Stubs - Smart Money

Smart Money (1931) Starring: Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Evalyn Knapp Directed by Alfred E. Green. Screenplay: Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, Lucien Hubbard, Joseph Jackson. Producer: None Credited. Run time: 81 minutes. United States. Black and White Drama, Gangster Pre-Code

By 1931, James Cagney’s star was rising at Warner Bros. In only his fourth film with the studio, he was put in a movie with Edward G. Robinson. Already an established film actor, Robinson was already one of the studio’s biggest stars after Little Caesar (1931), the first of the major gangster films of the 1930s. This film went into production while Cagney was filming his own breakthrough gangster film, Public Enemy, which would come out later that same year. The film would prove to be the only ever pairing of these two actors. The film would also be the feature film debut of prominent character actor Charles Lane, who over the next 72 years would appear in more than 250 films.

Nick's (Edward G. Robinson) after-hours gambling den is intruded by Sport Williams (Boris Karloff).

Nick Venizelos (Edward G. Robinson) is a prosperous barber in Irontown, a small non-descript town. After hours, he opens the back room of his shop and allows his customers to gamble. An interloper, Sport Williams (Boris Karloff), loses $100 to Nick before Nick kicks him out. Nick is so lucky that others suggest he go to the big city to take on a famous gambler named Hickory Short. Nick doesn’t lack self-confidence and puts up half of the $10,000 stake he’ll need himself. The others in town raise the rest. He leaves the shop under the supervision of his assistant, Jack (James Cagney), and takes a train to the big city.

James Cagney plays Nick's assistant Jack in Smart Money.

After checking into a hotel, Nick flirts with Marie (Noel Francis), the pretty blonde working at the hotel cigar stand. He manages to ask her out to dinner, even though she pretends at first that her mother won’t let her stay out late.

Marie (Noel Francis) works the cigar stand at the big city hotel Nick stays out.

At dinner, he asks her about Hickory Short and the game he’s supposed to have in the hotel. She tells him the room number, 347. She warns Nick to put some money in the hotel safe just in case he needs carfare back home. While Nick doesn’t think he’ll lose, he does trust her with $100 just in case. He tells her that he’s a judge of human nature and knows that even though they’re strangers, she's on the level.

Later that night, he goes up to the room and believes he’s meeting Hickory, but it is actually a conman, Sleepy Sam (Ralf Harolde), who pretends that he’s heard stories of Nick and even makes him prove he is who he says he is. To his own dismay, Nick loses big that night.

The next morning, Nick receives a telegram from the gang back in Irontown wishing him luck. Meanwhile, the bellhop brings him several bottles of liquor with a note from Hickory wishing him better luck next time.

Nick finds out Marie no longer works at the cigar stand.
The new cashier happens to be Robinson's wife, Gladys Lloyd.

When he goes to the lobby to talk to Marie, he finds out from the new cigar stand girl that Marie no longer works there. Sharing a table at breakfast, he reads a headline in the newspaper that Hickory Short is about to be released from jail in Florida.

Nick discovers that Marie is in cahoots with Sleepy Sam.

He goes back to 347 and bluffs his way into another card game. This time, he wins but when he’s asked to show he had his original $3000 stake, the men beat him up rather than pay him off. After he gets out of the hospital, he realizes that he has Marie’s address and goes to get his $100 back. Not only does she pretend not to know him, but he sees that Sleepy Sam is in her apartment. Knowing he’s been set up, he vows revenge.

Jack joins Nick in the Big City.

Nick goes back to work as a barber. Jack has come to join him in the big city and sticks by Nick even though he’s broke. But Nick has a winning personality and manages to raise another stake from his well-to-do customers and their friends.

It takes six months, but Nick manages to track down Sleepy Sam and his gang in another big city. He proposes a one-on-one game, with each man putting up $50,000 and playing until one man has all the money. Sam accepts and one of his gang members, Two-Time Phil (Edwin Argus), backs Sam.

Nick comes with armed back up this time.

Nick insists on sending out for fresh decks of cards, just to be safe. When Nick wins, the con artists reach for their guns to prevent him from leaving. But Jack and another man burst in with their guns already drawn. Nick then gloats on the way out, pointing out that he simply cheated better than Sam by using shaved cards.

Lobby card memorializes Nick's chat with the manicurist.

But Nick isn’t done yet getting his revenge. While getting a manicure, he asks the manicurist her advice on how to get even with Marie. She suggests sending flowers and a diamond bracelet and then going from there.

Nick takes her advice and when he next boards a train for the next town, Marie is with him now. But later when he gets the chance, he dumps her for another blonde.

Nick finally gets to play the real Hickory Short; a Walter Winchell column reports the rumor that Nick beat Hickory to the tune of $300,000. Nick becomes the king of illegal gambling in the city, with Jack as his right-hand man.

Margaret Livingston plays the undercover girl sent by the DA to get the dirt on Nick.

He opens another barbershop as a front for a successful gambling club. He manages to thwart the District Attorney Black’s (Morgan Wallace) efforts to shut him down. Knowing his weakness for blondes, they send in an undercover girl (Margaret Livingston). Jack gives her quite the buildup and Nick welcomes her into his office. It looks like she’s conning him, but Nick figures her out and kicks her, literally, out of his office.

Jack doesn't like Irene being in Nick's house and tells him so.

Later, as Nick and Jack are out driving, they are stopped and asked to take a young woman, Irene Graham (Evalyn Knapp), who has been fished half-drowned out of the river, to the hospital. Irene revives during the ride, but Nick insists she stay at his mansion until she is fully recovered. Jack, who is very suspicious of her, protests but to no avail. When she tries to leave the next morning, Nick insists that she stay and even gives her the key to her room to show he’s on the level.

