PAULETTE GODDARD in THE CRYSTAL BALL (1943)

 "SHE'S A GAL WITH A PAST WHO KNOW YOUR FUTURE!"

The always likable Paulette Goddard stars with Ray Milland in the rom-com THE CRYSTAL BALL (1943). It’s a Paramount film distributed by United Artists due to Paramount having too much product to get on the screen during WWII.

Goddard plays Toni Gerard, a beautiful, sharp-shooting Texan redhead who is stranded in New York due to losing out to a blonde in a fixed beauty contest. For the sake of the plot, Toni decides to spend her last 38 cents on fortune teller, Madame Zenobia (Gladys George), a likeable low-rent grifter. Zenobia takes pity on Toni, letting her a room in the back of her shop and then sets her up working next door with shooting gallery owner, Pop Tibbots (Cecil Kellaway), who acts as her father confessor and guardian angel.

When Toni is forced to masquerade as the veiled Madame Zenobia, she gets mixed up in a plot (largely irrelevant to the film) to get the haughty rich widower, Jo Ainsely (Virginia Field), to buy into a crooked land deal. This gets Toni involved with Ainsely’s handsome estate counselor, Brad Cavanaugh (Milland). After this, the rest of the movie is a series of amusingly farcical scenes where Toni juggles trying to win Brad away from Jo without revealing that she is now also Madame Zenobia. No one will be surprized in how the story ends – happily for everyone, except Jo.

The script by the soon to be Executive Producer of Columbia Pictures, Virginia Van Upp (Cover Girl, 1944), from a story by Steven Vas, is bit too complicated for its own good, but it maintains a solid pace for its 81 minutes. I enjoyed two of the running gags that almost become their own subplots. This first involves Toni getting a hapless waiter (you’ll recognize the face of Sig Arno) fired from every job that she continuously runs into him (literally) at, all of which he accepts with the frustrated good grace of someone who can’t afford to explode with indignation. The second sees Toni, Brad, and Brad’s right hand man (the always wonderful William Bendix) mistakenly visiting the apartment of the squabbling Mr. & Mrs. Martin (Ernest Truex – Bensinger in His Girl Friday, 1940 & Iris Adrian – Lola in My Favorite Spy, 1951), and getting tossed out on their ears by one of the pair who mistakes each visitor as the indiscreet lover of the other. The scene is made funnier by the quips of snoopy onlooker (Mabel Paige).

Ray Milland, Virginia Field, Paulette Goddard & Cecil Kellaway

The story shares many similarities with Ann Southern’s Maise series that ran for 10 installments from 1939 to 1947. Like Toni, Maisie is a southerner who starts every film broke and out of work, but soon falls in love with someone who she has to separate from an annoying girlfriend/fiancée. Toni’s wardrobe and sharpshooter background also foreshadows Peggy Cummins’ doomed gangster, Annie Laurie Starr, in Gun Crazy (1950).

The ex-Mrs. Charlie Chaplin, Goddard might not have been an actress with a large range, but she more than made up for it by the sincerity she brought to every role. I can’t think of another actress from the 1940’s who had a more likable onscreen persona than Goddard. She was nominated for one Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actress in So Proudly We Hail! (1943)

Millard was the polar opposite talent-wise of Goddard, with the ability to easily move from gut-wrenching drama to light comedy. He’s quite enjoyable here and he and Goddard make fine sparring partners. Milland and Goddard costarred in three other films together, The Lady Had Plans (1942), Reap The Wind (1942) and Kitty (1945). Watch for Milland's comically small 2-cylinder Crosley convertible that, as he mentions, would have been a good, gas-efficient vehicle during the war. Paulette Goddard owned one in real life.

Any cracks in the script are ably patched over by the dozens of great uncredited actors who fill out almost every scene. Top billed costars Gladys George, Virginia Field, Cecil Kellaway and WilliamBendix deserve full Atomic Surgeon reports of their own. But keep an eye open for a young Yvonne De Carlo (future Lily Munster) as Milland’s sassy secretary; Hillary Brooke (little Jimmy’s mom in Invaders From Mars, 1953) as Jo's catty friend; and Nestor Paiva (Capt. Lucas in Creature from the Black Lagoon) as the restaurant owner caught in the middle of Toni's scheme (an imaginary mouse in a teapot) to meet Brad. I'd have watched a film about any one of these characters. If there was any justice in the world, Paramount would have given Milland and De Carlo's characters their own film series.

The Crystal Ball was directed by Elliott Nugent, who had previously directed Goddard opposite Bob Hope in The Cat and The Canary (1939) and Nothing But The Truth (1941). Nugent started out as an actor costarring with Marion Davies in Not So Dumb (1930) and Lon Chaney in The Unholy Three (1930) before switching careers into directing. He specialized in light comedies, notably directing Bob Hope and Harold Lloyd. It’s worth watching his She Loves Me Not (1934) starring Miriam Hopkins and Bing Crosby that helped establish Bing as a top Hollywood screen personality.

The director of photography was twice Oscar nominated Leo Tover. He was one of the top cinematographers in the 40’s and 50’s working mostly for Paramount and 20th Century Fox. He made the intergalactic robotic enforcer, Gort, look menacing in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), and made us all want to Journey To The Center of The Earth’s (1959) glorious CinemaScope lost world.

Is THE CRYSTAL BALL worth my time? An unqualified yes. While not quite an A picture, it delivers on the laughs with a fun, watchable cast. Goddard is as adorable as ever (just look at that picture above!), and everyone in it shines.

Availability: As a MOD (manufactured on demand) DVD from ClassicFlix’s Silver Screen series. Check for availability, but very good copies of The Crystal Ball are currently watchable on many online platforms..