The Lady Gambles

A socially-conscious melodrama about the evils of gambling, and comparisons to "The Lost Weekend" are apt. Stephen McNally is dashing (and hot) as temptation embodied...one wonders why she doesn't ditch Robert Preston--who seemed middle-aged when he was 20--for him. Luckily, not too much of this is Stanwyck in victim mode, when you just want to slap her and say, "Snap out of it--you're Barbara Stanwyck!" Her moments of manic possession and exhilaration at the tables are absolutely marvelous.

At least she gets punched in the face in this one, but for a Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, it struggled to excite. Only short bursts of that destructional behavior. So much of this felt like the selling point was the romance. I wasn't very interested in that.

Starts off hastily but improves steadily towards the inevitable happy ending. Not particularly insightful in depicting gambling addiction as a sickness, but generates decent drama nonetheless.

Powerful anti-gaming treatise, 'THE LOST WEEKEND' of gambling films - while it can't quite match that landmark, it is still a painful (if sometimes overly moralistic) depiction of Stanwyck's descent into addiction, marked by a fine performance by the lady herself, but exceeded by her co-star McNally, delicious as the venal casino manager who takes her under his 'wing'. Preston seems at a loose end as the long suffering husband, but he's the only weak link in a strong supporting cast.