Silver Queen (1942)

Though the casting does let this down a bit, there’s still a solid story and a proper San Francisco brawl at the end to keep it going. Priscilla Lane is the adept poker playing “Coralie”, the daughter of the wealthy “Steve” (Eugene Pallette) and engaged to “Forsythe” (Bruce Cabot). All is going great until the market crash wipes her dad out and leaves her stony broke. Determined to sort out his debts, she heads off to ply her trade as a gambler and regularly sends back cash to her fiancé to settle up with her father’s creditors. Unknowingly, she also has a would-be suitor in “Kincaid” (George Brent) who discovers that her money isn’t going where she intended, but instead to prop up a silver mine that he had given “Forsythe” to give to her as a wedding gift - her father had originally owed  it. With her now successful and her would-be spouse facing ruin of his own, things all come to an head when “Kincaid” faces him down with the truth. Yes, it is quite derivative, but I quite enjoyed this workmanlike effort that’s helped along by Pallette and by Guinn Williams’ jovial “Blackie”, but the leading roles are less than imposing. Brent and Cabot are a really quite bland and every time I saw Lane I keep wishing it were Barbara Stanwyck. Still, it doesn’t hang about, gives us a sense of just how fragile wealth was back then amongst the pioneers and luck-riders and it’s got a nippy score too. Maybe not the most memorable, but I found it killed eighty minutes fine.