So You Want to Be a Gambler

This was another Joe McDoakes short that I recently watched, this time on the TCM site. In this one, the character played by George O'Hanlon is a gambler who's always broke. But he keeps playing on from a pinball machine to poker to dice to roulette wheel. My favorite was the dice part where his partner gives him "Mexican jumping dice" in the guise of selling cigarettes. Boy, how those dice jump! And then there's the poker sequence where a player there has an extra "hand"! And dig how announcer Art Gilmore speaks of Joe's pinball playing as if it's a golf round especially when a kid almost ruins the bout! So on that note, So You Want to Be a Gambler is another Joe McDoakes entry that's well worth a look.

What can be someone's tragedy can often times be used to provide some great comic situations. This Joe McDoakes short from Warner Brothers shows the evils of gambling addiction, but provides a few laughs

George O'Hanlon as McDoakes is down to the burlap, not a nickel to his name. But he cons a poor newspaper delivery kid and deposits said nickel in a pinball machine and hits a $50.00 jackpot.

So what does O'Hanlon do? He heads out to the nearest gambling establishment and what happens to him, happens to too many people. I won't go into the situations, but they are whimsically humorous.

We watch this and laugh and it's funny, but how does someone with a real gambling problem look at this short subject? It's like an alcoholic seeing a funny drunk act when his life is told for real in a film like The Lost Weekend.

Food for thought. The last and final gag is laced with irony.

So You Want to Be a Gambler (1948)

*** (out of 4)

Joe McDoakes (George O'Hanlon) short has the dimwitted guy trying his hand at gambling, which leads him to profit $12,000 but of course he can't walk away a winner. This here is one of the better films in the series as we get a better than average story that has plenty of laughs along the way. The story of the down on his luck gambler on his roller coaster day is nicely directed by Bare and the screenplay has a couple nice twists that make for some good laughs. The highlight are the scenes where Joe gets a psychic parrot calling off numbers for him. The early scenes at the pinball table are nicely done and the final gag works well too.