Sweepstakes and lotteries have proved to be reliable plot motivators in Hollywood, with ticket-holders in films as diverse as Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1925), John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), William Castle's Mr. Sardonicus (1961), and Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) driven to the worst possible behavior in the expectation of the best possible outcome. Set within the immigrant community of New York City before World War II, the MGM comedy The Winning Ticket (1935) stars Leo Carrillo as a poor Italian barber whose life changes unexpectedly with the purchase of a winning lottery ticket. Complications arise when Carrillo's ne'er-do-well Irish brother-in-law (Three Stooges creator Ted Healy) loses the ticket, prompting a madcap search through the city (with the smashing of dozens of ceramic parrots, one of which may or may not contain the missing ticket, anticipating the business of the Eiffel Tower paperweights in Ealing's The Lavender Hill Mob [1951]) on the way to a redemptive wrap-up. Director Charles Reisner had honed his comic craft as a gag writer and assistant to Charlie Chaplin on The Kid (1921) and The Gold Rush (1925) and later directed such time-tested funnymen as Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers - no surprise that he orchestrates the slapstick shenanigans of The Winning Ticket with comic aplomb.

By Richard Harland Smith