The basic story you'd think was sure-fire but this was a big flop. It's not a very good movie - quite dull - but a number of dull movies were hits in 1946 (Hollywood's most financially successful year - all those returned servicemen going out all the time). I probably put it down to casting and making some basic mistakes.
The story is about a rogue who finds religion. That's fine, but they cast William Powell who was suave and getting on in years, when they really needed Bogart or Raft or maybe Spencer Tracy. Also it's never clear how rogue-y Powell is meant to be - he's a newspaper man, who goes to work for a "company" as "vice president". Is that bad? Why not make him a crook or gangster? Or at least an obviously super shady businessman? (It's never clear - or maybe I blinked and missed it.)
He gets into religion somehow... I wasn't sure how. Why not dramatise an incident? Why not have a clear turning point? There's a nice girl he meets (Esther Williams) and a kindly priest (Lewis Stone) - both have to little to do and the latter was introduced too late. There's a femme fetale played by Angela Lansbury, which gives this some novelty... only she's not really a femme fetale, just a nightclub singer who is a little shonky. She turns good at the end - kind of just because it seems. It's all very un-satisfactory emotionally.
How did MGM stuff this so badly? I would've thought it was easy - act one, man cocky, act two, gets a conscience, act three deals with ramifications. But it's a mess.
It's fun to see Esther Williams in a non singing dramatic part. She's pert and pretty and the performance is absolutely fine - she's not an embarassment. MGM promptly shunted her off to musicals for the rest of her time there after this flopped. I don't think her performance had anything to do with it. If they'd cast, say, Laraine Day, they would've still had a stinker on their hands.
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