If any movie deserves the appellation "Snappy little programmer", it's DON'T BET ON BLONDES, a fun 1935 Warner Bros. production. The story revolves around "Odds" Owen (we never find out his real first name), played by one and only Warren William. Odds is the biggest bookmaker in NYC, but he's getting tired of all the underhanded activities involved in the gambling racket. Odds decides to imitate Lloyds of London by starting up a business that will insure just about anything, such as the voice of the world's greatest husband caller.
A Southern Colonel (Guy Kibbee) takes out a policy to insure that his daughter, a young attractive stage actress named Marilyn Youngblood (Claire Dodd) doesn't marry--the Colonel is afraid that if she does, she'll quit performing and also quit paying all his bills as well. Odds and his motley associates take great pains to make sure that they don't have to pay off all the various strange policies, but in the act of making sure Marylin stays single, Owen starts to fall for her. Marylin discovers what her father has done, so she takes it upon herself to play up to Odds and then pull the rug out from under him.....but in usual early 1930s Warners fashion, all sorts of crazy complications pop up.
DON'T BET ON BLONDES was helmed by Robert Florey, but this isn't a director's film--the movie succeeds due to the personalities of the cast and the momentum of the story. Warren William is his suave, sneaky self as Odds, a distinguished looking gent who thinks he knows the angles on everything until he meets up with Marylin. Claire Dodd is a great match for William, due to the fact that in her screen career she played as many chiselers as he did.
Guy Kibbee steals the film as the mint julep-sipping Colonel, who is writing a book on how the South actually won the Civil War! Vince Barnett, William Gargan, and Spencer Charters are the gang that put Odds' schemes into motion, and a clean-shaven Errol Flynn, in one of his very first film roles, plays an unsuccessful suitor of Marylin.
The whole idea of an insurance company that underwrites weird policies is an intriguing idea--I think it would make a great TV series. If anything DON'T BET ON BLONDES doesn't give that idea enough coverage--the movie is only 59 minutes long. It's very rare that you watch a film and, at the end of it, you wish that there was more to it, and that you could spend more time with its characters--but DON'T BET ON BLONDES fits that bill.
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