Thieves Fall Out (1941) Poster

(1941)

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6/10
A pleasant time waster from Warner Brothers
AlsExGal24 November 2019
B-movie comedy from Warner Brothers and director Ray Enright. Eddie (Eddie Albert) and Mary (Joan Leslie) elope, upsetting their respective fathers who are business rivals. Eddie struggles to get started in business himself, but his grandmother (Jane Darwell) convinces him to sell his inheritance to a broker for quick cash. Unfortunately, the broker is also in league with some gangsters.

I was disappointed at first, as judging by the title, I expected a crime drama of some sort, only to be met with a slightly-dopey domestic comedy. However, it grew on me a bit during its brief running time, mainly due to the fun performance by Jane Darwell as the meddling grandmother. I still don't think this is anything people should seek out, but it's a pleasant time-waster if you happen to run across it. Joan Leslie was only 16 at the time of filming. Etta McDaniel, playing a stereotypical maid, was the less well-known sister of character performers Hattie McDaniel and Sam McDaniel
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7/10
Caper with mistaken identity and inept cops
ksf-231 January 2008
Jane Darwell as Grandma Allen sure stole the show in this old black and white rags to riches story from 1941. Darwell had just won the Oscar for playing Ma Joad in Grapes of Wrath. Robert Barnes (Alan Hale) and Ed Barnes (Eddie Albert) are father and son, in this love story and mistaken identity caper, with Grandma helping things along. Joan Leslie is Mary, the blushing bride, along for the ride. Even a young Anthony Quinn as "Collins" the thug. Blossom, the laughing maid, is played by Etta McDaniel, sister of Hattie. Looks like the McDaniel sisters only worked together once in "Stella Dallas" in 1937. Alan Hale, who usually played the old, gruff sea salt, made 235 films, starting in 1911. Eddie Albert's biggest movie was Roman Holiday in 1953 and of course he played "Oliver" in the Green Acres TV series. He had only been in films for three years when he made "Thieves Fall Out". Any flick that has the good guys trying to outwit the bad guys has to have inept cops, and Edward Brophy and Edward Gargan are here, playing their usual roles.
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5/10
Jane Darwell's gangbuster granny steals the show.
mark.waltz6 December 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Fresh from an Oscar win for "The Grapes of Wrath", veteran character actress Jane Darwell went from drama to outlandish comedy as a feisty golden girl who has more energy than her own grandchildren. She's the sharp tongued mother-in-law of businessman Alan Hale (Sr.) whose son Eddie Albert has invested his mother's inheritance to him, putting her life on the line, with Darwell stepping in to take on the criminal element (lead by a young Anthony Quinn) who dares to threaten her daughter's life to get their cut of the inheritance.

Strange premise, yes, but very funny throughout, with Hale upset mostly because Albert is engaged to the daughter (Joan Leslie) of his business rival (Vaughan Glaser) and the two wives (Minna Gombell and Nana Bryant) fluttering around like dizzy children who have been spinning around for far too long. Gombell's the target of Quinn and company, but it is Darwell who steps in to take her identity so she can outwit them and save the family.

If you can get past the disturbing plot line of Gombell being a marked target for possible assassins, you'll find yourselves rooting for Darwell and Albert who team up against Quinn and his associates. Considering that Darwell was in her early 60's when she made this film (and would go on in films for another 25 years), it is obvious that she was having a great time here shamelessly hamming it up and hysterically delivering each wisecrack (usually at Hale's expense) with gusto. Albert gets to utilize his comedy skills in being a reactor to all the situations around him, knowing that there's no way he can keep up with granny.

Unfortunately, Joan Leslie is secondary to the action, getting only a few good moments, and overshadowed by Albert and Darwell in spite of being a gorgeous, rising leading lady. Hale's reactions to Darwell's ribbing are deliciously slow burning, although it's clear that as much as he annoys her, she has a soft spot for her son-in-law as well in spite of his shortcomings.

There are some good moments too for the much married housekeeper Etta McDaniel (Hattie's sister) who gets in a few very funny malapropisms that are amusing even with her character's stereotyping. It's a more than passable time-filler that is very unique in many ways compared to other comedies of the time.
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Fun, energetic, cute but not very clever
Sleepy-171 May 2001
Fast-paced family comedy similar to what Disney produced in the 50's and 60's. Very likeable cast includes Eddy Arnold, Jane Darwell, Alan Hale. Son of a mattress factory owner buys his own factory and gets involved with gangsters (Anthony Quinn and Frank Faylen!). If you don't like feisty, wise-cracking grandma's (Jane Darwell hams it up), skip it; otherwise, quite enjoyable.
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6/10
Muddled And Frantic
boblipton19 October 2023
Eddie Albert wants to marry Joan Leslie, start his own business, and get out from under the thumb of his blustery, obnoxious father, Alan Hale. His only asset is a legacy, but he doesn't inherit it until his mother, Minna Gombell, dies. At the urging of his grandmother, Jane Darwell, he sells the legacy at a steep discount to Hobart Cavanaugh. He sells it to gangster Anthony Quinn. He offers to sell it back to Albert, lest something unfortunate happen to his mother.

