The Man Who Had Everything

Jack Pickford was an odious young man and not a particularly wonderful actor but the idea of the beggar's curse on which it is based - that he should have everything he wants - is a rather good one. This is the work of hugely prolific short story writer and novelist Ben Ames (later the man behind two noir classics, Leave Her to Heaven 1945 and The Strange Woman 1946) but it is only a short story and the film does peter out dreadfully towards the end, particularly as Green has made everything far too explicit and there is no real tension of any kind.

The moral of the tale incidentally (and one does encounter the phenomenon in other films of the period) is that one should be very wary of women who wear anything resembling the remains of a pheasant on top of their head. It sems one should always prefer the type of woman who has a perfectly simple little fox-carcass strung around her neck, perhaps because one can chat to it while embracing her. Ah, those were the days!

Today, people think of Jack Pickford as the alcoholic, womanizing sister of Mary Pickford and the husband of tragic silent movie actress Olive Thomas. It's too bad, because Jack Pickford was a great young actor in his own right, with charisma to spare and talent to boot.

"The Man Who Had Everything" is a neatly packaged morality play. The plot is simple and predictable. However, Pickford's performance is great and lifts the movie into a touching story of one man's greed and redemption.

It's a hard movie to find, but I suggest that one looks for it.