Irene Graham (Evalyn Knapp) is grateful for Nick's kindness.

Eventually, she is so touched by Nick's kindness and begins to feel at ease, even going so far as to rearrange the furniture. She wants to return Nick’s kindness and offers the key to her room to Nick. He turns her down. She confesses that she hasn’t told him the truth, that she is fleeing from a charge of blackmail. Nick is unconcerned.

Even though he runs an honest gambling den, public outrage puts pressure on the DA, who is up for re-election soon. He has Irene picked up and threatens to prosecute her unless she cooperates in incriminating Nick, but she refuses at first.

Finally, he gets her to agree to put a racing form in Nick's coat, which will be enough to put Nick in jail for a month for gambling. Jack finds out about the plan, but when he tries to warn Nick, he becomes furious and knocks Jack to the floor, accidentally killing him when he lands on a metal door stopper protruding from the floor.

The police raid the illegal casino, and start to break the gambling tables. In the confusion, Irene slips the racing form into Nick’s coat pocket. Black arrests Nick, as a racing form is considered gambling paraphernalia. Nick is mad at Irene but then they discover Jack is dead after Nick admits to knocking him down. Irene begs Nick for forgiveness, never having imagined things would end up as they had. Nick grudgingly provides it, saying he’s always had a weakness for women.

Nick is shell shocked to find out he's accidentally killed Jack.

The district attorney sends Nick to jail for ten years for manslaughter, but Nick, who is never down for long, bets the reporters that he will be out of jail before his sentence is up. As he is boarding the train to go to prison, he offers to bet that he will be out in five.

The film was released on July 11, 1931, less than two months after The Public Enemy had made co-star Cagney a star in his own right. In a contemporary review, Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times makes note of this, stating “His role is of minor importance…”

Edward G. Robinson, Hall notes, “…gets all that is humanly possible out of the part of Nick the Barber…”, which is true. I was amazed at how well-rounded Nick’s character is in the film. Robinson seems very comfortable playing this part, which gives him perhaps more to play with than his signature performance in Little Caesar. He is full of sayings and confidence while at the same time superstitions. He carries a rabbit’s foot as well as rubbing Blacks and midgets on the head for luck (we’ll talk more about the overtones of the film later). Nick as a fully realized character is due in part to the screenplay for which Lucien Hubbard and Joseph Jackson would receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Story, but also to Robinson’s acting.

There are several blondes whom Nick is attracted to during the film, including Noel Francis as Marie, Margaret Livingston as the DA’s girl, and Polly Walters as Lola. However, it is Evalyn Knapp whose name is on the poster. Knapp doesn’t seem to get much attention in reviews but I think she gives a pretty good performance as Irene, the woman who finally does Nick in. It is a small role, coming in the last third of the film, but one that she carries well.

Evalyn Knapp as Irene in Smart Money.

Knapp, who began working in silent films, had appeared in such films as Sinner’s Holiday (1930), would become one of the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers’ WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932, along with Ginger Rogers and Gloria Stuart. Baby Stars were a group of young actresses who were under contract at major studios that WAMPAS felt were on the threshold of stardom. Knapp would become popular as the title character in the cliffhanger serial, The Perils of Pauline (1933). She would receive top-billing opposite John Wayne in His Private Secretary (1933). However, Knapp never really attained star status and her career ended in 1943 with Two Weeks to Live, a Lum and Abner comedy for which she didn’t even receive screen credit.

Boris Karloff has a bit part in Smart Money.

It is interesting to see Boris Karloff in such a minor role in the film. Karloff, who had been acting in films since 1919’s The Lightning Raider, had not yet seen his career take off. Like Cagney, who was filming this on the verge of stardom, Karloff would make his signature performance as the Monster in Frankenstein, which would be released later that year.

Like Knapp, director Alfred E. Green might not be a name that gets a lot of buzz when you’re talking old Hollywood. Green, who got his start as an actor in silent films in 1912, began directing in 1917. After Smart Money, he would go on to direct Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face (1933). Green would also direct such films as The Jolson Story (1946), Cover-Up (1949), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), and The Eddie Cantor Story (1953). His last film was the Phil Silvers starrer Top Banana (1954). He does a good job here, though there is nothing that sets this film apart from so many others being cranked out during the early 1930s.

Speaking of the time, some attention should be spent to what may seem to be and was racial stereotyping in the film. More than once does Nick rub a black man’s hair for good luck. I’m not sure where that superstition came from, but it does make blacks seem like they’re less than human and are more talisman. Nick’s character does interact with blacks but for the most part, they are train porters and servants. These sorts of stereotypes have to be accepted as signs of the times the film was made when such depictions were considered normal.

Since this is pre-Code Hollywood, sex is always bubbling just under the surface. Nick has an affinity for blondes and I don’t think we’re supposed to think he likes them for their personalities, either. There is a very telling chain of events in the film. When Irene first arrives at Nick’s place, he gives her the key to her room so that she can lock him out. However, when she is wanting to repay his kindness, she offers the key back and by extension sex as part of that repayment. It is subtle but still there.

Cagney leaves little to the imagination when he describes Margaret Livingston's physique.

And there is not so subtle mime Cagney’s character Jack does in describing the DA’s undercover girl before he brings her in to meet Nick. Again, it is not her personality that is being emphasized here. The routine is sort of reminiscent of a bee dancing to tell the others in the hive where there is pollen.
Like I said, the film itself has nothing that really sets it apart from other films coming from the major studios at the time, especially Warner Brothers. However, the film is not without its charms.

Robinson is very good as Nick, and, as noted, this is the only time he and Cagney would share the screen. As a bonus, the film highlights Boris Karloff, who is on the verge of stardom himself. While not great filmmaking, there is enough about Smart Money to make it worth watching.