Art Yeoman Movies

One of Cary Grant's most financially successful 1940s vehicles, Mr. Lucky finds Grant atypically cast as a shifty, out-for-number-one gambler. Having dodged the draft by adopting the identity of a dead man, Grant sets his sights on purchasing a fancy gambling ship. To raise the necessary funds, he pretends to be working hand in glove with the American War Relief society. Once he meets Laraine Day, however, Grant is seized by an uncontrollable bout of honesty. It takes him awhile, but he finally does the right thing. The film is framed in flashback, as old seaman Charles Bickford explains why a tearful Laraine Day waits at the dock each evening for a certain ship to come in. Also in the cast is Paul Stewart as a cold-eyed but nonetheless semi-comic hoodlum, and Kay Johnson and Gladys Cooper as elegant but gullible society women. The best aspect of this breezy comedy-drama is Grant's cockney propensity for "rhyming slang," a running gag better heard than described. Mr. Lucky was later adapted into a TV series in 1959, with John Vivyan in the Cary Grant part and with Blake Edwards at the production controls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his starring film for Universal Pictures, W.C. Fields plays circus manager and all-around flim flam man Larson E. Whipsnade. When he's not trying to fleece the customers or elude the sheriff, Whipsnade busys himself trying to break up the romance between his daughter Vicky (Constance Moore) and carnival ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (playing himself). He also carries on a running feud with Bergen's nattily attired dummy Charlie McCarthy ("I'll slash you into venetian blinds!"). Bergen's other dummy is Mortimer Snerd, who occasionally comments upon the action in his own thickheaded fashion. Anxious to arrange a marriage between Vicki and the wealthy Roger Bel-Goodie III (James Bush), Whipsnade disposes of Bergen and his dummies by sending them aloft in a hot-air baloon. Attending a party at the Bel-Goodie mansion, Whipsnade makes a pest of himself by constantly referring to snakes, a subject that invariably causes Mrs. Bel-Goodie (Mary Forbes) to swoon. He also engages in a zany ping-pong tournament with socialite Ronnie (Ivan Lebedeff). But it is Vicki, and not Whipsnade, who breaks up the engagement by telling off her pompous fiance. At that very instant, Bergen, having escaped from the balloon, arrives to claim Vicki and to help Whipsnade escape the sheriff once more. A partial remake of the W.C. Fields silent Two Flaming Youths, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man was scripted by Fields under the pseudonym "Charles Bogle." As published in the 1973 compendium W.C. Fields by Himself, the original screenplay was to have had dramatic overtones, including the death of Fields' trapeze-artist wife and a climactic soul-baring scene wherein Fields expresses his genuine love for his daughter. All this was jettisoned when it was decided to capitalize on the Fields-Charlie McCarthy "feud" then blazing on radio's Chase and Sanborn Show. While nowhere near as funny as Fields' subsequent Universal feature The Bank Dick, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man still contains a generous supply of laughs. Our favorite line: "Somebody's taken the cork out of my lunch." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After several years' faithful service in supporting parts, Frank Jenks and Dorothea Kent were promoted to leading roles in Universal's Strange Faces. Even so, it is fourth-billed Leon Ames who dominates the film, in the dual role of a notorious gangster and a respectable small-town citizen. Taking advantage of a "celebrity lookalike" newspaper series created by reporter Denby (Jenks), the gangster learns the identity of his double, concocting a scheme to kill off the lookalike so that he (the gangster, that is) can continue eluding the law by passing himself off as his "twin". But Denby and his girl Friday Maggie (Kent) tumble to the scheme and head to the villain's hideaway, where they team up with bucolic weekly-newspaper editor Hobbs (Andy Devine) and Hobb's sweetheart Lorry May (Mary Treen). From this point onward, melodrama takes a back seat to comedy, with Jenks, Kent, Devine and Treen going through the repertoire of their tried-and-true laughmaking bits. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An actor creates a devious murder plot in this suspenseful, ironic drama. For many years, the aging thespian has been confessing to homicides he never committed. Naturally the cops think he is bonkers so that when he really does kill his victim, no one believes he did it. Unfortunately, his lies work against him when something goes horribly wrong. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide