The Lady Gambles (1949)

While accompanying her husband (Robert Preston) on a business trip to Las Vegas, a housewife (Barbara Stanwyck) discovers gambling and finds herself addicted. Thus her fall from grace begins with the lies, the stealing, the broken marriage and ending up in a hospital ward. While films about alcoholism (THE LOST WEEKEND, SMASH UP) became fashionable in the forties, gambling addiction was hardly addressed and certainly even more rare with a female protagonist. So this Michael Gordon (PILLOW TALK) film is interesting from that aspect although the film is rather simplistic in that dime store Freudian psychology frequently practiced in 40s cinema about the causes of Stanwyck's gambling addiction. Also, there's not much subtlety, her addiction goes from zero to sixty without any brakes. Stanwyck, no surprise, gives a strong performance going from the happy Chicago housewife to the cheating shill getting beaten up in dark alleys. Unusual for the period, there's some actual location shooting in Vegas rather than duplicating it on a soundstage. There's an excellent score by the undervalued Frank Skinner (ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS). With Tony Curtis, Stephen McNally, Leif Erickson, Peter Leeds, Jerry Paris, John Hoyt as a terribly insensitive doctor and Edith Barrett as Stanwyck's neurotic, clinging sister.