The Big Gamble

The Big Gamble opens on New Year's eve, with a broke gambler trying to figure out how to work his way out of debt. Alan Beckwith (Bill Boyd) gets local thug Andrew North (Warner Oland) and Beverly Ames (Dorothy Sebastian) involved in a scheme to come up with money fast. Viewers will recognize Warner Oland as the lead in all the Charlie Chan movies in the 1930s. Also keep an eye out for James Gleason as Squint Dugan, small time crook. He will go on to play the ultimate slow-witted New York police lieutenant in just about every film made in the 1940s. Zasu Pitts plays Dugan's wife, maid to the Beckwiths. Sound and light quality are a little iffy, but that can be forgiven, since it was the early days of talkies. The dialogue is all a bit stilted and hesitating, apparently since everyone was new to the live sound track. Director Fred Niblo only made two more films after this one. Niblo had an interesting history; his brother- in- law was George M. Cohan, and Niblo was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Pictures. Not the strongest script or acting, but its a fun, low-key film. Even a couple surprises.

Alan Beckwith owes a large gambling debt to gangster Andrew North. Alan agrees to take on an $100k life insurance policy. He also agrees to marry Beverly who is under North's control. After the mandatory one year wait, he will kill himself and leave the money to Beverly. North assigns Squint Dugan to watch over the couple.

This is a pre-Code crime drama from RKO. The staging is a bit play-like. It's early filmmaking. I do like the premise. It has potential to go down differing paths. There is an obvious flaw with North's plan. Alan is a gambler and he's got nothing to lose as he gets closer to the one year mark. He's going to gamble. If he makes a lot of money, he's going to try to buy his way out. If he loses a lot of money, it doesn't matter to him anyways. The comedic touches don't really work. After a slow-moving two thirds, the movie does rise up in tension culminating into a good fast-pace car chase.

William Boyd is willing to kill himself for enough insurance money to pay off his debts, but crime boss Warner Oland raises the stakes: a year and a day, and the money will nominally be paid to wife-for-hire Dorothy Sebastian. But a lot can happen in a year...

Shot beautifully by under-rated DP Hal Mohr, this movie, with a newly mobile sound camera is very good visually. Unfortunately, leads Boyd and Sebastian are not quite out of the silent era and director Fred Niblo is not so good at directing the dialogue -- nor does the depression that the leads evince for the first half of the movie, help things much. James Gleason and Zasu Pitts are, of course, excellent, but, despite an excitingly shot finale,the acting prevents this from being more than an averagely good picture.

The film begins with William Boyd (later known to the world as Hopalong Cassiday) meeting Warner Oland in a restaurant. It seems that Boyd owes gangster Oland $5000 and instead of paying him back, he has an intriguing proposition--he'll kill himself and make it look like an accident to that Oland gets his money. Oland likes the idea but isn't interested in just a paltry five grand, so he modifies the idea. Since most policies won't pay off for the first year, Oland will arrange a sham marriage and support Boyd and his new bride for one year--then an "accident" will occur. And, to make sure that nothing happens to Boyd in the meantime (such as cold feet), Oland arranges to have gunman James Gleason follow him and make sure nothing happens during that year. Now too surprisingly, suicidal Boyd actually falls in love with this arranged wife and by now it's too late--Oland won't let him out of the deal.

This plot is very tough to believe and needlessly complicated. Arranging for a wife as well as Gleason seems a bit like overkill. Simply having Oland be the beneficiary seems to make far less sense--but, of course, this changes the plot and then there's no reason for Boyd to change his mind. Despite this rather substantial plot hole and a slow first half of the film, it all managed to pull itself together in the second half--and culminating with a very well-staged chase scene where you DON'T have cheap rear-projected shots and you have some very violent and realistic elements (making it perhaps the best car chase of the era). No cheap stock footage here or a crash that looks ridiculous--it's very well done and made my heart race.

Overall, this is a B-movie with some serious flaws, but provided you can just watch the film without questioning them, you'll be very pleasantly surprised by the end--nearly earning this film an 8. A good job of acting by all except Oland--whose delivery, unfortunately, isn't too much better than his Charlie Chan character in other films!

Gambler Alan Beckwith (William Boyd) wants to make a deal with gangster Andrew North (Warner Oland) to whom he owes five thousand dollars in gambling debts. He wants to take out a life insurance policy on himself for the amount he owes and then commit suicide. He's tired of life. North agrees but modifies the deal. Instead he will pay for a policy for a hundred thousand dollars in life insurance on Beckwith, but Beckwith needs to wait a year and a day to kill himself so that the policy will pay off on suicide. In return, North will pay for Beckwith to have a nice lifestyle while he waits out the year. Also, Beckwith has to marry a woman of North's choosing - Beverly (Dorothy Sebastian) who will be the technical beneficiary of the policy so that North can keep his name out of it. For some reason North, who trusts nobody, trusts that this woman will just hand over the money to him after Beckwith's death. Also, Beckwith and his wife in name only know nothing of each other's situation and relationship to North. Watch and find out how this plays out.

Husband and wife William Boyd and Dorothy Sebastian were in a couple of silents together - that's how they met - but this is the only sound film in which they appeared together. It would be interesting if only for that. I can't help but think this film had some of the melodramatic portions rushed so that there was more time at the end for the big car chase which is very well done considering RKO's budget and that this is early sound. For example, at some point during the year, Beckwith manages to get appointed as head West Coast salesman for a development company and his wife becomes an executive secretary for another big company, during the Great Depression! Why didn't these two show this kind of hustle and initiative before?

As the comic relief, Zasu Pitts and James Gleason play a maid and a henchman of North's who are a married couple, but they are actually something other than what they appear to be.