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The Hoodlum Saint

1946

WAS IT THE SOCIETY BEAUTY OR THE NIGHT CLUB SINGER?

A former reporter comes back home after serving in the army during World War I and finds that it's much more difficult to find work than he expected. Desperate, one day he crashes a wedding attended by many of the city's rich and powerful, meets a beautiful girl named Kay who turns out to be his ticket to meeting those rich and powerful people, and he soon manages to land a job on a newspaper. He gets caught up in the "make money at all costs" game but receives a rude awakening when the stock market crashes in 1929.

William Powell Esther Williams Angela Lansbury James Gleason Lewis Stone Rags Ragland Frank McHugh Slim Summerville Roman Bohnen Charles Arnt Louis Jean Heydt Charles Trowbridge Henry O'Neill William Phillips Matt Moore Trevor Bardette Addison Richards Tom Dugan Emma Dunn Mary Gordon Charles D. Brown Stanley Andrews Stanley Blystone Hobart Cavanaugh Jack Cheatham Chester Conklin Heinie Conklin Byron Foulger Dwayne Hickman Show All…

Alternative Titles

Oro en el barro, El canalla redimido, Ouro no Barro

Genres

Drama Music

Theatrical

04 Apr 1946

USANR

USA

04 Apr 1946

TheatricalNR

91 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by D Rock ★★½

Manipulative, money-chasing financier is pushed kicking and screaming for 90 minutes into not being such a manipulative, money-chasing financier. ok the idea is laudable I guess. I mean a message movie about life being about more than just the sizes of your bank account and your NY penthouse, who can't get on board with that amiright?
Except that the place this dreary, unsubtle mess of a movie pushes William Powell to is into the arms of religion. Crying at the altar you've almost literally been arm-twisted into praying at? Check. We even get a little Timmy or Tommy or something who's been given a brace for his leg so please don't go stealing from the charity tiller now.
I think…
Review by Will Remmers ★★★★½ 3

What makes this movie great isn't the movie. All of the reviews here miss that because they are distracted by the movie. By 'the movie' I mean Powell, his financial whatevers (which I can't fully hate because this movie has this dramatically ironic foreboding line after everyone is buying loads of William Powell stocks days before the Crash: "This 1929 is better than last year!" which was so funny and on-the-nose, I watched it twice), Esther out of the water (who is endearing!), their lack of chemistry (eh, it comes and goes). Stop getting hung up on the movie.
Start getting hung up on the details, you Goose! Some people here say that the stacked supporting cast doesn't save the…
Review by Marya E. Gates ★★★

Angela Lansbury step on my neck
Review by Lowbacca ★★★

This does feel like it gets more than a little bit preachy at points, but at the same time, I enjoyed the performances enough all around that I wasn't that bothered by it. The overall story still ends up being well enough, and there's plenty of watching William Powell do his thing of being quick on his feet to create situations to his advantage.
I do wish they'd given a bit more to Angela Lansbury, but she certainly makes the most out of what she does get to work with.
Review by hellohildy ★★

Odd casting and a meandering script with no idea of what it wanted to be sabotages what might have been a good movie. I adore William Powell, but he was too old for this part, or else Esther Williams (29 years his junior) and Angela Lansbury (33 years his junior) were too young.
A dream-team of side-kick "mug" character actors - James Gleason, Frank McHugh, Rags Ragland and Slim Summerville - couldn't save this film, though they were the most entertaining things about it. Sadly this would be the last film of both Ragland and Summerville, who died the year this film released.
I take off a half a star for MGM putting Angela Lansbury in the striking gown that Ginger Rogers had slayed in the year before in Weekend at the Waldorf. That's too recognizable a costume to recycle.
Review by PUNQ ★★½

One of several big losers for MGM in 1946. Such a shame they couldn't get more out of all the wonderful characters in The Hoodlum Saint (1946). For a lot of this was enjoyable, but the story never catches steam. They also didn't seem to know how to best utilize the actors they'd chosen for this project. Esther Williams without a swimming pool was too dry to watch. A cold Angela Lansbury was just dull. To me it was James Gleason who came out of this looking best. At least his character developed in believable way. I never truly figured out how to take William Powell character.
Review by Rick Burin ★ 1

