Million Dollar Baby

Plot

In this upbeat drama, a lovely European heiress is disturbed to discover from her lawyer that her father made his fortune by cheating his own partner. This precipitates her hasty return to the US where she meets the partner's granddaughter. The heiress then moves into the girl's boarding house and gives her a million dollars. Unfortunately, her newfound wealth causes the girl, untold trouble as her lover, a proud musician, refuses to marry a woman with more money than he. The girl solves the problem by donating her fortune to charity. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Review

A screwball comedy with a few screws loose is the best way to described Curtis Bernhardt's Million Dollar Baby (1941) -- and not in a good way, either. The concept behind the plot is promising, as well as similar to such earlier works as If I Had A Million and Brewster's Millions, of sudden wealth as a disruptive force in the life of its protagonists. The film, based on a story ("Miss Wheelwright Discovers America") by Leonard Spigelgass, also anticipates Douglas Sirk's Has Anybody Seen My Gal, but the latter was brought off with a lot more skill and success. Million Dollar Baby works as long as the focus stays on May Robson's wealthy dowager -- she's delightful in every scene she is in, and the script is perfectly suited to her. And in addition to handling the comedy better than anyone else here, Robson does better with the serious, dramatic moments. But then we meet Priscilla Lane and Ronald Reagan, playing the wide-eyed (even a little dense) recipient of the windfall and her would-be husband, a discontented, ascerbic musician, respectively. Alas, Lane isn't a good enough actress here to handle the script's wildly varying moods, juxtaposing drama (which she's pretty good at) and zany comedy (not good at all). But even worse is Reagan, whose portrayal of a poor-but-proud pianist/composer is filled with contradictions that seem to indicate that the writer and director just didn't know what to do with his character -- is he to be taken seriously, or is he an element of the romantic comedy? Additionally, the actor himself seems to try and embrace equal parts of Henry Fonda and Oscar Levant -- that mix would be difficult to pull off for a great actor, but needless to say Reagan falls woefully short, and renders his character unappealing as well as unconvincing. The other major problem concerns the other major protagonist, the attorney portrayed by Jeffrey Lynn -- once his early scenes with Robson are over, establishing him as a sympathetic voice of honesty and frankness, the rest of the picture presents him as an unappealing, self-centered upper-crust prig (the "detour [for women] on their way to finding the right guy," is how he describes himself). The end result is that, with the exception of Robson's character, there's really no one to believe, or, believe in, or -- emotionally -- to root for or resonate to in this movie. It needed Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart, and perhaps John Payne as the attorney, to pull it off, plus a slightly more polished script, and it fails in all of those departments. Additionally, the movie is a victim of its own ambitions -- if Million Dollar Baby had been a nice little 75 minute or 70 minute B-picture (in which case Robson wouldn't have been in it, and she's the one thing that does work), it might have been better off; at 100 minutes with a big cast (including Walter Catlett as a nervous department store manager, Lee Patrick -- as a strip-tease artist, no less -- and Irving Bacon, James Burke, and John Qualen in various small parts), it's carrying too much weight for its own good, and has too many resources at its disposal to forgive more than one or two of these flaws. And a last minute plot-driven critique of the income tax system and the government doesn't help sell this as a comedy -- one has to wonder, did screenwriter Casey Robinson get a big tax bill that year? -- or as entertainment, especially with the overall ham-fisted approach of the script and the director. The film is so chaotic in its shifts of mood and tone that one wonders what the original conception was -- the listing of several cast members whose scenes were deleted indicates a troubled production, which is usually a special problem for a comedy. Ultimately, Robson is always worth seeing, and makes this film well worth a look, but the movie's only other modest contribution to popular culture was the song "I Found A Million Dollar Baby -- In A Five Ten Cent Story" by Billy Rose, Mort Dixon and Harry Warren -- the words may not mean much today, but the Warren melody is very familiar, having been liberally quoted elsewhere. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast

• Priscilla Lane - Pamela McAllister
• Jeffrey Lynn - James Amory
• Ronald Reagan - Peter Rowan
• May Robson - Cornelia Wheelwright
• Lee Patrick - Josie LaRue

Helen Westley - Mrs. Galloway; George Barbier - Marlin; Nan Wynn - Flo; John Qualen - Dr. Patterson; Walter Catlett - Simpson; Fay Helm - Mrs. Grayson; Richard Carle - George the Butler; John Ridgely - Ollie Ward; Maris Wrixon - Diana Bennett; James Burke - Callahan; Johnny Sheffield - Alvie Grayson; Jean Ames - Phyllis; Irving Bacon - Income Tax Man; Nat Carr - Man; David Clarke; Pedro de Cordoba - Conductor; Charles Drake - Crew Haircut; William Forrest; Edward Gargan - Customs Officer; Kenneth Harlan; Stuart Holmes; George Humbert - Tony; Wilbur Mack; Charles Marsh; Greta Meyer - Anna; Will Morgan - Member of Orchestra; Frank Otto; Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton; Herb Vigran; Billy Wayne - Reporter; Jack Wise; Charles Anthony Hughes; George Campeau; Garrett Craig; Paulette Evans - Woman; Inez Gay; Eddie Graham; Ted Thompson; George Davis - Swiss Taxi Driver; David Oliver

Credit

Orry-Kelly - Costume Designer, Curtis Bernhardt - Director, Rudi Fehr - Editor, Frederick Hollander - Composer (Music Score), Charles Rosher Sr. - Cinematographer, David Lewis - Producer, Richard Macaulay - Screenwriter, Casey Robinson - Screenwriter, Jerry Wald - Screenwriter, Leonard Spigelgass - Book Author

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