CASH (FOR LOVE OF MONEY/IF WE WERE RICH)
UK, 1933, 62 minutes, Black-and-white.
Robert Donat, Edmond Gwenn, Wendy Barrie.
Directed by Zoltan Korda.
The third film, small budget, for celebrated British actor, Robert Donat. The same year he was to appear in The Private Life of Henry VIII and quickly invited to Hollywood for The Count of Monte Cristo. Donat did not like Hollywood and returned and stayed in England for the next 25 years until his death, making a number of significant films ranging from The Ghost Goes West to The Citadel to The Winslow Boy. He won the Best Actor Oscar in 1939 for Goodbye Mr Chips.
In some ways this film is very quaint, small-budget British filmmaking of the early 1930s. The focus is on money, Edmond Gwenn playing a scheming businessman trying to play off his friends, but rather limited in his cash. The creditors are after him. Wendy Barrie plays his support daughter.
The complication comes when the assistant creditor, Donat, charming in his manner, is attracted to the daughter, finds $100,000 in cash in a bag, place there allegedly by a thief, uses the cash to charm the daughter and the old schemer who then arranges for discussions, on the visual evidence of the cash, for a huge entertainment scheme (and, in the 1930s, reference to one of the attractions as sex appeal).
The greedy colleagues all make a contract. The young man is able to get a is one from the businessman. The butler who has actually paid of the schemer’s bill for home delivery of food, without noticing, actually stokes the fire using all the cash. And, the newspapers then reveal that it was forged cash.
Not particularly startling, more historical interest, and with two Oscar winners, Robert Donst himself and Edmond Gwenn, who is probably best known as Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Oscar winner for The Miracle on 34th Street.
