I bought this two years ago on VHS. I saw it on TV many years ago and being an avid Edward Arnold fan, I wanted to see it again. I was disappointed that this had to be Arnold's last movie, since he had been in so many great ones (i.e. Diamond Jim, Come and Get It, You Can't Take it With You, etc.) In this one, as the previous reviewer noted, he plays a lobbyist named Oliver Tubbs. (I couldn't help but wonder if they chose this name for him because he was so heavy.) Anyway, he hooks up with Alan Napier, (who is woefully miscast) a crooked lawyer named Sheridan who wants to bring gambling into Florida and wants Tubbs to blackmail everyone he knows to get it passed. (Arnold would have been better suited to have played the Sheridan role.) Somehow, Patricia Medina gets hooked up in this hodgepodge as the femme fatale on the run after her husband is killed by Napier's gang. Add in Lee J. Cobb as a detective trying to avenge his boss' murder (he was killed with Medina's husband...why, I'm still not sure). Lee J. Cobb hides Medina in a shack with his girlfriend and the girlfriend's son and exposes the five year old kid to gratuitous violence. (Way to go, Sherlock!) When Tubbs is accused of one of the people he tried to blackmail's murder, Sheridan tells him to beat it. After a bunch of killings (including the one in front of the kid), the police come to Sheridan's home and they find Tubbs in a daze, gun in his hand and Sheridan dead. They take Tubbs away and Cobb wonders what would have happened if gambling had ever come to Florida.
It's just my speculation, but I think Arnold maybe took the role for the free trip to Miami and Cuba (which was still legal for Americans to go at the time the movie was made.) He seemed like he he had phoned in his role and it's sad that his career ended on such a low note.
It's just my speculation, but I think Arnold maybe took the role for the free trip to Miami and Cuba (which was still legal for Americans to go at the time the movie was made.) He seemed like he he had phoned in his role and it's sad that his career ended on such a low note.