On a rainy night in New York, hustler Bill O’Brien looks for a sucker to fleece and enters a swank nightclub. He sets his sights on Charles Engle, a desperate embezzler bent on suicide as the only way out of his crime. Bill misinterprets Engle’s modest clothes and demeanor and thinks that he is a rich “hick” from out of town. What he does not know is that Engle has been given until six o’clock in the morning to repay money that he embezzled to spend on his frivolous wife. Bill enlists the beautiful and ambitious Nina Barona, an aspiring showgirl whom he meets at the club, to act as bait to lure the unsuspecting Engle into a high stakes poker game run by gangster Dutch Enright. Meanwhile, Gene Gibbons, an alcoholic, down-on-his-luck playwright who sees a story in everyone, becomes involved in Engle’s life when he is mistakenly given Engle’s coat at the cloak room and finds his suicide note. Though he himself is despondent, he decides to plot “a happy ending” for the desperate man. When he approaches Engle and hears his story, Gene tries to trick his former mistress out of a broach that has a value more than equal to Engle’s debt, but the broach turns out to be paste. When Gene hears about Bill’s original plan to fleece Engle in a poker game, he enlists Bill in a new scheme to win the three thousand dollars that Engle needs by having Engle go to the game, then sneak out after the gamblers’ allow him to win some initial “sucker money.” Bill is reluctant, but agrees if Engle will give him anything over the three thousand dollars. While waiting in a hotel room for the game to start, Gene scripts a scenario for Bill and Engle, then passes out. Bill decides to go through with the plan, but before the curtain is rung down on the last act, Gene wakes up sober and, having forgotten everything about the evening’s events, leaves the hotel to reconcile with his ex-wife, who has always had faith in him. Now stranded, Bill, Engle and Nina must write their own ending. When Dutch learns that Engle plans to skip out with the winnings, Nina appeals to Bill’s better instincts and convinces him to beat off Dutch’s thugs while Engle escapes with the money. In doing their good deed, Nina and Bill fall in love and redeem themselves, thus finding their own happy ending. More on Wikipedia or Variety
Festival Film- Awards & Festivals
Academy Awards, 1941- Nominee: Best Writing, Original Screenplay
Watch Angels over Broadway aka Before I Die (1940)
