Clark Gabe shows the expected ease in playing this familiar part in Mervyn LeRoy’s drama, set almost entirely within a casino.
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On the way to his casino, Charley runs into Ben Sneller (Lewis Stone), once a big shot gambler but now broke. He stakes him to $500 dollars when told by Ben that he feels lucky. Ben enters the gambling casino with him and sits down at the poker table.
Meanwhile, Charley’s worthless brother-in-law, Robbie (Wendell Corey), has been blackmailed into letting the crooks Angie and Sisti take a hand in a crap game with loaded dice. Charley becomes suspicious of them, but before he can investigate, he learns that Ben Sneller, having lost the give hundred, is attempting suicide. He takes his gun from him in the nick of time.
Charley’s son Paul is arrested for a brawl. Charley rushes off to get him out of jail, but Paul refuses to leave with him. Lon comes to Charley’s aid and prevails upon Paul to go with her to gambling house and see the place for themselves.
Sisti and Angie stop playing craps, and the loaded dice is withdrawn. An honest game is in progress with Jim Kersten (Leon Ames), a rich client of Charley’s, playing in spectacular luck, but Charley refuses to stop the game. Instead, pitting his own luck against Kersten’s, he wins back the money lost.
When Angie and Sisti try to hold up the place they are stopped by Charley, which makes Paul realize his father’s worth. Touched by his son’s new respect and affection, Charley plays a fixed hand against his employees, deliberately losing the casino, so that he can start out a new life with his wife and son.
This was the only film Alexis Smith made at MGM; she was loaned from Warner.
The movie is verbose and lacks humor to make it genuinely engaging. A routine programmer, as they said at the time, Any Number Can Win is not one of LeRoy’s or Gable’s pictures.
Despite mixed reviews, the movie was commercial at the box-office.
Cast
Clark Gable as Charley Enley Kyng
Alexis Smith as Lon Kyng
Wendell Corey as Robbin Elcott
Audrey Totter as Alice Elcott
Frank Morgan as Jim Kurstyn
Mary Astor as Ada
Lewis Stone as Ben Gavery Snelerr
Barry Sullivan as Tycoon
Marjorie Rambeau as Sarah Calbern
Edgar Buchanan as Ed
Leon Ames as Dr. Palmer
Mickey Knox as Pete Senta
Richard Rober as Lew “Angie” Debretti
William Conrad as Frank Sistina
Darryl Hickman as Paul Enley Kyng
Caleb Peterson as Sleigh
Dorothy Comingore as Mrs. Purcell
Art Baker as Mr. Reardon
Credits
MGM
Produced by Arthur Freed.
Directed by Mervyn Leroy.
Screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the book by Edward Harris Heth.
Camera: Harold Rosson.
Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons and Urie McCleary.
Musical Score: Lennie Hayton.
Editor: Ralph E. Winters.
Release date: July 2, 1949.
Running time: 112 minutes.
Budget $1,363,000
Box office $3,205,000
