"The Billion Dollar Scandal" (TBDS) was a David v. Goliath story in which case the David was an ex-con and the Goliath was a group of wealthy oil magnates. It's hard to find a greater disparity in power and influence.
A car accident led an ex-con named Frank 'Fingers' Partos (Robert Armstrong) to become the massage and fitness man for a rich businessman named John Dudley Masterson (Frank Morgan). Fingers wasn't too bright, but he was smart enough to know to invest his money in the stocks he overheard John and his rich friends talking about. He had a good thing going until his brother, Babe (Frank Albertson), started dating Masterson's daughter, Doris (Constance Cummings). Masterson was dead set against it and he would financially ruin Fingers if it meant prying his daughter away from Babe.
The romance between Doris and Babe set off the dramatic events that followed, but it wasn't the primary focus of the plot. It was one of those rich girl/poor boy romances where Hollywood wants us to believe that rich girls truly fall in love with peppy paupers. Call me a cynic, but I don't think hardly any such romances are real love. I think they're nothing more than bored young women who are attracted to something different and confuse their excitement with love (that includes Rose from "The Titanic"). The other portion of them do it because they have daddy issues and they want to spite their overbearing fathers. What's left are the paltry few that are truly in love while Hollywood writers make it seem as though they are the rule, not the exception.
TBDS was not about that romance and it shouldn't have distracted me so, but I can't help it. I see the cliche rich girl/poor boy romance and it's like nails on a chalkboard. The main issue was a country being bilked by an elite cabal, and the lowly whistleblower who could take them down. I liked that aspect of the film, however it was a little too trite. As brilliant as Masterson was, he was equally clumsy, inattentive, and tactless. If all masterminds were as bungling as him when it comes to perpetrating billion dollar schemes, we could easily lock them all up.
TBDS did have a good cast in spite of the basic plot. Along with Armstrong, Cummings, and Frank Morgan, there was James Gleason, Irving Pichel, Warren Hymer, Sidney Toler, Berton Churchill, Purnell Pratt, and Ralf Harolde--all veterans.
Free on Internet Archive.
