BORN TO GAMBLE
US, 1935, 63 minutes, Black-and-white.
Onslow Stevens, H.B. Warner, Maxine Doyle, Eric Linden, Lois Wilson, William Janney, Ben Alexander.
Directed by Phil Rosen.
This is a brief drama, with quite a number of subplot elements, made in the atmosphere of the Depression, a moral fable about contemporary American society, risk-taking in gambling, preoccupation with making money, using a movie story to make its point. The director is Phil Rosen, who worked with Edison in filming The Miracle Man in 1912, began direction in 1915, prolific in small-budget features, his career cut short by his death in 1951.
There is an opening declaring that risk-taking in gambling is prevalent amongst the wealthy as well as the poor.
The framework of the story is a group of wealthy men meeting in a club, one of them, Carter Matthews, played by H.B. Warner eight years after his being the King of Kings, warning the others about gambling. They were having an argument about the causes of depression and prepared to bet on who was right and who was wrong. Matthews intervenes and then tells the story of his family.
This leads the audience back to a rather wild West, the portrait of a gambler, eminently successful, continually lucky, yet drawing three aces of spades in succession, a premonition of death. A drunken rival confronts him, angry about losing money, a challenge to a duel, guns in the streets, both men dying.
Carter Matthews marries his daughter, is prosperous in a piano selling firm, has several children. There are several moral lessons from the behaviour of his children. They are shown as children being risktakers in gambling in the vein of their grandfather. The oldest son is restless, enjoys flying, enrols in the Lafayette Escadrille, is to sail on the Lusitania and loses his life. The other sons are involved in business, one of them persuaded by the other to get involved in bootlegging, and an assassination by a local gangster. The other son, Henry (played by Onslow Stevens who also played the gambling grandfather) is a champion sportsman, rather reticent, hesitating in his proposal to marry a young woman. With the death of his brother, he disappears, the audience finding that he plans to kill the gambler but is patient and wants to set him up, ruining him financially, but by appearing as an expert on horseracing, fixing a race, ingratiating himself with the gambler, spending seven years building up his empire and then giving him false advice. But, the gangster is shot at the time and Henry arrested.
There is a court case, testimony, Henry found not guilty – reunited with his father, and marrying the young woman.
Quite an amount of moralising, anti-gambling, in just over an hour.
