The Lady Gambles (1949): Gambling in a back alley with loaded dice, then getting beaten into unconsciousness, how did Joan Boothe (Barbara Stanwyck) get into this position? To answer that, the movie takes us back a year or so…

Joan’s husband, David (Robert Preston), writes for a newspaper and she accompanies him to Las Vegas while he writes a story about Boulder Dam. She used to write for a magazine and thinks it would be fun to write a story about gambling. Joan is spotted taking pictures, and is escorted to the casino manager’s office. After he’s convinced that the pictures won’t be used for blackmail, the manager gives her “house chips” to gamble with and permission to continue taking pictures. When she tells her husband about it, she tells him that “gambling is exciting!” From there it’s a short trip to the dark side of gambling…the addiction. In order to gamble, she “borrows” her husband’s expense account money, she pawns her camera, and she lies to her husband about what she’s done during the day…anything to keep him from knowing that she’s gambling.

In one scene, Joan is having lunch with her sister, at the Pelican. The casino manager sits down with them and tells Joan that he’d like her to play in a poker game and that he’ll stake her. Her response to him is my favorite line in the movie: “I find that I don’t care for gambling much. It’s noisy and confusing and just a little…dirty.” A proper lady’s attitude toward gambling in the 1940’s, I’m sure! 4 stars

For those who love old Vegas and gambling: Many of the scenes are filmed at the “Pelican”, which is easily recognizable as the Flamingo. Most of the gambling scenes seem to be at the Flamingo and maybe the Boulder Club. There are scenes with craps, roulette, poker and horse racing. The only chips that I recognized were generic comet chips. There were shots of the Silver Dollar, Santa Anita Turf Club, Boulder Club, Monte Carlo, Golden Nugget, Frontier Club, El Dorado, and more. 4.5 “chips”