Million Dollar Legs

USA 1932
produced by
Herman J. Mankiewicz, B.P. Schulberg (executive) for Paramount
directed by Edward F. Cline
starring Jack Oakie, W.C. Fields, Andy Clyde, Lyda Roberti, Susan Fleming, Hugh Herbert, George Barbier, Dickie Moore
screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Henry Myers, music by Rudolph G. Kopp, John Leipold

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Brush salesman Tweeny (Jack Oakie) has just fallen in love with Angela (Susan Fleming), daughter of the president of Klopstokia (W.C. Fields). The president actually soon takes to Tweeny, but tells him he will only give him his daughter's hand in marriage if he's able to somehow come up with $ 8 million for the country's empty treasury, and soon, too. An unsurmountable task it seems, but then Tweeny finds out that the land is full of record-breaking athletes, and he decides to take them all to Los Angeles to compete (and win) in the Olympic games.

That should do the trick of course, but there is opposition in form of the gouvernment led by the secretary of the treasury (Hugh Herbert), who desperately want to impeach the president - so they smuggle master spy Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti), the woman no man can resist, onto the LA-bound boat, and she soon creates unrest among the athletes and has them clobber each other out of commission. Angela has soon seen through her game though, and she clobbers her into admitting that she hasn't loved any of the athletes right to their faces (and wins a gold medal for high diving in the process), and already Klopstokia is on a winning streak.

It's the Olympic's game finale, weightlifting, and Klopstokia is only one win away from reaching its goal. The contestant in this category is the president himself, but he finds an unexpected adversary in his own secretary of the treasury, who uses the charms of Mata Machree to motivate himself. At 900 pounds though, both men (and Mata Machree) are so out of breath, they are already prepared to call it a draw - when Tweeny insults the president to such an extent that he in his rage lifts the 1,000 pound weight and throws it after Tweeny, winning the contest in the process ...

A little comedy that's just too nice to really amount to anything much, that's too far-fetched to really convince, and that's totally unsuccessful when it tries to go for political satire.

That said, it's certainly not the worst film I've ever seen, but I doubt that I'll even remember having seen it in as little as a week.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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