The Luckiest Guy in the World

Barry Nelson has been embezzling. His wife walks out on him. Then his luck begins to change, and he sees a way to start all over again. He only needs to get away with murder.

The series of crime two-reelers had been running for a dozen years at this point, but they had gotten a bit stale, and did not comport well with MGM's post-War optimism. In the 1930s, everyone was worried about crime and gangsters. In the first half of the 1940s, it was foreign spies. Now they figured the string was run out, and that CRIME DOES NOT PAY now longer paid. Good thing they went out on a high note.

"Vurn" (Barry Nelson) is $150 in the hole to his bookie and so borrows the proceeds of his insurance job to settle the debt and back some horses. He regularly fobs off his boss (Milton Kibbee), but this time he wants the cash - and next day, too. Luckily, his wife (Eloise Hardt) has a nest-egg from her late mother, but she isn't about to hand it over to this wastrel and so a scuffle ensues with tragic consequences. Rather than face up to those, he decides to abscond but before he can board the bus he realises that there might just be a better, and much more lucrative, solution - but what chance he can get away with it all? You do have to suspend reality a bit with "Vurn" as he acquires some rather unpleasant skills a bit too readily and the story becomes just a little too contrived so as to tee up the denouement, but on that front he does rather prove the point of all of the previous editions of this "Crime Does Not Pay" series and I did find the ending really quite fitting.

The Crime Does Not Pay short subjects were usually pedantic lessons on the evils of crime and how the police inevitably get their man because they've got science and good detective instincts on their side. This last one of the series is one glorious exception, it could have been a feature film. And as a short subject could have qualified for a Twilight Zone episode.

Barry Nelson who had a much better career on stage than he did on film stars in The Luckiest Guy In The World. He starts out pretty unlucky because he's a compulsive gambler who picks losers all the time. Embezzlement leads to murder and what seems a successful cover-up. But only seems so because this guy did get away with the crime, but the ending is out of a Twilight Zone episode.

This short subject was nominated for an Oscar in that category, but lost to a short subject called A Boy And His Dog and do I have to tell you what that's about. Sentimental won out over the surreal that year.

Still this short subject is one of the best around.

I just watched this excellent short earlier today on the turner classic movie channel as part of their 31 days of the Oscars. The Luckiest Man In The World was nominated for the Oscar of Best Short Subject, Two-reel Jerry Bresler in 1947. I'm not sure of what the other nominees were, but it is a shame it did not win the award. This short perfectly illustrates just how one's obsessing for the unreachable can easily dwindle into a downward spiral of unstoppable events eventually driving the person over the edge in an ironic twist of fate/pay back. Also, it has great characterization which enables the viewer to quickly sympathize the main character. This film has excellent pacing, not at all rushed or slow at any point. The short is simple, but gets its point across with utmost ease and beauty. If you happen to stumble across this one, count your lucky stars!

Director Joseph Newman's "The Luckiest Guy in the World" is, quite simply, a too-long neglected masterpiece of film noir. Like a previous poster, I, too, saw this recently on Turner Classic Movies and it grabbed me right from the beginning, a compelling story of an "average Joe" whose life spirals out of control when he desperately needs money to pay off gambling debts.

Baby-faced Barry Nelson, one of the screen's best portrayers of Mr. Nice Guy types, turns in a solid performance of a man caught in an inescapable trap of his own making. Also excellent, in the only other roles of any size, are Eloise Hardt as his long-suffering wife and Henry Cheshire as his sympathetic, unsuspecting boss. Max Terr's taut musical score is a plus, too.

Almost all the entries in MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series were good little crime dramas. Like many live-action shorts of the period, they served as a valuable training ground for promising writing, acting, and directing talents that the studio was trying to develop. "The Luckiest Guy in the World" is, far and away, the best, an outstanding short and a lost classic of film noir.