Any Number Can Play

Charley Kyng runs an illegal casino. When his heart gives trouble, his doctor tells him to spend more time with his family. But he cannot keep the work apart from the house. His son Paul is ashamed of what his father does and gets into a fight at his prom over it. Meanwhile his brother in law Robbin, who works at the casino, starts fixing games because of his own heavy gambling debts. The film tells gambling not as excitement but as an order that pulls in everyone around it. The distance between father and son is the carrying thread. It comes from the vein of American cinema of 1949 that joined family drama to a crime story. Clark Gable, Alexis Smith and Mary Astor appear in Mervyn LeRoy’s hundred and twelve minute American film, completed in 1949.