Men of Chance

In Men of Chance, Mary Astor finds herself poor and destitute in Paris. When she gets arrested for suspected prostitution, when all she was doing was allowing a fellow traveler to sit beside her at a café, she thinks the worst has happened. Then, John Halliday comes to her rescue and reinvents her image as a rich countess. Before she knows it, she's highly respected and the successful gambler Ricardo Cortez falls in love with her.

Similar to other racehorse films of the 1930s, like Saratoga and Broadway Bill, this romantic drama has been forgotten over the decades. It's not really the best movie out there, even though the beginning setup with Mary's arrest is interesting. If you like racehorses in movies, you'll find a host of movies to watch in the 1930s, when the sport was extremely popular.

When the film begins, Marthe (Mary Astor) is broke in Paris and unable to feed herself, let alone boat fare back to the US. However, an odd man befriends her and grooms her for marriage. Now, this woman of humble birth is a countess--and soon ropes a rich gambler, Johnny Silk (Ricardo Cortez). He's daffy about her and wants to marry her...and she is afraid to tell him the truth about herself. She does love him and reluctantly agrees to marry him.

Back in the States, the couple is quite happy though Marthe still hasn't told him the truth. In the meantime, Marthe's old benefactor arrives from Paris. He says he's broke and she offers him help....and he then springs his trap. What this trap is and why is something you'll need to see for yourself as well as Marthe's reaction when she realizes she's been a pawn in a very expensive and complicated game.

This is a very interesting film and offers several nice twists and turns. Along with some nice acting, this one is a nice little film and worth your time.

From rko, martha and gertie (mary astor, kitty kelly) are in paris, pretending to be royalty to attract a man. Also in paris is famous gambler john silk (ricardo). Fellow americans dorval and farley are also here, trying to get back some of the dough they have lost to silk over the years. Intrigue as each party tries to put one over on the others. Things take a serious turn when silk proposes to martha. Can she get out of this? And does she want to ? What will happen if all the lies are exposed? Mary astor had started in the silents, and even won the oscar for great lie 1941. Although we probably all know her better from falcon. I'm surprised that she wasn't even nominated for falcon, but i guess we can't be greedy. Directed by george archainbaud. He had started in the early days of silent film. Directed the 1939 version of some like it hot. Which has nothing to do with the 1959 version. Story by louis weitzenkorn. Had several projects made into film, but died young at 49. He was a newspaper editor, and even wrote a play about the business. It was later turned into a film. Men of chance is good; a snapshot of the times... organized crime running the rackets, women just looking for a husband. Any husband.

I'm not quite sure what happened to Ricardo Cortez' career. True enough, he was pretty shaky in his early talkies, still (mis)cast as the foreign lover with a Bowery accent, but by the time this movie was made, he was absolutely solid and well cast as a gambler. Perhaps by this point in his career, people were no longer interested in paying money to find out.

Mary Astor, on the other hand, had finally learned her craft. In silent movies, she had relied on her immense, youthful beauty. In her early talkies, she seems timid and overwhelmed, but by this time she knew how to steal a scene by repose: in a swirling sea of movement, she was the still spot. Think of her in THE MALTESE FALCON, seated in the armchair. Think of her in DODSWORTH offering her hand to Walter Huston. Think of her in PALM BEACH STORY chattering a mile a minute.... but no. Everyone is brilliant in a Preston Sturges comedy, and unexpected.

She is not note perfect here: a bit weak in the early scenes. But still, by the 20-minute mark in this one-hour programmer, she owns it. Take a look at it.

She's a starving artist in a fetching studio-bound Paris, entrapped for soliciting (Implausibility #1) and bailed out by John Halliday, who sees something.unique in her and offers to set her up as a countess, a disguise nobody bothers to look into (Implausibility #2). In that guise she meets a smitten Ricardo Cortez, who falls instantly in love with her and demands that they get married (Implausibility #3), taking her best pal (a fun Kitty Kelly), who's been posing as her maid, along on the honeymoon (Implausibility #4). Cortez, who's at his most boisterous and leading-man-handsome here, is a gambler and horse aficionado, which leads to Mary innocently feeding info to Halliday that ruins Cortez, who instantly turns on her and throws her out (Implausibility #5), until she engineers a way of turning around her innocent mistake. It's not, in short, credible, but the two stars are photogenic, and Astor already owns the screen, offering a layered performance of a not very layered character. The horse racing sequences are exciting, and the horse Cortez bets it all on is a real beauty; the scene between him and the horse is truly touching. I'd expected this to be Warners, but it's RKO, and it's a good-looking, lively early talkie. With many implausibilities.