Sudden Money is a 1939 American comedy film directed by Nick Grinde, written by Lewis R. Foster and starring Charlie Ruggles, Marjorie Rambeau, Charley Grapewin, Broderick Crawford, Billy Lee and Evelyn Keyes. It was released on March 31, 1939, by Paramount Pictures.
Plot
When the Patterson family wins $150,000 in a sweepstakes, family patriarch and frustrated drummer Sweeney decides to reassemble his old college
ragtime band. Sweeney's wife Elsie enrolls in an art school, eager to become a painter. Her brother Doc begins gambling on horse races. The Pattersons' daughter Mary attends an expensive boarding school while son Junior is enrolled in a military academy. Grandpa Casey disapproves, believing that the family should be more careful with the windfall.
A young woman named Yolo joins Sweeney's band and immediately creates problems. Her jealous ex-convict boyfriend punches Sweeney in the nose. Elsie's art teacher disappears with her tuition fee. Mary's new beau Johnny Jordan and his father are appalled by the family's behavior, and she is expelled from school. The family slowly returns to poverty.
Grandpa Casey, proven right about how the family handled its fortune, wins a small cash prize himself, and the family once again devises grand plans.
Cast
Reception
In a contemporary review, the
Los Angeles Times called
Sudden Money "an unusually good 'program' picture" and wrote: "When the money leads to disaster, and the entire family discovers it is better off right back where they started, the audience also finds it has been well entertained with a movie that rates top billing on any double bill."
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