Pot o' Gold

Pot o' Gold (1941)

It's the prize romantic laugh of the year... more fun than winning the POT O' GOLD!

Jimmy, the owner of a failed music shop, goes to work with his uncle, the owner of a food factory. Before he gets there, he befriends an Irish family who happens to be his uncle's worst enemy because of their love for music and in-house band who constantly practices. Soon, Jimmy finds himself trying to help the band by getting them gigs and trying to reconcile the family with his uncle.

Date of release
1941-04-03
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (28)
Runtime
1h 26m
Genres
Comedy, Music, Romance
Director
George Marshall

Casting

Interesting facts

Pot o' Gold is a 1941 American romantic musical comedy film starring James Stewart and Paulette Goddard, directed by George Marshall, and based on the NBC radio series Pot o' Gold. The film was released by United Artists on April 3, 1941, eight months before the aforementioned NBC radio series came to an end. Paulette Goddard's singing voice was dubbed by Vera Van. The film was known as The Golden Hour in the United Kingdom.

Production and reception

Producer James Roosevelt had been working in the motion picture industry since January 1939, as an executive and consultant. He formed Globe Productions at the end of the year, and soon announced that the first Globe production would be Pot o' Gold. While Pot o' Gold was in preparation, Roosevelt introduced a new concept: Soundies musical movies.

When Pot o' Gold was released to theaters in April 1941, it was warmly received by trade critics. The general tone was that, although the story was unremarkable and formulaic, the film was a masterstroke of light entertainment. Motion Picture Herald reported: "Basic and proven ingredients artfully mixed and beaten to a light froth, with the final seasoning done exactly to a turn.

Because the film was produced independently — copyrighted by James Roosevelt personally and not owned or controlled by a studio — it became available for reissue in late 1943. Robert M. Savini of Astor Pictures bought the reissue rights from co-producer Henry Henigson (Henigson acted for James Roosevelt, who was serving in the Marine Corps). Savini retitled the film Jimmy Steps Out and released it to theaters in 1944.

Like other independent ventures, the film came back to haunt the stars. Paulette Goddard and Horace Heidt had invested in the film's production and filed suit against producer Roosevelt for an accounting while Roosevelt was in the military. Because of the film's non-studio status it has been a TV perennial since 1948, and was an early arrival to home video.

Nine years later, Stewart did another movie about a big-money radio show, The Jackpot (1950).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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