POT O’ GOLD (1941)

James Stewart made three Frank Capra films; many more simply Capra-esque.  This is one of them.  His last release before WWII took him off the screen ‘for the duration.’  Five years later, he’d return with his final actual Capra film, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46 playing a small-town family business owner who dreams of leaving for bigger things.  So it’s a prescient surprise to have 1941 Stewart as a small town family business owner hoping to stay put.  That big job in the big city?; no thank you.  What is this, Bizarro IAWL?  And why so little known?  But one reel in, Stewart gives in to the biddings of crusty Uncle Charles Winninger to be heir apparent to the other family business, a big health food factory in the big, unhealthy city.  Once there, he soon stumbles upon a happy clan of musicians living the tenement commune life (it’s Paulette Goddard and her happy band, literally a happy band), and just like that, GOLD leaves IAWL behind and becomes a sort of ‘almost-musical’ variation on the first Stewart/Capra film, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU/’38.  (That’s the Crazy family meets Capitalism; George Kaufman/Moss Hart stage classic.)  This idea far less interesting; and not much helped by director George Marshall*, a script, that lays it on thick (Mary Gordon’s Irish Dear a particular horror), and lots of bouncy, but generic tunes.  Musicals are hard enough to pull off.  Screwball semi-musicals, jumping in & out of stage conventions to allow people to break into song, way beyond the abilities of this crew.  Including the lousy vocal mismatch dubbing Goddard’s singing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *The Hollywood director who might have pulled this off is Leo McCarey.  See him do it in THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S/’46.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/11/bells-of-st-marys-1945.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Yes, producer James Roosevelt, in his sole feature credit, was FDR’s eldest boy.  No doubt, the guy who forgot to renew copyright which flooded the market with subfusc Public Domain copies.  Decent ones easy to find if you look around.