The Hoodlum Saint

TCM had "The Hoodlum Saint" on August 8, 2016, the first of a series of movies starring Esther Williams. Williams was 24 when she co-starred in this movie and she looked great. Star William Powell looked like he was just earning a paycheck, he had the most script lines and this script was a disaster area, completely unreal. This movie had fine stars and character actors at every turn: James Gleason, Frank McHugh, Angela Lansbury, Rags Ragland. All try hard but who is really interested in a story that revolves in part on the story of Saint Dismas, the good thief in the New Testament who becomes the "hoodlum saint." Greenlighting movies like this turkey paved the way for MGM production head Louis B. Mayer's dismissal.

Cliff Reid was the producer of this movie, his first and last for MGM. Reid had worked as a producer or assistant producer at RKO from 1934 to 1942, according to IMDb. If the movie was low budget, like RKO movies starring Lee Tracy, Reid was the producer. These RKO movies are mostly unwatchable, badly written and with bad production values. For a bigger budget movie like "Bringing Up Baby," Reid was the associate producer. Reid is the one who deserves all the blame for how bad "The Hoodlum Saint" is, it has a low budget script tagged to the high production values MGM gave its movies.

Further, William Powell was miscast as the star, he sleep walked through most of the movie. You have Esther Williams full of vitality playing against a very dull William Powell. Producer Cliff Reid imbued this movie with "B" movie values. You know, MGM would have been better off making this movie starring Lee Tracy in William Powell's role as a former newspaperman who sells out at first to get rich on Wall Street before the crash.