$1000 a Minute

Roger Pryor is a nice guy, but money slips through his fingers before he can spend it. When the jeweler will not let him have Leila Hyam's engagement riing on credit, she calls it off. But two wacky millionaires make a bet that no one can spend $1000 A Minute, and offer him $10,000 if he can do it, with Edward Brophy to go along to make sure he doesn't violate the terms -- he must buy real things, and they cannot be investments.

Like me, you'll identify this as a variation on George Barr McCutcheon's BREWSTER'S MILLIONS. I found it an amiable enough farce with Brophy getting most of the funny bits -- a bit of a surprise to me to find him actually getting some laughs, particularly when paired with a Great Dane. This is very early days for Monogram Pictures, so they have a good assortment of talent on view, including Sterling Holloway, Edgar Kennedy, Herman Bing, Franklin Pangborn, and even George 'Gabby' Hayes. It's also remarkable for being the bet print of any Republic picture I've ever seen. Over all, it's ok: like many comedies in this era, it's more frantic tan funny, but it does have its funny moments.

"Wally" (Roger Pryor) is a debt-ridden hack who is desperate to buy an engagement ring for his fiancée "Dorothy" (Leila Hans) but can't even afford the cab fare. Then his editor fires him and he heads to the casino! He doesn't do much better there so decides to tap up one of the wealthy gents who frequent the place. As luck would have it, he and one of his equally wealthy chums had just made a bet on whether it could be possible to spend $1,000 per minutes for twelve hours. That makes a grand total of $720k! They decide to give "Wally" a chance to earn a bonus of $10,000 if he can hit that target. He has to get receipts for everything and has to run all the purchases through the eagle-eyed "Benny" (Edward Brophy) but he still reckons this will be a synch. Now the last thing he was reporting on was a robbery and so when he starts off his spree with a string of very expensive pearls, the suspicious jewellers call the cops and they soon begin to suspect that his current, fully funded, extravaganza might be connected with that very crime. With the police on his trail and the clock ticking down, it soon proves quite a lot more difficult than he'd expected to get the job done - but can he make it? This is quite a fun hour of comedic excess and there's an amiable chemistry between Pryor, Brophy, Hyams and the long-suffering cabbie "Pete" (Sterling Holloway) who just wants his fifteen bucks so he can take his taxi back to the garage and go home to bed! The scenarios work quite well and all are kept busy by a decently paced direction and by jokes that, though maybe a bit repetitious, still manage to avoid being too cringy and do point out just how we value money over all other things at our peril.

'$1,000 a Minute' is a movie about the interest charges on my credit cards. No, just kidding. (Not much!) Actually, '$1,000 a Minute' (that dollar sign is in the opening credits) is an above-average B-movie with an ingenious premise, which unfortunately it doesn't quite fulfil.

Roger Pryor was a B-movie version of Clark Gable: they played similar roles, but Pryor lacked Gable's confidence and his raffish rough edges. Also, Pryor was smaller than Gable, with a poncier moustache. Muscular and fit, Pryor was completely believable as a boxer in 'Belle of the Nineties' ... but his small size relegated him to playing a middleweight at best. Gable was the heavyweight, in terms of build and his appeal as a box-office draw.

I viewed a nitrate print of '$1,000 a Minute' that had begun to deteriorate, and had some footage missing. (I viewed as much as I dared of this film through a hand-held Steenbeck viewer, so as not to subject it to the sprockets of a motorised projector.) This movie ingeniously combines two premises that have separately done good service elsewhere. One of these is the one about the eccentric millionaires who make a bet that cruelly exploits some innocent schlub. An early example of this plot line was Mark Twain's story 'The Million-Pound Banknote'. A more recent example was the film 'Trading Places', with *two* schlubs as the millionaires' pawns (one white pawn, one black pawn). The other premise used here in '$1,000 a Minute' is the hardy perennial from 'Brewster's Millions': the one about the man who is legally required to squander a vast fortune.

'$1,000 a Minute' stars Roger Pryor as a cynical newspaperman (Clark Gable subtype) who loses his job and his girlfriend in the same day. Somewhat desperate, he finds himself embroiled in the scheme of two eccentric millionaires. They're conducting a wager to see whether or not it's possible for anyone to spend $1,000 a minute, every minute, for 12 continuous hours. (Nobody in this film does the maths, so I'll do them: that bet would cost $720,000, not counting the stakes of the wager itself.)

Pryor, of course, is the man who gets stuck with the job of spending the dosh. As an incentive, he's promised $10,000 for himself *IF* he can keep up the spending ... if he fails, he gets zilch. A gunman named Benny, with a broad Brooklyn brogue, is assigned to stay on Pryor's heels to make sure he follows the rules and keeps up his spendthrift behaviour.

