kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS**** Depressed and unable to pay gangster Andrew North, Warner Oland, the $5,000.00, that's at least $100,000.00 in 2016 dollars, he owes him Alan Beckwith, Bill Boyd, plans to off himself after making out a $5,000.00 insurance policy with North as the only recipient. So far so good but it will take a year for the policy to become effective and Alan Beckwith will have to be married for it to be worked out! On top of all that North not satisfied with just the $5,000.00 ups the policy to $100,000.00 in order to get his monies worth! Having a shot gun marriage with Beverly, Dorothy Sebastian, who's kid brother Johonnie, William Collier Jr,is also in debt to North all Alan has to do is wait out the year and on New Years Day 1932 get himself killed in a staged accident and all his troubles will be over! Or so he thought! Playing the stock and real estate markets Alan not only makes enough money to pay North $5,000.00 debt off but also falls in love with his wife Beverly with now getting himself killed the very last thing on his mind! ***SPOILERS*** The movie goes into overdrive with North and his boys out to murder both Alan & Johnnie just for making him look bad as a both a gangster and businessman. This after Alan gets the other $100,000.00 that North wanted in a card game and thus had Johnnie kidnapped by North's men after he came to his pad to off him himself and ended up getting kidnapped by him. This leads to as wild car chase with Squint Dugan, James Gleason, one of North's goon but really an undercover US Government Treasurer Agent behind the wheel.As for North he gets his when placed under arrest and about to be driven to the nearest police station to get booked for attempted murder and kidnapping, as well as racketeering, tries to make a run for it and is crushed by, after jumping out of the car, oncoming traffic! Now with all his troubles behind him Alan and Beverly get married for the second time and this time it's not for a year but for keeps.

mgconlan-1 "The Big Gamble" has one of the most provocative premises ever cooked up for a movie. World-weary gambler Alan Beckwith (William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd in a surprisingly despairing modern-dress role) is tired of life. Owing $5,000 to the sinister Andrew North (Warner Oland) and $2,500 to a former servant, Beckwith cooks up the idea of having North take out an insurance policy on his life, then killing himself. North insists that the policy be for $100,000; that a North-hired hit man do the actual killing (since if Beckwith commits suicide, the policy becomes invalid); that Beckwith live a year and a day after taking out the policy; and that Beckwith's wife be the beneficiary. When Beckwith protests that he doesn't have a wife, North supplies him one: Beverly Ames (Dorothy Sebastian), who's under North's influence because her brother Johnny (William Collier, Jr.) is also on the hook to him. The good news is in the striking performances of both leads - and of James Gleason and ZaSu Pitts as a comic-relief couple (though I have a hard time watching Pitts in comic roles without thinking of how Hollywood wasted her talent as a dramatic actress despite her incandescent performance as Trina in Stroheim's "Greed," which should have done for her what "Sybil" and "Norma Rae" did for Sally Field 50 years later) — and some intriguingly proto-noir compositions by cinematographer Hal Mohr.The bad news is Fred Niblo's surprisingly slow, stodgy direction - by 1931 virtually no one was still having the actors pause between hearing their cues and speaking their own lines, but Niblo directs like it was still 1929 - Mohr's mostly plain, uncreative cinematography (which doesn't sustain the marvelous atmospherics of the opening scenes), and some dubious performances by the supporting players. William Collier, Jr. comes off way too queeny as Johnny - we can't muster much sympathy for someone this wimpy - and Warner Oland, though playing a character with an Anglo name, inexplicably not only wears his Charlie Chan makeup but speaks in his Charlie Chan voice. Though a previous silent version of this story was made, "The Big Gamble" really should have been filmed a third time in the 1940's; its plot would have been a natural for film noir.

boblipton William Boyd is willing to kill himself for enough insurance money to pay off his debts, but crime boss Warner Oland raises the stakes: a year and a day, and the money will nominally be paid to wife-for-hire Dorothy Sebastian. But a lot can happen in a year...Shot beautifully by under-rated DP Hal Mohr, this movie, with a newly mobile sound camera is very good visually. Unfortunately, leads Boyd and Sebastian are not quite out of the silent era and director Fred Niblo is not so good at directing the dialogue -- nor does the depression that the leads evince for the first half of the movie, help things much. James Gleason and Zasu Pitts are, of course, excellent, but, despite an excitingly shot finale,the acting prevents this from being more than an averagely good picture.

ksf-2 The Big Gamble opens on New Year's eve, with a broke gambler trying to figure out how to work his way out of debt. Alan Beckwith (Bill Boyd) gets local thug Andrew North (Warner Oland) and Beverly Ames (Dorothy Sebastian) involved in a scheme to come up with money fast. Viewers will recognize Warner Oland as the lead in all the Charlie Chan movies in the 1930s. Also keep an eye out for James Gleason as Squint Dugan, small time crook. He will go on to play the ultimate slow-witted New York police lieutenant in just about every film made in the 1940s. Zasu Pitts plays Dugan's wife, maid to the Beckwiths. Sound and light quality are a little iffy, but that can be forgiven, since it was the early days of talkies. The dialogue is all a bit stilted and hesitating, apparently since everyone was new to the live sound track. Director Fred Niblo only made two more films after this one. Niblo had an interesting history; his brother- in- law was George M. Cohan, and Niblo was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Pictures. Not the strongest script or acting, but its a fun, low-key film. Even a couple surprises.