Winner Take All

Winner Take All features some fine acting and a fairly believable portrayal of gambling addiction and the desperation to which it leads. I watched this movie on Prime recently--fifty years after its release!--and was trying to place the actress. At first, I was thinking Florence Henderson from The Brady Bunch, but then from somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain erupted the answer lodged decades ago: Shirley Jackson from the Partridge Family!

Ordinarily, a made-for-tv movie is not worth even writing about, but the performances were so strong and the story convincing enough that I decided to add to the single-digit number of reviews here at imdb.

Some credit for the theatrical quality should go to the director, Paul Bogart. The cinematography, however, is pretty mediocre, as one would expect of a movie made so long ago. I watched this because I have a fascination with other people's gambling behavior, not being a gambler myself.