THE JACKPOT wins as an amiable Everyman comedy from 1950, a year that produced a bumper crop of bright farces, exciting westerns and taut crime pictures. It was also a big year for its front & center star James Stewart, who brought off this lark along with the better known comedy Harvey (one of his five Oscar nominations) and the popular westerns Winchester ’73 and Broken Arrow. Directed by Walter Lang, a specialist in comedies and musicals (State Fair, Cheaper By The Dozen–also 1950–The King And I), the script by Phoebe & Henry Ephron (Carousel, Captain Newman, M.D.) was inspired by an article John McNulty wrote for The New Yorker.

‘Bill Lawrence’ (Jimmy, 42) seems to be doing okay. Happily married (Barbara Hale, 28, as ‘Amy), with two kids (Natalie Wood, 11, Tommy Rettig, 9), he’s VP of a department store in an Illinois town. Out of the blue—or, the radio—Bill wins $24,000 in prizes from guessing an answer on a game show. That’s swell until the blizzard of components arrive, ranging from a fussy interior decorator (Alan Mowbray), a Shetland pony, 7,500 cans of soup, a beautiful portrait painter (Patricia Medina) whose allure quotient cues jealousy, strain at work (the boss is exasperation ace Fred Clark), IRS taxes on the winnings, and a brush with racketeers and the cops. Fortune isn’t necessarily good.

Thanks to Stewart’s timing and affability and a swell cast in support the Joe Average-meets-Disaster premise works smoothly thru 85 minutes. Along with the above talents, chuckles are guaranteed from a brim-full of familiar character actors—James Gleason, Lyle Talbot, Walter Baldwin, John Qualen, Fritz Feld, Ann Doran, Eddie Firestone, Philip Van Zandt and Minerva Urecal. Fun movie deserves more recognition.

The gross of $4,400,000 ranked 70th for the year. Another 1950 comedy along similar lines beat it to the draw by five months. Champagne For Caesar, about a polymath besting a game show, starred Ronald Colman, Vincent Price and Celeste Holm. It didn’t fare as well, 56 places lower at the box office.