1950, Barbara Hale is confident as wife Amy. A little odd is that Hale was in her late twenties when this movie was made so her character Amy would have had her daughter in her late teens. Too true that teen marriage was not a biggie back then. Hale is called upon to put on a variety of acts in this movie, which shows her range. The act 'jealous wife,' which is cliched, is on the writers.

As for the connection to the classic series Perry Mason, portrait painter Patricia Medina was an alluring temptress in TCOT Lucky Loser. The oily obsequious colleague Lyle Talbot appeared in the TCOT Long-Legged Models.

Canasta cheat Claude Stroud appeared in TCOT Ominous Outcast, TCOT Left-Handed Liar, and TCOT Bigamous Spouse. From Texas, he was born to play the small-town heel.

Minerva Urecal, uncredited as Woman Trying on Hats (a funny scene based on the incongruity of battleaxe shooting for elegant), was in two episodes of the classic Perry Mason series TCOT Fan Dancer’s Horse and TCOT Lover’s Gamble. She could dress down and play a landlady of cheap residency hotel or dress up and play a society matron.

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