Cash McCall (1960) ***

As time wore on and attitudes to corporate skull-duggery hardened – Wall Street (1987), Other People’s Money (1991), The Big Short (2015)  – it was no longer necessary to soften a venal character with romance. And I guess the ruthless Cash McCall (James Garner) falling in love with Lory (Natalie Wood), daughter of takeover target Grant (Dean Jagger), provides the movie with a soft underbelly, intended presumably to show the inhuman businessman’s more human side, but instead diverting the picture away from delivering a massive punch against the asset-stripping proliferating too fast in American business.

Otherwise, it is a good assessment of the double-dealing and pitiless behavior of business sharks preying on weaker businesses. Then complaining when the tables are turned. Anti-Trust investigators would have a field day, but I’m not sure if the U.S. Securities & Exchanges Commission, set up in the wake of the 1929 Wall St Crash, was as powerless as today, usually turning up when the damage is done rather than stepping into prevent it.

Grant decides to sell up when his biggest customer Schofield Industries, run by retired Army General Danvers (Roland Winters), holds him to ransom. Cash McCall swoops in but, after finding a flaw in Schofield Industries, determines through clever maneuver to add that to his mountain of companies and make an immediate $1 million profit on Grant’s company which he purchased for $2 million.

The romance resistance that is standard for such pictures pivots on Lory having been rejected (on a stormy night) by Cash the previous summer. Ironically (though I doubt if the makers noticed the irony), Lory is viewed as a bonus in the deal, Cash’s wealth making him an ideal catch in the eyes of her parents, despite the abhorrence he inspires.

A contemporary audience might expect her to be the fly in the ointment, especially as she owns ten per cent of her father’s company, offering an opportunity to stand up to Cash on  principle. But that’s not envisaged here. And you can’t expect her, in those sexist times, of complaining that her father is depriving her of her inheritance and the chance to run a big company.

It’s at its best in the financial chicanery. Danvers comes unstuck when Cash discovers that Grant holds an unexpected ace and can run his company into the ground. Every time anyone tries to get the drop on Cash it turns out he owns their company or nullifies their intent by knowing what they’re up to. He recruits or increases the salary of anyone who stands in his way. Money not only talks it minimises and even forgives or elevates heinous action.

The only person who bests him is a hotel assistant manager Maude (Nina Foch) who, misreading the signals, believes herself to be his love interest. In revenge, she scuppers his  burgeoning romance with Lory.

In fairness, Cash is as upfront about his intentions as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. He describes himself as a “thoroughly vulgar character – I enjoy making money” while confessing he doesn’t buy businesses to run them but to sell them or break them up into more viable smaller pieces.

But the James Garner (The Americanization of Emily, 1964) charm gets in the way. He wants to have his cake eat it. Move into serious roles without falling foul of the public. Romance is seen as the tool.

Garner evolved a sneaky screen persona, attempting to be rascal who got away with it thanks to his charm, best personified in The Great Escape (1963) and The Americanization of Emily, in both films his escapades endorsed by the authorities. But it would be hard to find any redeeming qualities in a ruthless business buccaneer who exalted in the chaos he caused, little regard for the wrecked lives left in his wake.

The film attempts to get by this via the romance – a beautiful woman couldn’t possibly end up with a scoundrel, could she – and by setting up virtually every other character excepting Grant as dodgy (and even Grant ends up congratulating him on his clever schemes).

As an insight into corporate malfeasance, it’s interesting enough, and bold for the times, and certainly gets points for not falling back on the old trope of the little guy fighting big business. This features grown-ups knowing exactly what they are letting themselves in for.

A couple of sections jar – the flashback and a labored explanation that “Cash” is not a nickname but a Christian name. On the other hand, it could as easily be perceived as a romance that just happened to take place against the unusual backdrop of the boardroom.

It’s worth noting that Garner himself was not above unscrupulous dealing. Having convinced Warner Brothers to fund his first three movies, he then proceeded to sue the studio over his contract, leaving them with the bill for his flops.

Nina Foch (Spartacus, 1960) and Dean Jagger (Firecreek, 1968) are the pick of the supporting actors. The most interesting aspect of Joseph Pevney (The Plunderers, 1960) was that he directed a quartet of films in this single year and then not another for the rest of the decade.

The final screenplay from celebrated writer Lenore Coffee, whose career spanned forty years, an astonishing feat for a female in Hollywood, and was at one time the highest-paid screenwriter in the industry. It was co-written by Marion Hargrove (40 Pounds of Trouble, 1962) from the bestseller by Cameron Hawley.

Would have been a better picture if it had stuck to the knitting and not wandered into romance, so good in parts rather than a major success.