Displaying items by tag: Money Madness movie

MONEY MADNESS

US, 1948, 73 minutes, Black-and-white.

Hugh Beaumont, Frances Rafferty, Harlan Warde, Cecil Weston, Ida Moore.

Directed by Sam Newfield as Peter Stewart.

Hugh Beaumont was successful in a series of supporting features, taking over from Lord Nolan, as Michael Shayne, private Detective. Hugh Beaumont had a number of short feature roles in the 1940s, in his private detective  outings, audiences seeing him as both charming and casually carefree.

He had the strong opportunity to appear as a psychopathic villain in the brief film noir, Money Madness. Ultimately, he was famous and very popular for the long-running series, Leave it to Beaver as the father of the family.

In money Madness, he participated in the robbery, the Robert shot, his taking the money and storing it, then fulfilling his scheme, is a cab driver, charming young woman, marrying her, killing her hypochondriac and demanding can’t, making sure that husband and wife cannot testify against each other, telling the young woman lives, trapping her in difficult circumstances. There is a romantic interest in the lawyer who handles her arts will. And the plan is to say that the money stored in the attic had been kept by the art with nobody knowing and therefore her niece inheriting it.

Strange aspect of the screenplay, the film opens with the young woman getting a 10 year sentence. The end does not come back to that. Rather, the audience knowing about the sentence, has a high hopes that the charming lawyer who has survived the psychopaths attempt on his life, will clear the young woman’s name.

An unusual film noir of 1948.