The Cheaters

I used to watch this movie every year on WGN (Chicago TV station) as a child. As an adult, I think this movie is more pertinent today than when I was a child. It's the story about a self obsessed family that through greed finds the "true" Christmas spirit.

It's too bad that whatever studio owns the rights to this movie has not chosen to release it on DVD. I know that two companies are offering for sale, one on DVD and the other on VHS tape. I don't know about the quality of the transfer of the DVD but it was supposedly made from a VHS tape master. I bought a copy of the VHS tape which comes in a yellow colored sleeve and found the quality to be sorely lacking from the copy I had made from a WGN broadcast. Unfortunately, that copy got overwritten.

I would like to know what company owns this film. I have read that it was originally distributed by Republic pictures. I understand that Artisan Home Entertainment has the rights. A search on the internet for Artisan takes me to Lions Gate Entertainment where I found a reference stating the Lions Gate was once Artisan. I have also read that Paramount controls the rights.

I would love to know if anyone else has a copy they made from the WGN broadcast. Please email me if you do. It seems ashame to see this great movie fade into oblivion!

This is a delightful movie that is rarely seen. It's a Christmas movie. A family of rich, self-absorbed people loses everything in the depression. They are visited by a mysterious stranger who helps them to find something more important than the money they have lost. Nicely done.

My husband's family loved this movie and rank it with It's a Wonderful Life. I can't remember seeing it or I saw it and don't remember it. I am like Chris from Philadelphia and have been scouring TV listings and calling all kinds of video stores to get a copy of it. Frake8 in Libertyville has seen it every year for 20 years. I am hoping that someone like Frake8 has a copy of it. I would love to surprise my husband one year with a copy of it. If someone has a copy of it, please email me and I will pay for a copy of it. I would be forever grateful and my husband would be in 7th Heaven.

I had no idea until recently that this was a Christmas-related film – the title certainly hints at nothing of the sort; however, it proved one of the more pleasant surprises of the festive season as I thoroughly enjoyed the picture. A B-movie at heart (being a production of the lower-berth company Republic), this was dealt an even greater blow when shorn of some 27 minutes on being licensed to TV – getting retitled in the interim to THE CASTAWAYS, and its potential appeal as a holiday flick thus made no clearer! The central premise involves a high-society household who, in spite of financial distress, tries to maintain decorum for the sake of a daughter's visiting fiancé; with this in mind, on realizing it has been snubbed out of a fortune – a deceased eccentric relative having willed his legacy to an unwitting child actress from long ago! – the family schemes to track the woman down (who is herself trying to make ends meet at the moment) and make sure she be kept ignorant of the fact. However, to uphold a façade of respectability and flaunt their would-be generous spirit in the eyes of the world, they go so far as to invite a less privileged soul (randomly picked off the social register) to partake of their 'bounty' during the Yuletide period; he turns out to be a former thespian who contrives to instill in them a regard for basic human decency, in the process learning to achieve peace of heart through the virtue of humility! Interestingly, though, the actor is himself not shown in a completely good light (unlike typical life-altering figures): he is shown to be fond of the bottle (even having the family butler mix him a special cocktail ostensibly to cure some form of ailment!), relentlessly draws on his knack for theatricality to drive home a point (such as affecting a limp – which momentarily brushes onto the head of the family as well! – and, claiming no one will be the same after that night, proceeds to give an intense solo rendition of "A Christmas Carol") and is himself guilty of insensitivity on occasion (especially when dealing with the duped heiress); incidentally, the woman's pragmatism and perennially optimistic outlook (while admitting to having herself consciously used them as a meal-ticket) has at least as much to do with the family's ultimate repentance. Though the behind-the-scenes personnel involved were no more than modest, if undeniably efficient, the film is essentially buoyed by a splendid line-up of actors: Joseph Schildkraut (surprising but effective casting, especially through his distinctive accent and mellifluous voice, for the down-and-out but resourceful ex-star), Ona Munson as the other 'interloper' in the scenario, Billie Burke and Eugene Palette as the masters of the house (typecast but always fun to watch as scatter-brained and flustered respectively), and Raymond Walburn as an equally useless next-of-kin (in fact, Palette had hilariously suggested to use him for the apparently fashionable "charity case" to be paraded in front of guests at Christmastime!). The Yuletide atmosphere is wonderfully captured throughout (down to having children carol-singing in the snow), lending the whole the requisite warmth – this, coupled with its gentle humor and nicely-drawn characters, makes THE CHEATERS a generally delightful concoction worthy of much greater attention than it has received over the years.

This odd little film plays out like a Christmas spin on MY MAN GODFREY. The family of rich businessman Eugene Palette is in financial trouble and when they learn that an even richer uncle has died and left his fortune to a woman he didn't even know, a former child actress named Watson, they scheme to find her and keep her under wraps until the search period is over, when the money will revert to them. A homeless former actor (Joseph Schildkraut) who is staying with the family helps out with the scheme, but the dawning of Christmas Day brings some changes of heart.

The best thing about this film is its physical production; it's an A-looking movie produced by B-studio Republic Pictures. The actors are also bigger names than Republic typically used, though most of them were aging actors who had seen better days. The real problem is the writing; the screenplay could have used another draft or two, especially in character development. One daughter is built up as a kind of sly, whimsical type in contrast to the other who is more cold-blooded, but nothing is done with that potentially interesting tension. Old pros Palette and Billie Burke are fine, though their choice to underplay their underwritten parts takes some of the fun out of the proceedings. Schildkraut is good, but his character remains a cipher, not in a mysterious angel/ghost way, but in a way that suggests the writers didn't know what to do with him. There is solid support from Raymond Walborn, Norma Varden, and eternal butler Robert Grieg. TCM host Robert Osborne introduced this as "the best Christmas movie you've never heard of," and as I am familiar with almost every Christmas-themed Hollywood feature film ever made, he may be right, and I am grateful for the chance to have seen it, but it's not a gem I'll want to revisit often.