Hilfe, ich bin Millionär

Dennis O'Keefe never became a top-tier star and today is mostly forgotten. It's a shame, as although he may not have had 'the look', he was quite enjoyable in gangster and light comedy films. Here, he and decent dialog manage to take a silly plot and make it worth watching.

The film begins with Monty Brewster (O'Keefe) coming back home after the war. He plans on marrying his sweetie, Peggy (Helen Walker) and settling down to a happy life. However, he soon is contacted by a lawyer. Apparently a VERY eccentric distant uncle has died and left his $8,000,000 to Monty...IF he manages to spend a million of it in two months. Supposedly it's to make him appreciate the value of money and make him sick of spending--though this makes no sense. He also cannot give much of the money to charity. In the process, a funny thing happens...the more he invests in stupid schemes, the more money he seems to make!! And, Peggy is getting sick of him because Monty is NOT allowed to divulge the crazy conditions of the will.

While the film goes a bit overboard when Monty starts acting crazy when he can't get rid of his money, it's a fun and frenetic film. Not deep or sophisticated--just funny. So, provided you can just turn off your brain and enjoy, you'll like this film very much.

Unfortunately, mention of the film title today always stops with Richard Pryor. While the Peoria comedian deserves mention, his 1985 film is not the definitive version. You have to go back to 1945 to pick up the Dennis O'Keefe rendition. It's wild and wacky, silly enough to amuse but also throws a spotlight on Hollywood's special ability to let one escape from the real world for an hour or two. Good luck finding it!

Monty Brewster (Dennis O'Keefe) arrives home from WWII, ready to marry his beautiful fiancée (Helen Walker), when he learns that he has inherited eight million dollars from an eccentric uncle. There's a catch in the will, however. Monty must spend one million dollars in two months, and have nothing to show for it, in order to inherit the rest of the money. He also can't tell anyone about the terms of the will and he must postpone his wedding until after he has completed his task. Naturally, this leads to all sorts of chaos and has Monty's fiancée and friends thinking he has lost his mind.

One of Dennis O'Keefe's best roles. It's a very funny and likable screwball comedy with a solid cast, including the always fun Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. The plot's about as contrived as it gets so I recommend you put your inner critic to bed before watching.

Brewster's Millions (1945)

*** (out of 4)

Screwball comedy has Monty Brewster (Dennis O'Keefe) returning home from the war and finding himself with an inheritance for $8 million. The only catch is that he must spend $1 million within a two month period in order to collect the rest of the money. One of the deals is that he can't tell anyone so the people around him, including his fiancé (Helen Walker) and best friend (Joe Sawyer) thinks he's crazy. This was the fifth version of this famous story and two more would follow with the most recent being the 1985 version with Richard Pryor and John Candy. Having only seen tha version (the 1914 Cecil B. DeMille film is lost) this one here plays much better, although there aren't quite as many laughs. For a comedy one might say this fails because there aren't too many laughs but I didn't find that to be the case because there's so much innocent charm that one can't help but get caught up in the story and the situation O'Keefe finds himself in. O'Keefe really makes the film go with his frantic performance, which is very good. The way he slowly starts to lose his mind as he can't get all the money spent is priceless and makes for a good time. June Havoc, Gail Patrick, Mischa Auer and John Litel add nice support as well. Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, a black actor, does a great job playing O'Keefe's servant and delivers most of the laughs in the film. It's also worth noting that this movie was banned in Memphis because it was deemed that their relationship was too "equal in nature" and the people of Memphis didn't want people watching a movie where the races were shown as equal. While the film isn't a major success or a masterpiece of comedy, it does work for what it is. The nice performances by the now forgotten actors is another reason to watch this film even though it's rather rare.

This is a harmless screwball romp (one of the last of its kind) from the '40s starring DENNIS O'KEEFE as a man who, to satisfy the whim of a wealthy relative, has to spend $1,000,000 within a short amount of time in order to qualify for a $7,000,000 inheritance.

The script makes sure that he has a hard time ridding himself of dough. Seems everything he touches suddenly has the Midas touch. It's stretching it a bit when he even gets a telephone call from some radio show blithely announcing that he just won $25,000. It should happen to all of us, most of whom are still waiting for the Prize Patrol to show up at our door from Publisher's Clearing House.

Anyway, the script makes sure that O'Keefe has to mug his way through many hapless situations involving show biz connections, a fancy yacht, horse racing, everything that conceivably could give him a chance of losing money--but of course there's a happy ending.

Nice to see so many '40s players in the supporting roles. HELEN WALKER, NEIL HAMILTON, JOHN LITEL, JUNE HAVOC,MISCHA AUER, GAIL PATRICK, EDDIE "ROCHESTER" ANDERSON among others.

Allan Dwan directed and keeps things moving at a fast clip. And whatever happened to DENNIS O'KEEFE? He was a good light comedian and did a lot of straight dramatic roles too. Then suddenly he was out of sight in the movies, swallowed up by television for most of his career.