Thieves Fall Out

What a nice surprise. This is the type of Warner Brothers early forties broad comedy that tends to meander and never find itself. "Thieves Fall Out" does just the opposite. After a walk-up start, it works into a trot and then a gallop with the laughs coming from a twisty, lovably nutty plot and a riotously broad performance from Jane Darwell (Ma Joad, and "Mary Poppins" 's bird lady).

Eddie Albert wants a raise from his employer and father, Alan Hale, so that he can afford to marry Joan Leslie, the daughter of Hale's chief competitor in the mattress business. Jane Darwell, as Eddie's gangster-obsessed Grandma (and arch-nemesis of her son-in-law, Hale) schemes with Eddie to sell his legacy, a hundred thousand dollars which he will inherit when his mother dies, so that he can buy a factory his father's business depends upon and go into business for himself. When the legacy winds up in the hands of gangster Anthony Quinn, Eddie's mother (the joyfully overacting Minna Gombell) finds herself trembling in the crosshairs.

That's a darned funny set-up, and once we get there, we're off and running.

Nice guy Eddie Albert's no Eddie Bracken, at least laugh-wise, and Joan Leslie's great potential as a comedienne was not yet realized in 1941. The often hysterically funny Alan Hale is underused, too, especially in his comic battles with his mother-in-law, Darwell, which could have carried this thing for an hour. There's also an obnoxious Reggie Mantle-type rival for Eddie that we don't get a lot out of. The rivalry between the two in-law mattress kings doesn't get us much.

None of that matters, because with Darwell's blustering buttinskyism the film finds its stroke and never loses it. With snappy dialogue and a gun moll spirit, she is pitted against virtually every member of the cast in one scene after another, and the sparks fly. She brings it all in for a landing right on time.

The title, incidentally, comes from an old proverb: "When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own." I looked it up for ya.

Oh you know, it's nice to just watch a simple lark kind of picture from time to time. This is one with Eddie Albert being a feature player, who is really an attractive guy. He played young, naive types a while, always darn nice. I remember him in a Lucille Ball picture as her boyfriend, which was quite a to-do: "The Fuller Brush Girl," no less. There were some more like that. In better pics, there were "Roman Holiday," "Oklahoma," "Tea House of the August Moon," "The Longest Day" with almost every male actor around, of course, and many more.

On the personal level, he had one marriage and lived to age 99. He was active in athletics, organic gardening, keeping a vineyard, travel, participated in and founded humanitarian projects, as well. There was a crowd at his funeral. Kind of a special person, I would say.

He was a sweet guy in this. The grandma encouragement was very cute, and he seemed to take off on his own on the strength of it. There was one part in this that really annoyed me. The new wife's dad threatens to come and get her if he didn't really make good like he said he was going to, in a certain amount of time. Excuse me? How about forsaking all others, including Mom and Dad. He goes along with it. Not! The in-laws are a pain. But, you know, I think his mom was even worse - an advanced neurotic. (Where was her medicine?) Yep, there were a couple of people in this who really needed a kick in the tail.

Wow. Wasn't Anthony Quinn a looker back then? Who'd a thought it? When the coppers showed up, I thought they were the bad guys impersonating the police. I'm sure I've seen that shorter, rounder one be a dodo gangster (instead of a dodo cop, and probably as just a plain dodo).

There were so many nut-jobs in this, instead of "Thieves Fall Out," it could have been called, ""Brains Fall Out," The Crazies Hold Sway" or "Busy Going Berserk" or others along that line.

Everyone's capacity for this type of film "experience" varies. They don't bear close inspection. Found this one enjoyable because of Eddie Albert's very attractive persona. I would definitely watch it again.

Eddie Albert wants to marry Joan Leslie, start his own business, and get out from under the thumb of his blustery, obnoxious father, Alan Hale. His only asset is a legacy, but he doesn't inherit it until his mother, Minna Gombell, dies. At the urging of his grandmother, Jane Darwell, he sells the legacy at a steep discount to Hobart Cavanaugh. He sells it to gangster Anthony Quinn. He offers to sell it back to Albert, lest something unfortunate happen to his mother.

Like other Warner comedies in this period, it is frantic rather than funny, made from conflicts born out of obnoxious stereotypes. Among the worst is Miss Gombell, who is loud and hysterical at all times. Hale is permanently grouchy. Albert is working between his nice guy/sap character, and when MissLeslie walks out on him, as the wife invariably does in movies like this, it's in a fit of hysteria.

It's hard to care for any of these characters, and that means we aren't invested in what happens to them. Add in dumb cops played by Eddie Brophy and Edward Gargan, a minor appearance by John Litel as a plant manager, and the most sympathetic character might well be Anthony Quinn. True, he's willing to bump off ladies, but Miss Gombell wouldn't be much of a loss, and for him it's only business, like the way other businessmen behave here, only without the threat of homicide, which quickly recedes anyway.

... one of them is interesting. Nor do they all really mesh.

I have noticed that many of the movies falling into the "hicks nix sticks pix" type have rather complicated legal and financial transactions at their center. This one is about a legacy -- and how and why not to sell one.

How many people in 1941 knew what that even meant? Eddie Albert, always a likable performer, is the one who sells one. It's his mother's but there is a clause allowing for him to get money while she's still alive if he marries and ... Oh, forget it. That is another plot. He gets married.

He buys a company. He doesn't tell his father. He doesn't tell his father-in-law.

His grandmother, Jane Darwell, tries to help the young couple out. And she gets into quite a pickle herself.

This is neither fish nor fowl. It isn't especially funny. It isn't really romantic. And it's one of those movies in which gangsters are adorable bumbling and ostensibly cute.

As a post script, the two gangsters in question have a couple sequences that presage the two in "The Big Combo." I'm sure Anthony Quinn, who plays the boss, didn't know this. It may have been subliminal even. But it's there.

Fast-paced family comedy similar to what Disney produced in the 50's and 60's. Very likeable cast includes Eddy Arnold, Jane Darwell, Alan Hale. Son of a mattress factory owner buys his own factory and gets involved with gangsters (Anthony Quinn and Frank Faylen!). If you don't like feisty, wise-cracking grandma's (Jane Darwell hams it up), skip it; otherwise, quite enjoyable.