I’m not sure why I bought this DVD…
Oh! It’s because it has Cary Grant, and I vaguely remember trying to buy his more obscure (early) movies… a while ago…
Wow. Bought this in 2019. Time flies like a banana.
Man, this is one of those RKO cheapies? Many of the scenes (like the above) are just a couple of guys talking in front of a preposterous rear projection of some scenery: The greenscreen of the era.
So… this movie is about a claque of swindlers — they made some money being snake oil salesmen in the South, and then they lost all their money, and now they’re making their money back by… by… by…
I just didn’t understand the gag here — they swindled the guy with the comedy beard somehow, but…
The script just seems weird? Right:
The film was a commercial disappointment, losing $530,000, making it RKO’s biggest money loser of the year.
…
Filming was meant to take four weeks but ended up taking fifteen with Arnold on $10,000 a week, half of which went to B. P. Schulberg who owned his contract. Costing Small this much money gave satisfaction to Arnold, who had been rejected by the producer seeking his representation as an agent in 1918. Costs blew out on the production and there ended up being at least seven writers on the script.
Yes, this totally seems like a movie that had half a dozen writers that didn’t talk to each other.
Now they’re just doing vaudeville skits.
I think the main thesis of this movie is that the business world is stupid… so the schemes they do don’t have to make sense?
Because the schemes really don’t make sense. They’re the equivalent of the bridge personnel on Star Trek saying “try installing a recursive algorithm” and “rotate the shields”… but for, like, an hour.
It’s so stupid! But not in a good way! It’s just schemes that make no sense, and them slapstick scenes in between. I mean, this could have worked if they’d leaned into being a screwball comedy or something, but they don’t — it just veers wildly between boring scenes of scheming, and then slapstick that’s not very funny.
This movie is just totally inept.
And such a waste of talent.
The director here had been churning out movies in the 20s, and continued in the 30s, but didn’t continue beyond much into the 40s.
The Son of Monte Cristo!?!
You can just see Cary Grant thinking “what the fuck is this movie I’m in? Can I give them the slip and do a Mae West movie instead?! She’s funny!”
This is a very bad movie. There are some scenes that are pretty funny, but it’s still a very, very bad movie. And it’s bad in ways you rarely see — there’s talent both before and behind the camera, but it’s like they’re sabotaging the movie. It’s very strange, and very bad.
The Toast of New York. Rowland V. Lee. 1937. ⚀
