"Miracles for Sale" is a Hackneyed Piece of FlapDoodle with a Nonsensical Plot

 

by Daniel White

Tod Browning's final film, a murder mystery, Miracles for Sale (1939), is as much a lame duck as it is his swan song. An MGM programmer set in the twin worlds of spiritualism and show business, it starts off promising but quickly becomes a hackneyed piece of flapdoodle. An inglorious finish from one of the more ingenious directors of old Hollywood.

The flick opens with an Asian war lord, his face a gruesome caricature, ordering the execution of a female spy. Placing the Occidental lady horizontally into a child-sized casket ("unfortunately we only have small coffins"), the hapless Mata Hari is summarily machine gunned to death!

It's a bizarre, disturbing scene worthy of Mr. Browning, but alas, it turns out to be a phony set-up. It's a demonstration of retired magician Mike Morgan's (Robert Young) latest invention, a variation on the sawing a woman in half trick. A former carnival man himself, Browning often placed his movies in the world of chicanery, sham, and make-believe. But Miracles for Sale relies too much on a nonsensical plot that is not only trite, but worse, tedious.

There are a few flashes of the macabre, like two of the flick's supporting players ending up dead on the floor, positioned inside a satanic pentagram. And Dracula's daughter, Gloria Holden, shows up briefly as a spiritualist of questionable integrity. But even these off-beat touches are not enough to salvage this grade B potboiler.

Robert Young does a nice job as the amiable ex-Houdini who goes from sleight-of-hand man to amateur sleuth. In watching this movie though, it becomes apparent why he never achieved bona fide cinema heartthrob status. Likeable, but lacking in movie star magnetism, Young was designed to excel on the small screen, not to shine on the silver one.

Miracles for Sale does have a solid, talented group of character actors who are always worth watching. Henry Hull, Frank Craven, William Demarest, and an uncredited Charles Lane liven things up and occasionally elevate the movie to enjoyable entertainment.

With Florence Rice as Young's pretty, if uninspiring leading lady, and Astrid Allwyn and Lee Bowman as a bickering married couple, Miracles for Sale is a halfhearted farewell from the legendary director.

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