Brewster's Millions
Director: Allan Dwan
Year Released: 1945
Rating: 3.0
Back from the War, Monty Brewster (Dennis O'Keefe) finds out a long-lost uncle has left him an inheritance of $8 million, with a few rules attached: he must spend one million of it in two months, he can't tell anyone why he needs to spend it and he can't give gifts to his fiancée (Helen Walker). What follows is a frenzied dash for Brewster to unload money, with O'Keefe (in a delightful performance) more than up for the task - it also highlights an old rule of Possessing Wealth in a Capitalist Society: you need to have money to make money, and you also need a lot of Luck to keep making money. At first, Monty dumps a lot of cash on a new office and several ventures (yay, horse racing!), but he ends up profiting instead (!); only when he figures out how to 'cheat' the system (by taking his musical-troupe-on-a-yacht and then having that yacht towed following an accident for an astronomical sum) does he manage to 'succeed' by 'losing' the million. How dumping a ton of money in a two month period is supposed to teach him about frugality is somewhat implausible, but Brewster seems like the kind of tactful fellow who will make the remaining millions last for a lifetime.
