Lucille Ball and John Hodiak star in Two Smart People (1946)

 

Movie Review: Two Smart People (1946)

starring Lucille Ball, John Hodiak, and Lloyd Nolan

a blog post written for my We Love Lucy Blogathon

My Summary of Two Smart People

Two Smart People is what happens when two con artists try to pull a con on the same person and then manage to cheat each other of their mark. Ricki Woodner (Lucille Ball) and Ace Connors (John Hodiak) are quite a pair. Connors is on the run with stolen bonds glued into the binding of an ordinary cooking book while Ricki is always on the lookout for her next victim, yet somehow, fate has brought them together.

Fly Feletti, Connors' partner in the bond heist wants his share, but Connors isn't paying up, so as an old acquaintance of Ricki, he spills that Connors has a fortune in bonds stashed on him somewhere in the hopes that Ricki might be able to squeeze them out of him. Ricki pretends indifference, but in reality, she immediately sets Connors up as her new mark (just not partnered with Fly), a dangerous game to play with a man who's as equally clever as herself and can recognize when he's being played. 

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Add the fact that Connors is being escorted cross-country, of his own free will, by police officer Bob Simms (Lloyd Nolan) to stand trial and serve at least five years in Sing Sing, then the scenario is a ticking time bomb. An affable manipulator, Connors genuinely likes Bob since he's been chased by him for years, so the time they spend together traveling closer and closer to Connors' doom isn't unpleasant. And to her surprise, when Ricki realizes that Connors is going to be locked away for at least half a decade, she experiences enough sadness and remorse to make her realize that just maybe she feels more for Connors than she originally thought.

Throw in a stop across the Texas border into Mexico and a party during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and Two Smart People is a colorful and sparkling spectacle despite the fact that it's filmed in glorious black and white.

All the Feels

While Two Smart People wasn't a hit at the time, I'm so thankful it's been preserved and officially released on DVD. Otherwise, it might have been a movie that I would have passed by. My library didn't own it so I put in an inter-library request for it two years ago, watched it twice while it was in my care, and then immediately asked for it for Christmas, a request my sweet mother obliged me with. I don't actually own all that many Lucille Ball movies, so it was wonderful to find one that I genuinely loved so much where she's not playing the comedic redhead.

Looking back now, I realize that I first found Two Smart People not because of Lucille Ball, but because of John Hodiak. Ever since I saw him costar with Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls, I was hooked, but sadly, he doesn't have very many leading man roles. When I think of Hodiak, I think of vibrancy and sarcasm. I've only seen him play bad boy roles, but he always plays them with such charm, that you want to forget he's a bad boy. He and Lucille Ball sparkle with electric chemistry in this entertaining film.

Lucy is an elegant and graceful figure, clothed in scads of gorgeous clothing, and bearing a highly flirtatious air befitting a con artist. I think they're called "grifters," now, if I'm rightly remembering the term. She's a tough cookie, but with a soft side to her. I love how Lucy was able to play so many different kinds of roles, but that she really excelled at the women with an attitude. She wasn't one of those soft heroines of old Hollywood, oh no, Lucy was sarcastic and spirited just like her role as Ricki Woodner.

Veteran actor Lloyd Nolan provides a really solid supporting role as Bob Simms, playing a cop on the verge of retirement. Simms is mildly sad that his last job is to bring Connors in since he can't help but like the man, probably because everyone knows Connors isn't violent. He's just a swindler and they've been playing cat and mouse for so long, that it's sad to call it quits. It sort of reminds me a little of Catch Me if You Can, a funny thing to say since the real-life story behind Catch Me if You Can hadn't even happened yet in 1946.

There's a lot of sensuous attraction in Two Smart People, sort of in the vein of It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The flirtations and witty banter are just plain fun to watch, and even knowing that Connors should technically go to prison, you really don't want him to. You wish the court could just smack his hand with a ruler and let him go.

Do I think the relationship between Ricki and Connors is long-lasting? Mmm, I don't know. I've given it some thought, and I feel that for these types of characters, there's just no way to tell. I mean, do people get tired of playing the game? Yes, I'm sure they do. Do they ever want to find happiness and settle down? Probably. Would you ever be able to trust your significant other if you knew that lying was a very successful past time for them? That's a whole other conversation. But I'm an optimist so my hope is always yes, that people can find happiness and that they can change. Just because Connors is a charming conman doesn't mean he can't make a conscious decision to become something else, and the same goes for Ricki. I live in perpetual hope.

The ending is what I like to call a "non-ending," so that might be why it wasn't super successful at the box office. But old Hollywood was occasionally prone to those odd non-endings, and I feel that for Two Smart People, it kind of works. Because there's no real way you can wrap up the story when the characters have only been together for a week.

Two Smart People is one of my favorite films from the 1940s and has made it into one of my top Lucille Ball films, period. It's really an entertaining ride with two actors who, I think, had excellent screen chemistry and got to play with a fun script where they could express loads of facial expressions and sarcastic quips. While probably not a super memorable role for most people, Lucy was born to play Ricki Woodner, and for me, that's more than enough to make me love Two Smart People. And I get to enjoy John Hodiak, which is always a bonus.

Remember to check out all of the other Lucille Ball posts contributed to the We Love Lucy Blogathon by so many amazing bloggers!