The story is by Ernest Lehman and Geza Herczeg, and the snappy screenplay is by the team of Mary Loos and Richard Sale. Directed and produced by Allan Dwan, the film was distributed by Republic Pictures. The score was written by Nathan Scott, father of the legendary producer, composer, and saxophonist, Tom Scott. The Depression-era story addresses President Roosevelt's declaration of an eight-day "bank holiday" (closings) with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 to avoid customer withdrawals. In the case of this film, however, it involves the misplacement of a thousand dollars that changes its location.
William Lundigan plays a
struggling artist (cliché intended). He is stressed about making a decent
living to support his fiancée, Marsha Hunt. Both are hoping a painting of his sells for one thousand dollars, because nine hundred of it will go to her father, Gene "Bulldog" Lockhart, owner of a local inn. Lockhart
loathes the artist's feast-or-famine career pursuit. It initiates his
overstepping the bounds of character exaggeration. The frequency
becomes a bit out of place in a film of subtle humor, more in keeping
with a screwball comedy. Lundigan and Hunt made one of the most attractive on-screen couples in Hollywood with this film.
While attending to an insurance salesman, Roscoe Karns, Winninger mindlessly puts his thousand dollars in the wrong envelope—addressed to Lundigan—into the safe. The insurance money is meant for a local farmer, Tom Fadden, when he arrives. Karns does his typical rapid-fire delivery as a wisecracking womaniser with a trademark, wide-eyed double-take after a verbal smackdown. Into the mix are two bootleggers, an expert safecracker, Allen Jenkins, and his low-IQ partner, William Haad. They provide some periodic laughs in the film. Karns panicks at the very sight of them. Lockhart later finds the money in the safe and mistakenly thinks it was payment for Lundigan's painting. Suddenly, Lundigan is his favorite son-in-law. He uses the cash to help pay off his debt to local merchant, Will Wright, who, in turn, pays what he owes the building's owner, the take-charge, life-long resident, Florence Bates. Her impact on the characters and film nearly suggests she is the actual star of the film.
Winninger wonders how to rectify the shortage. He hopes Jenkins will be tempted to open the safe after being asked to protect it in his absence. Though it makes little sense, this would explain to the police how the money "disappeared." Jenkins easily opens the safe, but refuses to look inside after vowing to protect the money. Winninger knows the money is not there, so it would boil down to his word against a bootlegger's. Without any evidence, Jenkins stole nothing.
Another script fumble, is handsome Robert Shayne's over-the-top extreme for his inability to provide a living for his wife, Gail Patrick. In an angry tirade, he storms off to his office. Being a lawyer, a revolver rests in his top desk drawer. Just in case. Enter Bates, who prevents (postpones?) his potential suicide by giving the grand to him. In a bi-polar reversal, Shayne is instantly beside himself with joy. Patrick then uses
the money to pay Lundigan for the portrait she's gifting her husband.
So Karn's money goes full circle, passing between six people and back to Karns. Perfect timing for him to pay farmer Fadden, who enters before the film's end. What are the odds?
