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.