An incomprehensibly dreadful film about… well, I’m not really sure. Written by the once-in-a-lifetime team of Born Free director James Hill, John Ford’s roustabout mate ‘Spig' Wead, and the proto-feminist silent era veteran, Frances Marion (though the idea that any two of them were in the same room at the same time seems every bit as ludicrous as the script they created), it’s an endlessly hapless mess that mixes the DNA of The Roaring Twenties with one of Powell’s early-‘30s Warner vehicles, some interminable sub-Runyon shenanigans and a broad romantic comedy that regards unsolicited kissing and the tragic spectacle of marathon dance contests as just the funniest two things you could ever imagine.
The opening scene is honestly fantastic: newspaper…
Review by Fint ★★

Gosh, what tosh! A love triangle that makes no sense morphs into a sanctimonious slice of hooey where a Saint Dismas (no, me neither) becomes the reason for disreputables seeing the light of purity and charity. William Powell and Esther Williams initially dance around each other in puzzlingly concentric circles. When Angela Lansbury enters as a (dubbed) sultry chanteuse, things start to look up. But then Angela's character has a lobotomy (not literally) and becomes a completely different person, before the religious angle slinks in from left field. By this stage I was praying to Saint Dismas to put me and the film out of our misery.
The most interesting takeaway was the proof that already MGM hadn't a clue what to do with the divine Angela, just two years after her arrival and a year after her second Oscar nomination. Careers in those days were constructed around 'types' and Lansbury was anything but cookie-cutter.
Review by Luke Thorne ★★★

Norman Taurog’s drama in which an ex-journalist returns home after helping in the military throughout the First World War and discovers that it’s much more harder to find work than he thought.
The story concerns a World War I veteran (William Powell) who takes advantage of a New York charity fraud until the Wall Street crash of 1929.
William Powell gives a good performance in his role as Terry O’Neill, the former reporter who is going to get more than he bargained for in terms of work, while Esther Williams (Bathing Beauty) is fine in her part as Kay Lorrison, the guest who Terry likes.
Elsewhere, there is a decent performance to be had from Angela Lansbury in her role…
Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★

Rewatch from 50 years ago; I didn't remember anything but the title. Hollywood high-style, it's a nice thing... but this is no St. Benny The Dip. The titular Saint Dismas does stuff on the characters' behalf, so it's tangentially related to all those life/afterlife dramedies that sprouted ,during the war; he's an officially-canonized version of Jesus Malverde. As it were.
Review by David Pousak ★★

You'd think this would be something of a noir based on the poster and the title, but no, it's a melodrama with some religious (The Hoodlum Saint refers to Dismas, one of the men crucified alongside Jesus.) and crime elements. Unfortunately, it's a very poor melodrama with awkwardly inserted religious and crime elements. It tries to be all at once but can't balance them properly without feeling heavy-handed in one part or another, undoubtedly due to poor writing. What's worse is the cast: Gleason going overboard, Frank McHugh being severely underutilized, Angela Lansbury having little to sink her teeth into, Esther Williams delivering her lines in an incredibly flat manner without any nuance at any point (it's a miracle her…
Review by Bill ★★★

I can’t imagine a movie ever saying the words “Saint Dismas” as often as this one does. I was enjoying it well enough before it started hammer the religion into me. Powell has a craftiness that sells his part, and Esther Williams seems slightly amused through all of it, even when her heart is breaking. Honestly, given the rogue’s gallery of character actors in this, it might have worked better as a comedy.
Esther Williams, Ranked

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Where to watch

The Hoodlum Saint

Synopsis

WAS IT THE SOCIETY BEAUTY OR THE NIGHT CLUB SINGER?

Cast

Director

Producer

Writers

Editor

Cinematography

Assistant Director

Art Direction

Set Decoration

Special Effects

Composer

Costume Design

Makeup

Studio

Country

Language

Alternative Titles

Genres

Releases by Date

Theatrical

04 Apr 1946

Releases by Country

USA

04 Apr 1946

Popular reviews

Where to watch

The Hoodlum Saint

Synopsis

WAS IT THE SOCIETY BEAUTY OR THE NIGHT CLUB SINGER?

Cast

Director Director

Producer Producer

Writers Writers

Editor Editor

Cinematography Cinematography

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Art Direction Art Direction

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Special Effects Special Effects

Composer Composer

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup Makeup

Studio

Country

Language

Alternative Titles

Genres

Theatrical

04 Apr 1946

USA

04 Apr 1946

Popular reviews

Director

Producer

Writers

Editor

Cinematography

Assistant Director

Art Direction

Set Decoration

Special Effects

Composer

Costume Design

Makeup