The genus is "coming unexpectedly into an enormous amount of wealth and/or celebrity." The species is "sudden, enormous wealth." The subspecies is "must spend a king's ransom in a short time in order to possess the remainder." Dennis O'Keefe is Montague Brewster who inherits eight million dollars from a distant relative. The problem is that he has two months exactly (until noon, as a matter of fact) to get rid of one of those millions and wind up with no assets at the end of that period, or the remaining seven million goes to the Bolivian Anthropological Society.
Naturally, if you or I were handed the task it would be easy. We give it all to Friends of the Earth or something. But to make the story more interesting, O'Keefe must take an oath that he will keep the arrangement a secret from everyone, including the woman he's supposed to marry tomorrow, and that he must give no more than five percent to charity, and that he must keep detailed receipts of all expenditures -- all of which reduces him to necessarily making bad investments and throwing elaborate parties on private cruises.
Well, a million dollars in 1945 was worth rather more than the same amount today. Losing it was more difficult than you might think. Brewster begins small. If he takes a taxi somewhere, instead of paying the fare, he buys the taxi, hoping to own a small fleet that will fail. Then he graduates to more inventive enterprises -- bad musical shows, extravagant gifts as business expenses, race horses that move with the momentum of disdainful waiters in Parisian restaurants, establishing accounts in collapsing banks. As you might expect, these apparently moribund ventures make him a bundle of money until he's half mad with despair.
It was directed by Allan Dwan who was a genuine pioneer. He was making movies before they were invented. When the Magdalenian people were painting aurochs on the smooth rocky walls of Lascaux, Allan Dwan was cranking the camera. Genuine, yes, but genius, no. Dwan turned out a string of mostly modestly budgeted B movies that played their hour upon the stage and were forgotten.
"Brewster's Millions" is an example of a successful effort at a hell-for-leather comedy with small stars. Dennis O'Keefe is serviceable as the ex-GI on the verge of an eight-million-dollar inheritance and a nervous breakdown. He hardly pauses for breath. He rushes around like a Type A Personality. Everywhere he turns, people give him money.
He gets good support from the capable and conventionally pretty Helen Walker, and from his two buddies Joe Sawyer and Herbert Rudley, whose names you may or may not recognize but whose faces are likely to be familiar. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson has some of the better lines.
Part of the problem with the movie is that there aren't more "better lines." The writers seemed content to let the story set the frantic pace of the movie and hope that that itself provided enough humor. It lacks funny gags. And, not to ask for the moon, but imagine what Cary Grant instead of Dennis O'Keefe would have done for a movie like this. He would at least have doubled the laugh quotient.
The story itself MUST be funny because this movie has been remade and there are a half dozen close cousins, including "Trading Places," "Man With a Million," "Mister Deeds Goes to Town" -- and, if I'm not mistaken, there was an entire television series based on the same fantasy -- "The Millionaire." Well, with the proper talent behind the camera and in front of it, the movie might have been a home run, but we'll settle for a single. Cheap as it is, it's a titanic improvement over some luridly colored adolescent sex fantasy or, for that matter, half the junk that's being ground out of Hollywood lately.
Naturally, if you or I were handed the task it would be easy. We give it all to Friends of the Earth or something. But to make the story more interesting, O'Keefe must take an oath that he will keep the arrangement a secret from everyone, including the woman he's supposed to marry tomorrow, and that he must give no more than five percent to charity, and that he must keep detailed receipts of all expenditures -- all of which reduces him to necessarily making bad investments and throwing elaborate parties on private cruises.
Well, a million dollars in 1945 was worth rather more than the same amount today. Losing it was more difficult than you might think. Brewster begins small. If he takes a taxi somewhere, instead of paying the fare, he buys the taxi, hoping to own a small fleet that will fail. Then he graduates to more inventive enterprises -- bad musical shows, extravagant gifts as business expenses, race horses that move with the momentum of disdainful waiters in Parisian restaurants, establishing accounts in collapsing banks. As you might expect, these apparently moribund ventures make him a bundle of money until he's half mad with despair.
It was directed by Allan Dwan who was a genuine pioneer. He was making movies before they were invented. When the Magdalenian people were painting aurochs on the smooth rocky walls of Lascaux, Allan Dwan was cranking the camera. Genuine, yes, but genius, no. Dwan turned out a string of mostly modestly budgeted B movies that played their hour upon the stage and were forgotten.
"Brewster's Millions" is an example of a successful effort at a hell-for-leather comedy with small stars. Dennis O'Keefe is serviceable as the ex-GI on the verge of an eight-million-dollar inheritance and a nervous breakdown. He hardly pauses for breath. He rushes around like a Type A Personality. Everywhere he turns, people give him money.
He gets good support from the capable and conventionally pretty Helen Walker, and from his two buddies Joe Sawyer and Herbert Rudley, whose names you may or may not recognize but whose faces are likely to be familiar. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson has some of the better lines.
Part of the problem with the movie is that there aren't more "better lines." The writers seemed content to let the story set the frantic pace of the movie and hope that that itself provided enough humor. It lacks funny gags. And, not to ask for the moon, but imagine what Cary Grant instead of Dennis O'Keefe would have done for a movie like this. He would at least have doubled the laugh quotient.
The story itself MUST be funny because this movie has been remade and there are a half dozen close cousins, including "Trading Places," "Man With a Million," "Mister Deeds Goes to Town" -- and, if I'm not mistaken, there was an entire television series based on the same fantasy -- "The Millionaire." Well, with the proper talent behind the camera and in front of it, the movie might have been a home run, but we'll settle for a single. Cheap as it is, it's a titanic improvement over some luridly colored adolescent sex fantasy or, for that matter, half the junk that's being ground out of Hollywood lately.