The script really has nothing to do with 1930's "Min and Bill", but there are undeniably equivalent characters. Wallace Beery is Bill, a neer-do-well fisherman with a run down boat who has a taste for alcohol and a weakness for women who hang out in bars. Marjorie Main is Marge Cavendish, a responsible and respectable yet salty spinster who allows Bill to dock at her seaside emporium - she is the censor-scrubbed version of Min in "Min and Bill". Every time Bill gets a dollar in his pocket he drinks part of it and winds up getting the rest taken by a local barfly floozy. Then Bill's estranged twelvish daughter Virginia shows up, thinking Dad really cares because he put the boat in her name. In fact, he was just evading attachment of the boat by creditors. At first - loving the daughter but not relishing the responsibility - he pawns Virginia off on Marge. However, Marge and Virginia join forces to try to get Bill to clean up his act and become respectable. The side plot to all of this family drama has to do with a local merchant who underpays the fishermen for the catch they bring him. This is a scam that Bill is very willing to overlook for a price - at first. But then the post-Thalberg typical Louis B. Mayer formula of a little moppet (Virginia) making everyone listen to their conscience and coalesce into a conventional family unit begins to set in.
Don't get me wrong, I think this one is worth watching. For one, here the focus is mainly on Beery's character and his very tarnished angel antics of which I never tire. Plus it's great to see a leading man and woman look like real people rather than hand carved statues as is the case in the films of today.
A couple of things did make me wonder though. Didn't Pico (Leo Carrilo) get tired of working for nothing even if Bill is his pal? Bill would pay Pico some paltry unfair amount of their take and then retrieve even that usually because of some mistake Bill had to pay for. And why was Bill wearing a wedding ring all through the film even though it is made clear he is a widower? Just wondering.
Don't get me wrong, I think this one is worth watching. For one, here the focus is mainly on Beery's character and his very tarnished angel antics of which I never tire. Plus it's great to see a leading man and woman look like real people rather than hand carved statues as is the case in the films of today.
A couple of things did make me wonder though. Didn't Pico (Leo Carrilo) get tired of working for nothing even if Bill is his pal? Bill would pay Pico some paltry unfair amount of their take and then retrieve even that usually because of some mistake Bill had to pay for. And why was Bill wearing a wedding ring all through the film even though it is made clear he is a widower? Just wondering.