Oro maledetto

Showgirl Claire Trevor is fleeing sleazy husband Monroe Owlsley and entranced mining engineer John Boles. She winds up staying with kindly Roger Imhof in a mining town where Boles decides to reopen an old gold mine. Add into the mix comic Harry Green as the impresario of a traveling leg show who wants to make some money, and you have one of the mishmosh scripts that Fox Films made into movies before the amalgamation with Darryl Zanuck's 20th Century Productions: some good bits, particularly Imhof's role, are overwhelmed by a meandering storyline that ends with a huge flood and a sudden, happy ending.

The usually amusing Green inserts himself ineffectively into so many of the subplots that he becomes annoying, and Miss Trevor gives a performance in which she goes squeaky with futile impotence.... not one of her more endearing performances. Boles is muscular and bland. Look fast and you may spot an improbably young Will Geer playing poker.

Of the two main stars in this Fox programmer, the bland John Boles as an engineer does nothing for me but it is always nice to see Claire Trevor, here as a runaway spouse taking a gig as a night club chanteuse in a mining town. There is some Depression period feel in the background of men looking for work and the construction of the Boulder Dam, with a flood sequence toward the end. Good support from the reliably sleazy Monroe Owsley as Trevor's husband, Harry Green as the impresario of a traveling troupe of chorus girls, and Roger Imhof (singled out by Variety) as a kindly old prospector. Trevor does one of those now forgotten songs of the time, "I've Got You On the Top of My List."