Hazard

Casino operator Fred Clark loves compulsive gambler Paulette Goddard. She's run up $16,000 in debt to him, which she has covered with a rubber check. No problem if she marries him. She refuses. He offers her double or nothing on a card cut: either she squares the debt, or marries him. She agrees, loses, and runs off. Clark hires PI Macdonald Carey to track her down.

Under the direction of George Marshall, the first hour of this movie is an agreeable comedy, made funny by eccentrics that inhabit this cinematic world, played by competent comic actors in odd situations: Stanley Clements, Percy Helton, Max Rosenbloom, and so forth. At about the hour mark, however, with the movie two-thirds over, Marshall seems to recall that he's got to get these two to fall in love and eliminate Clark as an impediment to the course of true love, so there's a shift into more standard comedic situations. And while Miss Goddard is fine in comedy, Carey is not.

He was one of those performers who emerged after the Second World War, classically trained and terrified of looking silly, and incapable of taking a pratfall. So he was replaced in the movies by a later model and instead appeared in over 3000 episodes of Day Of Our Lives. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but he probably wondered what had happened. Meanwhile, Miss Goddard made lots of money, married interesting men and was accused of being a communist. To this she replied "Say that again and I'll hit you with my diamond bracelet."