Double Dynamite

Double Dynamite is a triumph of miscasting.

First, you have Frank Sinatra playing a conservative bank teller, too mild mannered to stand up to his boss for a well-deserved raise. Next, you have Jane Russell playing Sinatra’s character’s equally modest girlfriend, suppressing all of her natural charm beneath a mousy persona that feels anything but authentic. Finally, there’s Groucho Marx, wasted as a pseudo-sidekick.

The plot sees Sinatra, desperate for money to marry Russell, goes into hiding with Marx when his reward for saving a bookie’s life coincides with a shortage at his bank.

Really, what were the filmmakers thinking? Producer Howard Hughes had to know something was wrong, given that filming finished in the fall of 1948, yet it didn’t open until Christmas 1951. Somewhere in between, Hughes also dropped the film’s original title, It’s Only Money, in favor of the Double Dynamite reference to Russell’s breasts, though you’d never know it from her wardrobe in this picture.

Granted it’s not all bad. Nestor Paiva is fun as the sunglass wearing bookie, Sinatra and Russell do sing a nice song, and Marx has a couple of good one-liners, but this is hardly enough to fill the film’s 80 minutes, especially when Sinatra and Russell are so handicapped by their ill-fitting characters.