$1,000 a Minute (1935)

“Wally” (Roger Pryor) is a debt-ridden hack who is desperate to buy an engagement ring for his fiancée “Dorothy” (Leila Hans) but can’t even afford the cab fare. Then his editor fires him and he heads to the casino! He doesn’t do much better there so decides to tap up one of the wealthy gents who frequent the place. As luck would have it, he and one of his equally wealthy chums had just made a bet on whether it could be possible to spend $1,000 per minutes for twelve hours. That makes a grand total of $720k! They decide to give “Wally” a chance to earn a bonus of $10,000 if he can hit that target. He has to get receipts for everything and has to run all the purchases through the eagle-eyed “Benny” (Edward Brophy) but he still reckons this will be a synch. Now the last thing he was reporting on was a robbery and so when he starts off his spree with a string of very expensive pearls, the suspicious jewellers call the cops and they soon begin to suspect that his current, fully funded, extravaganza might be connected with that very crime. With the police on his trail and the clock ticking down, it soon proves quite a lot more difficult than he’d expected to get the job done - but can he make it? This is quite a fun hour of comedic excess and there’s an amiable chemistry between Pryor, Brophy, Hyams and the long-suffering cabbie “Pete” (Sterling Holloway) who just wants his fifteen bucks so he can take his taxi back to the garage and go home to bed! The scenarios work quite well and all are kept busy by a decently paced direction and by jokes that, though maybe a bit repetitious, still manage to avoid being too cringy and do point out just how we value money over all other things at our peril.