... talk about playing against type! Of course this was before he was known for his roles as sympathetic physicians, but still it is a bit of a shock seeing Ayres play what is basically a very deplorable person.
The film tries to soft peddle it with an opening montage of stockbrokers selling bad stocks, bankers saying their banks are on solid ground, a man pretending to be blind and begging, and a common purse snatcher, I guess, the lesson being, that everybody has a racket and is on the take, but it didn't soften the blow for me.
Ayres plays Bill McCaffery, the son in McCaffery and Sons Plumbing. His dad tries to warn him against continuing to play the horses, and his best girl (Ginger Rogers as Molly) says she won't marry him until he stops playing the horses, yet he continues on. First he turns five dollars into 250 dollars, then he turns fifty dollars into 1500. When Molly says she is done with him because of his gambling, Bill takes the train to Saratoga and turns what was to be their honeymoon into a month long horse betting jag. He returns to New York with fifty thousand dollars after making all of the columns in the papers. 50K would be roughly a million dollars in today's money.
Dad and Molly stand their ground. And the law of gravity says what goes up must come down, but Bill is unswayed and thinks his luck will run forever, and complications ensue.
The film has some funny anecdotes that don't make you think any better of your fellow man. One involves a gold digger and the other involves Bill pulling a ruse that could land him in the penitentiary or even in the grave when he crosses a gangster.
I guess the funniest part (unintentional I am sure) of the film is when Bill is at a nightspot in Saratoga and out comes the floor show. They are actually rather pudgy girls in two piece outfits with stripes that make them look like convicts. Their dance routine is basically sitting down, crossing and uncrossing their legs, and then standing up again. Rinse and repeat. Talk about your all talking all singing all dancing convicts! Busby Berkeley this is not!
Lew Ayres and Ginger Rogers, who were married for six years, met making this film. It was probably a bad omen that, although in love and engaged, they spend most of the film feuding and apart.
I'd mildly recommend this, because it is a rare case of an existing Universal that is a straight precode in the Warner Brothers tradition. If you are a film history buff I would definitely recommend it.
