WINNER TAKE ALL
US, 1975, 97 minutes, Colour.
Shirley Jones, Laurence Luckinbill, Sam Groom, Joyce van Patten, Joan Blondell, Sylvia Sidney, Al Lettieri.
Directed by Paul Bogart.
Winner Take All is clearly a film about gambling. However, it focuses on an American housewife with the addiction. She is played by Shirley Jones, famous for her musicals Carousel and Oklahoma as well as her Oscar-winning performance in Elmer Gantry. She achieved fame on television as Mrs Partridge in The Partridge Family. In this film she plays somewhat against type – or a type with a dark side and her gambling addiction.
She plays a woman who has ruined a marriage, is concealing her gambling addiction from her new husband. She gets some support from her friends – but needs some kind of twelve steps in order to deal with her addiction.
The material is familiar – but is well played, with ordinary audiences being able to identify with Shirley Jones, not as some cynical gambler or some crime gambler but as an ordinary person with demons. There are good supporting performances by the veterans Joan Blondell and Sylvia Sidney. Direction is by Paul Bogart, a director of many television movies, and some films for the big screen including Skin Game, Class of 44, Mister Rico.
1. The impact of this telemovie, its techniques, theme?
2. The value of presenting such a serious theme for home viewing? Enjoyment value, the didactic effect, the deterrent from gambling?
3. The use of television techniques as close-ups, confined sets, focus on the social problem and its moral effects?
4. The title, its irony? Pre-credit build-up to the situation of Ellie? The irony of her downfall through gambling? What was she left with when she took all at the end?
5. The focusing on a woman, gambling and its associations with women, the impact of the film if the central character had been a man? The build-up of Ellie’s situation? As an attractive person, eliciting audience sympathy, her marriage and her home, her relationship to her parents? Husband? Friends?
6. Audience response to gambling in general? Moral judgements? Social dangers? The importance of seeing Ellie at her high point in winning, the degradation of her low points? What could anyone do for her to get her out of the gambling dangers? Why could she not help herself?
7. How well did the film fill in the background of her life, the quality of her marriage, relationship to her husband, his character and his attitude towards the gambling, the fact that she deceived him about the gambling? Her relationship with her mother and her mother's disgust and unwillingness to help? The stepdaughter? Her relationship with her friends, their helping her, their refusing to help? Should they have zw exercised more control over her? Edie, Beverly?
8. The presentation of Ellie and her lies, her deceiving herself, the lengths to which she had to go to avoid detection, her wiles for deception, her hurting herself and her hurting others, especially her husband? Why was this not sufficient to pet her away from gambling?
9. Comment on the consequences of the gambling the borrowing of money, the lies, the continual running of the risk, multiplying debts, the exhilaration of the races and yet getting into the power of unscrupulous people the garage, the cards? Pow was her whole life revolving around her weakness?
10. The theme of money, its importance for people’s lives, the exhilaration of having it, the desperation of not having it? The strange experience of having it and suddenly losing it? The size of debts and the enormity of the impact of being in debt? The effect on all other aspects of life? How well did the film illustrate this in particular situations of Ellie, particular emotional crises?
11. The presentation of the poker games, the balance of winning and losing? One thing leading to another, her going to the trots, to the pawnbroker, to the card games? Of her being in the power of an unscrupulous man and
having to spend the night with him?
12. What really happened to Ellie throughout the film? To her life, to her character?
13. The importance of the film's showing the anguish of the husband, his inability to understand, the confrontation with the truth and its effect on him? The separation? The hurt to him and his trying to get over it? The financial burden, his hopes, the building up of the future and his disillusionment? His decision to go back to her at the end? Credible, hopeful? An ordinary man trying to do his best?
14. The importance of the characterizations of Ellie’s mother, of Edie and her background of gambling and her influence on behalf of Ellie, the participation in the card games? Beverly and her willingness to lend the money and write it off, was she right in supporting Ellie? The repercussions on her mother, Edie and her nervousness during the poker game, Beverly and the fact that she was repaid?
15. The world of the gamblers, the rich and the callous? Audience identification with this world, repulsion?
16. The importance of a person going into the depths in order to come up again? The complete humiliation of Ellie with her husband, the unscrupulous gambler? Her going to work?
17. The importance of Gamblers Anonymous, the prologue, her telling her story and being courageous enough to do this, the flashback within this framework, the rehabilitation, a way of learning? What is the overall impact on the average audience and the effect as regards gambling?