Like other Warner comedies in this period, it is frantic rather than funny, made from conflicts born out of obnoxious stereotypes. Among the worst is Miss Gombell, who is loud and hysterical at all times. Hale is permanently grouchy. Albert is working between his nice guy/sap character, and when MissLeslie walks out on him, as the wife invariably does in movies like this, it's in a fit of hysteria.

It's hard to care for any of these characters, and that means we aren't invested in what happens to them. Add in dumb cops played by Eddie Brophy and Edward Gargan, a minor appearance by John Litel as a plant manager, and the most sympathetic character might well be Anthony Quinn. True, he's willing to bump off ladies, but Miss Gombell wouldn't be much of a loss, and for him it's only business, like the way other businessmen behave here, only without the threat of homicide, which quickly recedes anyway.
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6/10
dark premise trying to be light comedy
SnoopyStyle17 October 2023
Eddie Barnes (Eddie Albert) is a young man still living with his family and working for his father. Slimy George keeps diminishing him in front of his girlfriend Mary Matthews. He needs money to move out. He is the beneficiary of a life insurance policy but his mother has to die first. He tries to buy a business. For the money, he sells the policy. Chic Collins (Anthony Quinn) is a gangster who needs to get paid and is willing to kill for it.

The premise is a little convoluted, a little dark, and not all that funny. It's great to see a young Eddie Albert and it doesn't hurt to have Anthony Quinn. The premise is really a black comedy, but it's done in a light comedic tone. Instead of a comedy, this premise may work better as a noirish crime thriller. The light comedic tone is conducive to Chic Collins being a wet bandit.
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4/10
This Has Numerous Plots Going At Once ...
Handlinghandel26 June 2006
... one of them is interesting. Nor do they all really mesh.

I have noticed that many of the movies falling into the "hicks nix sticks pix" type have rather complicated legal and financial transactions at their center. This one is about a legacy -- and how and why not to sell one.

How many people in 1941 knew what that even meant? Eddie Albert, always a likable performer, is the one who sells one. It's his mother's but there is a clause allowing for him to get money while she's still alive if he marries and ... Oh, forget it. That is another plot. He gets married.

He buys a company. He doesn't tell his father. He doesn't tell his father-in-law.

His grandmother, Jane Darwell, tries to help the young couple out. And she gets into quite a pickle herself.

This is neither fish nor fowl. It isn't especially funny. It isn't really romantic. And it's one of those movies in which gangsters are adorable bumbling and ostensibly cute.

As a post script, the two gangsters in question have a couple sequences that presage the two in "The Big Combo." I'm sure Anthony Quinn, who plays the boss, didn't know this. It may have been subliminal even. But it's there.
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4/10
Fall Out **
edwagreen18 April 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Jane Darwell definitely stole this film here as the slick grandmother, way ahead of her time who wants her grandson to take his legacy and open a business with it. Eddie Albert is the grandson and he elopes with Joan Leslie, the girl of his dreams.

The problem is that the legacy has been handed over to a bunch of crooks, led by Anthony Quinn. A full payout to them would come only if the mother, played hysterically by Minna Gombell, is dead.

Alan Hale as Darwell's son-in-law is also along for the ride. The film is basically inane because whoever heard of such a practice of legacy with the mother having to die before a full payment is made? How Darwell outwits the gangsters is amusing by film's end.
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9/10
Fast And Funny
jdsuggs28 January 2017
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.
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An Eddie Albert romp
misctidsandbits30 September 2011
Oh you know, it's nice to just watch a simple lark kind of picture from time to time. This is one with Eddie Albert being a feature player, who is really an attractive guy. He played young, naive types a while, always darn nice. I remember him in a Lucille Ball picture as her boyfriend, which was quite a to-do: "The Fuller Brush Girl," no less. There were some more like that. In better pics, there were "Roman Holiday," "Oklahoma," "Tea House of the August Moon," "The Longest Day" with almost every male actor around, of course, and many more.

On the personal level, he had one marriage and lived to age 99. He was active in athletics, organic gardening, keeping a vineyard, travel, participated in and founded humanitarian projects, as well. There was a crowd at his funeral. Kind of a special person, I would say.

He was a sweet guy in this. The grandma encouragement was very cute, and he seemed to take off on his own on the strength of it. There was one part in this that really annoyed me. The new wife's dad threatens to come and get her if he didn't really make good like he said he was going to, in a certain amount of time. Excuse me? How about forsaking all others, including Mom and Dad. He goes along with it. Not! The in-laws are a pain. But, you know, I think his mom was even worse - an advanced neurotic. (Where was her medicine?) Yep, there were a couple of people in this who really needed a kick in the tail.

Wow. Wasn't Anthony Quinn a looker back then? Who'd a thought it? When the coppers showed up, I thought they were the bad guys impersonating the police. I'm sure I've seen that shorter, rounder one be a dodo gangster (instead of a dodo cop, and probably as just a plain dodo).

There were so many nut-jobs in this, instead of "Thieves Fall Out," it could have been called, ""Brains Fall Out," The Crazies Hold Sway" or "Busy Going Berserk" or others along that line.

Everyone's capacity for this type of film "experience" varies. They don't bear close inspection. Found this one enjoyable because of Eddie Albert's very attractive persona. I would definitely watch it again.
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