New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford

"New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" (1931) with William Haines, Ernest Torrence, Jimmy Durante, Leila Hyams, Robert McWade, Guy Kibbee, Hale Hamilton, Clara Blandick, Walter Walker, and many others, continues the saga of con-man extraordinaire, Wallingford, and his con-men cronies, Blackie Daw and Schnozzle, a film based on the well-known short stories, plays, and novels of George Randolph Chester which were made into silent films twice, 1916 and 1921. Haines plays Wallingford who can't do anything at all without looking for the con angle against anyone and anything for any reason on any day in any year. Blackie Daw, played by Ernest Torrence, is equally a con-man, though he doesn't think the public is as gullible as Wallingford does, though in this film up front Wallingford pretty much shows Blackie that the public in general IS as gullible as he thinks it is. Schnozzle is played by the Schnozzola himself, Durante. Hyams and her mother and father in the film, Walter Walker and Clara Blandick, are at first foils, then comrades, Hyams a lover, then in the end just...well, you watch and find out. This is Con Games Unlimited to the hilt. A fun, if not fairly mild, entertainer for 95 minutes. Any longer would have been beyond the limit. Where it stands gives it a passable 7 out of 10. I'm not a huge Haines fan, but he's good here. Torrence is always good. Durante's Durante no matter how you cook. He's rarin' to go even when well done. Guy Kibbee's quite good in this, too; not up to his usual sugar-daddy shenanigans he usually played in the 30s. This one's professionals doing what they know how to do best. Could have been a stage play. The lack of cinematic fluidity is its main fault. Otherwise, it's a watch!