Terra do Meu Destino

Victor Mature was a tough and solid leading man hero in many films, but in Gambling House he lets William Bendix make a chump out of him. In fact he gets into a real jackpot with the Immigration authorities.

This story hit home with me because I knew someone who was in just such a bind as Mature was in this film. He was born in Canada of Puerto Rican parents and he was undocumented until he was an adult. For him it was cumbersome process to get citizenship and he was ill equipped to deal with it. But that's another story.

The story of Charles 'Lucky' Luciano was in everyone's mind back then so the story here resonated with the American audiences. Luciano got himself deported to Italy as did a few other foreign born gangsters back then. This was no idle threat.

Mature takes a murder rap for Bendix and pleads self defense and Bendix agrees to a $50,000.00 payment and Mature takes his IOU. Just like Alan Ladd who gets burned with hot money after a contract in This Gun For Hire, Mature gets ratted out to immigration.

When Mature by dint of circumstances is forced to make contact with various hopeful immigrants the film takes an abrupt turn into social drama from noir. Helping him find a social conscience is rich do-gooder socialite Terry Moore.

The end is taken from one of Mature's much better films, Kiss Of Death without the dramatic impact it had in that one. William Bendix was never bad in any film, but he's sadly wasted in one of RKO's lesser noir films.

It's oddly named because this movie really has nothing to do with a gambling house.

Gambler Marc Fury (Victor Mature) opens the film by staggering into his apartment, drops of blood marking his path, and collapsing on the floor after phoning a doc who will ask no questions. The doc patches him up while he tells what happened. He got caught in the crossfire between some guy and gambling house owner Joe Farrow (William Bendix), who actually shot the other guy dead.

Farrow makes a deal with Marc where Marc takes the blame for the killing, but pleads self defense, and in return Farrow will pay Mature $50,000 and provide Marc with his own attorney as counsel. Marc is cleared, but Farrow has no intention - or ability for that matter - of paying Marc the money. So he tips off the feds to something that even Marc doesn't know - Marc's Italian parents were never naturalized and thus Marc, born in Italy but brought to America as a toddler, is not a citizen. This makes him eligible for deportation. As a guy with a long criminal record, it doesn't look good for him.

This sends the movie into another direction entirely which detracts from the original noir flavor, but still is rather interesting - the plight of immigrants from recently war-torn Europe, how people take advantage, and the people here in America who help them, and in particular one attractive social worker and immigrant aide (Terry Moore) that brings up a romantic angle between two very unlikely people - herself and Marc. The deportation angle also allows hardened cynical Marc to realize what being an American means to him.

I ended up liking this more than I thought I would for lots of reasons - Mature tends to be a ham actor, the obvious age difference between Moore and Mature, and the immigrants shown being depicted as just too wide-eyed and naive for me to buy into it. And yet it works. I'd mildly recommend it, just realize this is not your proto-typical noir of the era.

Heads up: I like watching Victor Mature, a most unassuming actor of undeniable quality. In GAMBLING HOUSE, he posts yet another solid performance, well backed up by that frequent villain, Willliam Bendix. Sadly, cute little Terry Moore comes nowhere near those two, and the actors who portray the members of the immigrant Sobieski family come across as even more amateurish than Moore.

Good direction, action sequences, and cinematography. The downside is the rather hackneyed script - difficult to believe that an active criminal donates 50,000 smackers to the sweet immigrant family, and that the US Government would deport someone who had served the US honorably as a GI, even if he has fallen into the web of crime.

In the end, GAMBLING HOUSE is certainly not a waste of time - and if you like Victor Mature, you might even find it a treat!

The movie's a flawed crime drama that suffers from both miscasting and an unconvincing mixed message. Mature's Marc Fury (what a name!) is a racketeer threatened with deportation because he crossed the head racketeer (Bendix), who has connived effectively behind the scenes. In his efforts to avoid being sent back to a war-ravaged Europe, Marc romances a refugee worker Lynn Warren (Moore) who works with persons displaced by the war.

Unfortunately the bubbly Moore is only 21 in a part that calls for a much more mature looking actress, while actor Mature is a relatively advanced 37. As a result, the two don't match up well either physically or age-wise, making their pairing a real stretch for the movie.

But I suspect there's an interesting backstory to this production from RKO. Keep in mind this was about the time womanizer Howard Hughes purchased the studio. Moore, apparently, was one of his many favorites, while she claimed the two had secretly wed in 1950, the same year of this film. So I rather suspect Hughes was trying to boost her career by pairing her with one of Hollywood's biggest hunks, whether their pairing in the movie was credible or not. This is speculation on my part, but remains something to think about when viewing the film.

Now, crime dramas don't have to exclude political themes if those themes are artfully included. The trouble here is that Marc's sudden change of heart is neither persuasively dramatized nor subtly expressed. His final patriotic speech before the judge is more like a sermon than a confession, and shifts the whole weight of the film onto a last minute contrivance. But again, keep in mind, that Hughes was obsessed with the communist threat in 1950, so the artless message could well have originated in the headman's office.

In short, I see the movie's crippling compromises as the result of studio boss Hughes' particular preoccupations. Again, I can't claim anything more than conjecture, but at the same time, the points do have a circumstantial basis.

Where the movie succeeds is in giving the audience an idea of the plight of civilians displaced by the recently concluded war in Europe, and seeking a new life in America. This is now a largely forgotten aspect of the post-war period, but remains a wrenching aspect, movingly portrayed here by the Sobieski family.

All in all, the movie lacks impact as a crime drama and over-does the courtroom preachments. No wonder that whatever the good intentions, Gambling House has joined the ranks of the largely forgotten.

This is an interesting film which is part gangster film, part film noir, and part social drama. For those interested in how deportation was used in the 1950s to get rid of undesirables, it is very educational and seems pretty realistic. I think the biggest problem with the film is the casting of the three leads, Victor Mature, Terry Moore, and William Bendix.

Mature is surprisingly good as a gangster, but he really has a good nature and looks heroic, so it is hard to see him as a thug. Moore was 21 years old at the time of the movie and Mature was 37. This type of age difference is not unusual in Hollywood movies of this time, but unfortunately, Moore looks 18 years and talks like she is 16, and Mature looks in his 40s, so the blossoming love relationship between them seems misplaced. There were probably 50 actresses from 25-45 who would have been great with Mature, but Moore just seems in the wrong picture. Moore is great in other pictures, like "Mighty Joe Young," but at 21, she lacks the gravity to be a counter-balance to Mature's brooding performance. He is also about a foot taller than her. She looks like his daughter when she is next to him.

Worse, William Bendix, one of the great comic actors of this time plays the villain. Anybody who has seen him in his "Life of Riley" television series or other comic roles he has played in can only be disappointed that he plays the villain straight without any comic touches. He is not bad as the villain, but it does seem a waste of his talents.

It does move along fairly well and does generate some suspense in the key scenes. Don't go in with high expectations and you'll enjoy it.