GamerTab That was an excellent one.

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

SimonJack Gene Raymond is one of the few actors in Hollywood history to have written, directed and starred in his own movie. And this is it – his only one. It's also the only film he directed. While "Million Dollar Weekend" didn't fare well at theaters, is has a good plot and screenplay. It was made by a small film company, Eagle-Lion films, which didn't provide it very wide distribution. Yet, it is a good and interesting story. It's a crime mystery with redemption, and it holds up very well. The very small cast of three main players focuses the plot well in just 72 minutes. . The credits list only Hawaii for shooting locations. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu was one setting. Raymond is very good as Nicholas Lawrence and John Nicholas. Osa Massen is very good as Cynthia Strong, and Francis Lederer is very good as Alan Marker. Raymond was a man of many talents. Besides acting, he sang, wrote stories and screenplays, and wrote songs. He was a sound and very good leading man, but he didn't land many major roles that shot him to stardom with the best known actors. He was equally adept at comedy, drama and musicals. Raymond was married to Jeanette MacDonald for 27 years, until her death in 1965. The couple had a sometimes stormy relationship. MacDonald's was one career in which the legendary Louis B. Mayer ruled with an iron hand and dictated much of her personal life. Raymond bore a striking resemblance to Nelson Eddy who co- starred with MacDonald in a number of musicals. Raymond served in the Army Air Forces of World War II and was decorated with later flying during the Vietnam War. He retired from the Air Force reserves as a colonel. He also had a controversial and colored past with some run-ins with the law. His bisexuality became known and created more personal and career problems.

XhcnoirX One evening company executive Gene Raymond decides to start a new life, with the company's money. He takes all the money & stock papers he can from his office safe and boards a plane to Honolulu, where he will switch to a plane to Shanghai. On the plane he meets recent widow Osa Massen (credited as Stephanie Paull), who is being stalked by family friend Francis Lederer who tries to blackmail her, as he claims he saw her kill her husband. Massen tries to use Raymond to get Lederer off her back, but it only leads to more trouble when Lederer steals Raymond's suitcase with the money & papers and heads to San Francisco, just as Raymond decides his boring life is exciting enough after all. Despite what IMDb thinks, this movie is pretty far removed from film noir. It has a few elements with the dissatisfied, stealing protagonist and the blackmailer, as well as a potentially murderous widow, but it doesn't amount to much to be honest. The movie is fairly bland, things stay predictable and straight-forward, and while it does entertain decently enough, the ending is as predictable as they get. Actor Gene Raymond went all out on this one, as he also co-wrote the story (with the producer) and directed it. He is pretty solid here, as are Massen and slimy Lederer. If only Raymond's writing and directing was more exciting. Heck, even veteran cinematographer Paul Ivano ('Black Angel', 'The Shanghai Gesture', 'The Suspect') doesn't excite here with only a few shadowy scenes. A missed opportunity, there was potential here. Enjoyable in parts (and Raymond and Massen work well together) but not noir enough to earn a recommendation. 6/10

dbborroughs Good little thriller about a bored business man who decides to grab all of his company's bonds and make a break for the tropics. On the Plane to Hawaii he meets a young woman in distress who is being menaced by gentleman with a foreign accent who knows way too much about her. Over the course of the weekend romance blossoms as danger lurks. Yes this sort of thing has been done a hundred times before and since, and yes its been done both worse and better, but there is something to be said about a little film that tells its story neatly and efficiently. The performances and the twists this time out are all quite good and enough to suck you in and keep you watching for the films 70 odd minutes. Will you remember the film when its done? Probably not but then again if you're like me you'll put it into the keep pile so that somewhere down the road I can stumble aback over it and enjoy it all over again.

IAmTheRedDragon I have no idea why this is classified as a comedy on this site! There are no comedic elements to this film - it is in fact a quite dark, 'film noir'-ish drama, and a very good one.Quiet middle-aged businessman Nicholas Lawrence is fed up with his life and decides to embezzle his firm of a million dollars and flee to Shanghai. However, it becomes his misfortune to find himself seated with a dodgy pair of passengers on the plane: a beautiful young widow, Cynthia Strong, taking a trip to Hawaii to get away from it all after the untimely death of her husband, and tooth-clenchingly irritating Alan Marker, who has trailed her in an attempt to blackmail her by threatening to frame her for the murder of her husband.When Alan has to make a trip to the gents', Cynthia begs Nicholas to help her by pretending he's an old friend of hers whom they have just mutually recognised, in the hopes that Alan will take the hint and go away. However, he instead sticks himself to the both of them like glue for the entire stopover in Hawaii and makes life miserable, culminating in his stealing Nick's stolen million and hightailing it to San Francisco. Needless to say, Nick is not now able to continue on to his destination of Shanghai, but instead he and Cynthia go in pursuit of Alan.This is a very absorbing, well-acted dark drama with a sympathetic hero, a lovely and mysterious leading lady, and a memorably obnoxious villain (Francis Lederer, who played Alan, was the founder of the American National Academy of Performing Arts and apparently was still teaching acting up to the end of his life - so he certainly knew how to play a truly obnoxious bad guy).Very recommended film which should be better known - you can easily imagine Bogart and Bacall in the leading roles, and if that had been the case, I think this film would have been a well-known classic, but the actors who do star in this film carry off their parts very well.