Il dissipatore

Having made his screen debut at 30, and previously acted in the theatre with Omaha Community Players and Cape Cod University Players, Fonda continued to pad out his c.v. with this bland film which had no sparkle or colour to it.

There were a glut of films in the Depression Thirties about rich heirs and dizzy heiresses. So if Henry Fonda who said he only vaguely remembered this film, he could be forgiven.

Fonda gets two co-stars here Pat Patterson the daughter of horse trainer J.M. Kerrigan replete with Irish brogue who trains for Fonda and Mary Brian a golddigging southern belle with rapacious father Spencer Charters.

Brian thinks Fonda a well known man about town playboy has more than he does and sets a trap for him. But Fonda has no idea about a dollar's value. He's plowed through his inheritance to the chagrin of his uncle George Barbier. He can't help it because Fonda is as the title says, a Spendthrift.

Of course in the end Fonda both ends up with the right girl and finds a job suitable to his lack of ability at really anything other than being a playboy.

Townsend "Towny" Middleton (Henry Fonda) finds out that he, who inherited twenty million dollars from his parents, is broke. He has his old money name and all of the trapping of wealth - mansion, polo ponies, art - but no cash. He sells his polo ponies so he can take his racehorse Black Mamba to the Kentucky Derby, possibly winning the cash prize there. Along for the ride is his personal secretary/close friend Bill McGuire (Ed Brophy) and Black Mamba's trainer Boots (Pat Paterson). While at the derby Towny meets Sally Barnaby (Mary Brian), and the two fall in love. Towny explains to her that he is broke, but she doesn't seem to be listening. Is it that love is stronger than poverty, or is it that greed is usually deaf? Watch and find out.

This is an awkward attempt at screwball comedy, although I liked it a great deal on the whole. It is more like a satire and social commentary on the idle rich and greed versus generosity. Henry Fonda's Towny is not so much a spendthrift as he is a rather clueless young man drifting through life until his sudden penniless state makes him grow up in a hurry. Towny is like an early stab at Fonda's role in "The Lady Eve" as the same kind of fellow, with Ed Brophy behaving like an early prototype of William Demarest's Muggsy in that same movie.

The supporting cast really makes this film - George Barbier as Towny's perpetually angry uncle, Ed Brophy as Towny's protector who may have a limited vocabulary but is quite the wheeler dealer, and Pat Paterson as the trainer of Towny's horses who is also nursing an unrequited love for the guy. Paterson left acting a couple of years after this film, having married Charles Boyer a few years before. The two had a long happy marriage ending in 1978 with Paterson's death.

I would highly recommend this, but have patience with it. It takes a few minutes to get rolling.