Let's Make a Million
Cast & Crew
Raymond Mccarey
Edward Everett Horton
Charlotte Wynters
Porter Hall
J. M. Kerrigan
Margaret Seddon
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
After the U.S. Senate allocates two billion dollars for veteran bonuses, Harrison Gentry, owner of Gentry Machinery and Supply Co. in Gentry, Oklahoma, plans to use his $1,100 bonus to marry his secretary and fiancée of five years, Caroline Williams. Harrison's maiden aunts, with whom he lives, however, hope to use his bonus to erect a granite shaft in honor of their father on twenty acres they purchased eleven years before as "Ezra Gentry Park." Harrison's aunts inveigle him into traveling to Kansas City to buy the slab, but the granite salesman has gone out of business. Upon returning home, Harrison, acting on a tip from his drunken sales manager, Sam Smith, buys stock from crooked oilmen Spencer and Gilbert. Harrison hopes Spencer and Gilbert will purchase equipment from his shop for a Gentry oil well, but is unaware they are being investigated for tax evasion. News of Harrison's stock purchase travels quickly around town, and soon most of Gentry's veterans have spent their bonuses on S & G stock. The well goes up, but after digging 6,000 feet and not hitting oil, Spencer and Gilbert dissolve their company and leave town. The stockholders, including Caroline's father, blame Harrison for their losses, and vote him out of the American Legion and boycott his store. Determined to help his friends, Harrison hires Sam's friend, geologist Cliff Spaulding of Texas, to investigate the dry well. Spaulding discovers S & G actually drilled only to 950 feet and suspects the property adjacent to the well, Gentry Park, is oil-filled. Harrison then contacts an old army friend who is now a detective, and he and his friends help Harrison blow up S & G's safe, forcing Spencer and Gilbert to release the Gentry oil lands to him. With S & G's money, Harrison builds a new well and, after his aunts sell him Gentry Park, strikes oil. The townsmen buy stock in Harrison's new oil company and dedicate the new well by making him president of the American Legion. Harrison then once again proposes to Caroline and they kiss.
Director
Raymond Mccarey
Cast
Edward Everett Horton
Charlotte Wynters
Porter Hall
J. M. Kerrigan
Margaret Seddon
Margaret Mcwade
Purnell Pratt
Irving Bacon
Ivan Miller
Stanley Andrews
Baldwin Cooke
Harry Bernard
Eddie Dunn
Eddie Acuff
C. Pat Collins
Crew
Thomas Ahearn
Hans Dreier
A. E. Freudeman
Doane Harrison
Earl Hedrick
Harold Hurley
Don Johnson
William Lebaron
John P. Medbury
Boris Morros
Walter Oberst
Lawrence Pohle
Manuel Seff
Karl Struss
Adolph Zukor
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This film's working title was One's Man's Bonus. Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade are billed as "The Pixilated Sisters" on the film, a reference to the roles they played in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (see below). The Variety review states that it was "quite apparent that Paramount made this farce comedy with the intent of cashing in on the nation-wide distribution of bonus money to ex-servicemen. That happened several months ago...which makes [the film] a bit dated."
