Miracle Money

This episode of MGM's long-running CRIME DOES NOT PAY series is a fairly typical one for the period from 1936 through the nation's entry in the Second World War. It concerns fraud of a particular sort. Earlier entries had covered milk, insurance fraud. In this case, it's about medical quacks. We are offered John Miljan, who proposes to cure cancer infallibly through a gizmo and expensive treatment, rather than chancy surgery, the only medically recognized treatment of the era.

Although most fraudsters avoid carrying around guns and committing murder, in this series, they invariably wind up bumping off inconvenient people. I imagine that was the popular thought of the day: start with cheating your friends with a double-headed quarter, and you were less than twenty minutes from arson, murder and jaywalking. Better not start at all, better hew to the straight but narrow path, because CRIME DOES NOT PAY.

"Miracle Money" is one of the many popular "Crime Does Not Pay" docu-drama shorts that appeared in the late 1930's and early 1940's. ("Once again, this is your MGM crime reporter!") Although the actual storyline is a bit overripe (medical investigators playing cops and robbers), the subject matter was very timely, and remains so today.

The "Miracle Money" refers to cash swindled from frightened and easily duped victims of quack medical practitioners. In this episode, the villainous doctor diagnoses cancer in his victims (whether they have it or not), and promises a reliable and painless cure via his "Volta Ray" machine in exchange for thousands of dollars. Those who are aren't really ill are cheated out of their life savings; the ones who actually *have* serious problems are generally doomed because they wait too long to seek rational treatment.

The fictional "Dr. Jones" of MM was a thinly-veiled reference to Albert Abrams, who first began his career as a quack gadget charlatan in 1915 and managed to dodge the law for years thereafter. There is also a strong inference to Harry Hoxsey and his cancer clinic scams, which began in 1936.

Apparently the message of "Miracle Money" wasn't sufficiently spread -- Ruth Drown resurrected the cancer charlatan device during the 1940's (ironically, her offices were located in Hollywood). Even in the 21st Century, the spiritual descendants of Abrams and Drown are still advertising such "cures," using advertising that is remarkably similar to that used by Dr. Jones in "Miracle Money" some 65 years ago...and the Hoxsey clinics, although finally driven out of the United States, are still operating in Mexico.

This short film appears occasionally on TCM. If you happen to stumble across it, watch. It's fun and melodramatic in its own right, as most of the Crime Does Not Pay subjects are, but it also has an eerie timelessness.

It's another story from MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series. Dr. Jones opens a cancer treatment center and tricks his patients with barely legal advertisements. They buy his ineffective expensive treatments. It's not the most exciting or action-packed story. It's fine for this series. It's actually more important than the average episode. It's a good warning to the audience of that time who are all too trusting.

Miracle Money (1938)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another winning entry in MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series. This time out we take a look at doctors who tell people they have cancer just so that they can scam them for money on a fake cure. Like others in the series, I guess you could say this is overly dramatic but to me that just leads to plenty of entertainment. There's plenty of drama throughout the short and one can't help but want to see the bad guys punished in the end.

Turner Classic Movies show this as well as other entries in the Crime Does Not Pay series so if you're interested then keep your eyes open.

Sad that even today with a lot more advances in cancer treatment than they had when this Crime Does Not Pay short was made we still have quacks like John Miljan peddling fake cures.

Miljan and his quack cancer cure center are the subject of an investigation by the state medical board. Due diligence and the man is gotten as in these short subjects they always are. Sadly for a lot more than fraud and quackery.

Nicely done film from this series.