The Big Gamble
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Fred Niblo
Bill Boyd
James Gleason
Warner Oland
Dorothy Sebastian
Zasu Pitts
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
On New Year's Eve, professional gambler Alan Beckwith approaches mobster Andrew North, to whom he is heavily in debt, with a proposition: If North lends him $7,500 to buy a life insurance policy, he will name North as the policy's beneficiary and then commit suicide, thereby "squaring" himself with interest. North agrees to the idea but insists that, to assure payment on a $100,000 policy, Alan must marry and live for one year before giving up his life. Although he disdains the idea of an arranged marriage, Alan accepts North's terms and weds Beverly Ames, whose brother Johnnie, a truck driver for the gang, has been accused of a double-cross and has been threatened with death. At first, Alan and Beverly, who have been set up in a lavish apartment by North, maintain their distance from each other, but as the months pass, their fear and suspicion turn to mutually felt attraction. Determined to discover why Beverly agreed to marry him, Alan visits Mae Robbins, Johnnie's girl friend, who tells him about Johnnie's trouble with North and Beverly's subsequent self-sacrifice for her brother. At the same time, Beverly goes to see North to find out why Alan married her. Once their motives are revealed, Alan and Beverly confess their love and vow to work together to repay North his investment. To raise the necessary cash, Beverly takes a secretarial job, while Alan becomes a representative for a development company. On New Year's Eve, a day before North's contract is to expire, Alan tells North that he has made enough money to repay him, but North refuses the money and insists on collecting the $100,000. Desperate, Alan finds a casino and begins betting heavily in a poker game, unaware that Johnnie is on his way to confront North. With help from Squint Dugan, an insurance investigator posing as one of North's gangsters, Alan rescues Johnnie from North's men, while North is killed during a fierce car chase with police. At last free from North's web, Alan and Beverly look forward to a happy, uneventful married life.
Director
Fred Niblo
Cast
Bill Boyd
James Gleason
Warner Oland
Dorothy Sebastian
Zasu Pitts
June Maccloy
William Collier Jr.
Ralph Ince
Geneva Mitchell
Fred Walton
Jack Richardson
Crew
E. J. Babille
Harry Joe Brown
T. A. Carman
Carroll Clark
Walter De Leon
Joseph Kane
Arthur Lange
Hal Mohr
Charles O'louthlin
Charles R. Rogers
A. L. Schafer
Gwen Wakeling
F. Mcgrew Willis
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working title of this film was The Iron Chalice. The Variety review described the picture as "a loosely woven tale never plausible, calling attention to the fact that Octavus Roy Cohen [the novelist] excels in negro comedy short stories and not in crime melodramas." According to Film Daily, Bill Boyd and his co-star, Dorothy Sebastian, had been married only a few months when they made this picture. In 1926, William K. Howard directed Rod La Rocque in Red Dice, a DeMille Pictures production of Cohen's novel (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30; F2.4496).
