Long before he directed Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and The Adventures of Robin Hood (among other brilliant films) Michael Curtiz took a hand in putting together this little Depression gem about shady detective work, women with money to spare, and a budding romance. The always puckishly sophisticated William Powell appears to have a great deal of fun playing what appears to be a shady detective—but one with an integrity and a great charm for women.
In this zippy little pre-code gem, Powell is hired to put a wealthy female gambler in jeopardy so that her considerable winnings can be taken back by the speakeasy where she gambles; can you guess what happens when the two meet? The woman is played by the engagingly attractive but underused Margaret Lindsay, and she's an apt foil for Powell's machinations (Lindsay has never looked better than she does in this film, and one wonders why she never moved into more major films).
This is another Warner Brother's quickie, a highly entertaining, fast-moving (67 minutes!) "B" film loaded with familiar character actors like Hobart Cavanaugh and Irving Bacon and even Toby Wing, whose wide-smile and sexy persona impresses immediately in a five second appearance as one of Powell's willing conquests. There's even a pre-code drug addict named "Whitey" referred to as a "hophead" into "snow," the sort of drug reference which, as a result of the new code, would completely disappear from films for twenty years after 1934; drugs didn't make a major appearance again until Sinatra's Oscar-nominated performance in The Man With The Golden Arm in 1956.
This is not a great film by any means, but a perfect Saturday matinée popcorn movie, an excellent example of a studio film that was no longer made after 1950.
In this zippy little pre-code gem, Powell is hired to put a wealthy female gambler in jeopardy so that her considerable winnings can be taken back by the speakeasy where she gambles; can you guess what happens when the two meet? The woman is played by the engagingly attractive but underused Margaret Lindsay, and she's an apt foil for Powell's machinations (Lindsay has never looked better than she does in this film, and one wonders why she never moved into more major films).
This is another Warner Brother's quickie, a highly entertaining, fast-moving (67 minutes!) "B" film loaded with familiar character actors like Hobart Cavanaugh and Irving Bacon and even Toby Wing, whose wide-smile and sexy persona impresses immediately in a five second appearance as one of Powell's willing conquests. There's even a pre-code drug addict named "Whitey" referred to as a "hophead" into "snow," the sort of drug reference which, as a result of the new code, would completely disappear from films for twenty years after 1934; drugs didn't make a major appearance again until Sinatra's Oscar-nominated performance in The Man With The Golden Arm in 1956.
This is not a great film by any means, but a perfect Saturday matinée popcorn movie, an excellent example of a studio film that was no longer made after 1950.