This premise is ingenious ... at first. In the early reels, the pace picks up speed as Pryor must accelerate his spending. At first, this looks a shop-a-holic's dream gig. But the suspense mounts as Pryor discovers it's getting more difficult to spend the money. When word gets out about Pryor's buying spree, merchants assume he's loony and they don't want to do business with him. The cops assume that Pryor is spending stolen loot, or spreading counterfeit cash: either way, they try to collar him.

There's a fine supporting cast in this film. Herman Bing was a German character actor who exaggerated his Prussian accent to comic effect, with wildly exaggerated rolling R's. Here in '$1,000 a Minute', Bing does a set-piece in which he explains to Pryor that Pryor can't order oysters because oysters aren't in season. Bing trots out the usual myth that oysters are only in season in months that have an 'R' in their names. (This is untrue: oysters are a bit more watery in the non-R months, but perfectly good to eat.) The way Herman Bing twists his 'R's in explaining this concept to Pryor is hilarious! Edgar Kennedy supplies one of his finest examples of his famous slow burn here. The annoying Sterling Holloway is as annoying as usual here; I skipped his big scene in my hand-held viewer. Franklin Pangborn is a bit less nelly than usual. Just a bit.

The real delight of this film is Edward Brophy as Benny, the gunman who supervises Pryor's spending habits. Brophy is typically described as playing dummies, but that's not accurate: on the rare occasions when Edward Brophy played a genuinely stupid man, such as in 'The Last Hurrah', he wasn't very credible. Brophy was brilliant at playing befuddled little tough guys: smart enough to know something was fishy, but who couldn't figure out what to do about it. In '$1,000 a Minute', he gives one of his funniest performances.

SLIGHT SPOILERS. Unfortunately, after setting up such a great premise, '$1,000 a Minute' can't keep up the spendthrift pace of its early reels. I missed some footage in the middle, but the ending loses steam. It's no surprise that Pryor ends up with Leila Hyams ... but her looks in this film disappointed me. In her silent-film roles, Hyams was meltingly beautiful ... then the talkies revealed her coarse Brooklyn accent. Yet, in her early talkie roles, Hyams was still good to look at although painful to hear. In '$1,000 a Minute', Leila has no appeal for me at all. Her long blonde hair is now short and dark. She wears a harsh make-up, with lipstick that looks nearly black on screen. Her eyebrows have been plucked and reshaped to resemble nothing found in nature's realm. Leila, how could you?

Because I viewed a damaged and incomplete print, I shan't rate this film. The production values are VERY low throughout. From what I could see, this movie starts out as a delightful and original comedy ... and then fails to pay off the promise of its premise.

If spending money were an Olympic sport, $1000 a Minute (1935) would feature a contender worthy of a gold medal-or at least an award for comedic effort. The film fully embraces the delightfully absurd logic of a simple premise: what if an ordinary man had to spend a fortune quickly in order to secure a prize? Yes, this idea has been revisited many times, most notably in Brewster's Millions, but this 1935 version has its own charm, a chaotic sense of humor, and a supporting cast that keeps the story moving at full speed.

Our protagonist is the kind of character who doesn't overcomplicate things-and for a film of this genre, that's a big win. Unlike other versions where the lead fluctuates between naive and frustratingly clumsy, here he simply accepts the absurdity of the situation and races against the clock while the real spectacle unfolds around him. And what a spectacle it is! From indignant taxi drivers constantly inflating the fare to store managers convinced they're being robbed, every scene is a small, escalating chaos. Add to that a high-stakes secret bet, a police chase worthy of an action film, and even an affectionate dog, and the result is a movie that always seems to have another bit of madness up its sleeve.

The film's greatest strength is precisely its creativity in stacking obstacles. With every attempt to spend money, something or someone turns the situation into an even bigger mess. And it's not just bad luck for the protagonist-it feels like the entire universe is conspiring to make his mission more difficult. If a clever con artist had caught wind of the situation and tried to take advantage, the story could have escalated to even more surreal levels, the kind that make audiences wonder just how far the madness can go.

The ending doesn't disappoint. After a series of misadventures, Wally crashes his taxi and ends up in the hospital-only for a surprisingly clever twist to finally help him meet the conditions of the bet. And it's impossible not to think: isn't this a film begging for a modern remake? With credit cards, online shopping, and an endless maze of financial bureaucracy, spending money quickly today might be an even greater-and more hilarious-challenge.

$1000 a Minute is a hidden gem for those who love comedies that thrive on chaos and emphasize character interactions. It doesn't need to reinvent the wheel-just spin it faster and faster until everything spirals out of control. And that's exactly what makes it so much fun.