Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

blanche-2 A war hero returns from the service and winds up stealing his own money back from the mob in "Mr. Soft Touch," a 1949 film starring Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, and Ted de Corsa.Ford plays Joe Miracle (shortened from his Polish name) who comes home before Christmas and finds out his partner in a club has been murdered by the mob, and the mob has taken his money. Joe retaliates by breaking into the club and stealing $100,000 from the safe. With everyone looking for him, Joe has a friend buy him a ticket to Japan, but the ticket is for a later date. So he takes off and enters a settlement house run by Jenny Jones (Evelyn Keyes). Jenny thinks Joe is a musician down on his luck. Meanwhile, a newspaper columnist who knows what happened wants Joe's story and is trying to track him down. In writing about Joe, the mob picks up his trail.Given the cast, Mr. Soft Touch was obviously intended to be a noir but turns into kind of a Christmas romance with comic aspects. For some reason it failed to hold my interest, even though I love Glenn Ford. The acting was good all around, but I preferred the beginning noir and wish it had stayed on that route. The original director was replaced, possibly to change the direction of the movie.Someone on this board mentioned that John Garfield would have been better in this role. He would have been very good as he always was, but he and Ford were different kinds of types and actors. Garfield looked and acted tough, and Glenn Ford was Everyman. I think his casting in this is the better choice. Joe is a likable, nice guy who was ripped off by the mob while he was off serving his country. Glenn Ford didn't have Garfield's range, but in the right role, he was very effective. And, I might add, easy on the eyes.

Robert J. Maxwell Glenn Ford is Joe Miracle (nee with some Polish jawbreaker of a real name). He returns from the war to find that a gangster, the ever reliable Roman Bohnen, assisted by his even more ever-reliable coffee-grinder-voiced henchman, Ted DeCorsia, have killed his partner and stolen the money from the night club Ford and his partner owned.Ford, quite naturally, steals it back and the gangsters are after him. Ford finds sanctuary in a settlement house run by Evelyn Keyes for indigents and neighborhood kids. Keyes mistakes Ford for a bum and puts him up in the upstairs flophouse in a bunk with shredded sheets and blankets. Ford must have these indignities visited upon him for the few days until his ship leaves for a foreign port.Guess what happens. He outwits the gangsters and Ford and Keyes fall in love and Ford, dressed as Santa Claus, uses the money to refurbish the settlement house with new mattresses, sheets, hot and cold running maids, and everything else until it looks like the Burj El Arab Hotel in Dubai. Everybody lives happily ever after except those who don't deserve it.The Depression-era script seems to have been taken out of some unused filing cabinet and dusted off. It may have been rejected at some time earlier by Frank Capra as too sappy for his attention. The "kids" in the settlement are derived from "Dead End", with their oddball features and funny hats. One of them wears a beanie -- in 1949. They try to teach the supposed novice Ford how to shoot dice, and they lose to their surprise. The shtick was done better in an Abbot and Costello movie in 1941. But the kids simply serve as an index of how much care has gone into the production, which is to say not much.Actually, the beginning, which has the police in pursuit of Ford through the neighborhoods of San Francisco has some rather promising crime-drama elements. The location is unmistakable, the Bay Bridge prominently featured. But then, for some reason, the sense of place disappears and the city becomes studio bound and utterly fictional. Several addresses are mentioned in the script. A movie-obsessed fan Googled them and none of the streets exist in San Francisco. (There is a brief glimpse of a street sign identifying the real Valencia.) Not that the city is ever named, but it it had been, it would have been called something like "Central City", as was the thinly disguised Los Angeles in "The Street With No Name." Something generic, you know? Glenn Ford goes through the movie looking intense. He always looks intense. Even when he's comically cheating "the kids" out of their change during the game of craps, you can't tell the scene is supposed to be funny. I have no idea why he adopted this stern and unamused stance. He had a considerable comedic talent that he displayed in later roles.Overall, it's dull, silly, and predictable, a cross between film noir and Capraesque comedy, and a not an especially easy one to bear. The "soft touch" of the title has shaped the entire production.

MartinHafer "Mr. Soft Touch" is an odd sort of film. It's like merging a film noir movie with a schmaltzy family film--and the results are far from great. Now I am not saying it's a bad picture--but it could have easily been a lot better--mostly because of its saccharine script.The film begins with Glenn Ford on the run. It seems he held up a nightclub and stole $100,000. But was it exactly stealing? It seems that the club had belonged to Ford but while he was off fighting in the war, it was stolen out from under him. So, the money is just payback for what was rightfully his--at least in his mind. The problem is that the mobsters who now run the place are not about to let him get away with it...and Ford needs to get out of the country ASAP.Now here is where it gets bizarre. His boat doesn't leave for a day so Ford tries to get himself locked up for the night--as he figures at least he'll be safe. But a do-gooder social worker feels sorry for him and gets the police to agree to release him to her program--something Ford really doesn't want. And, after a while, Ford's tough-guy persona is slowly eroded as he starts to think of others and care about the people in this Salvation Army-like setting. What's next? Well, it is predictable but a bit ridiculous--so watch it if you are really, really curious. I wouldn't.Ford's character is a bizarre enigma. He's supposed to be tough and nasty--and he's good at that. But later, he's supposed to be a softy--and this just never range true. Nor, for that matter, did the script.

bkoganbing The ingredients are all there for a superb Christmas holiday classic, but Mr. Soft Touch somehow fails to measure up. It could be because two directors with two different visions if any, Gordon Douglas and Henry Levin got assigned to this film from Columbia.The film starts out with the same premise as Angels With Dirty Faces. Glenn Ford is a former nightclub owner who while serving in World War II was done out of his share of the club by the mob. Unlike James Cagney who expected to move back into partnership with Humphrey Bogart and George Bancroft, Ford's a bit more realistic than that. He just robs the place and he's got both the law and Ted DeCorsia and assorted hoods looking for him.Circumstances manage to place Ford in a settlement house in San Francisco where Evelyn Keyes takes an interest in him. He actually starts to help out around the place and spreads just a bit of that hundred grand he robbed from the mob. But Keyes who can't help falling for Glenn and her boss Beulah Bondi know he's trouble.Mr. Soft Touch is not a bad film, but it could have been a holiday classic, it goes wide of the mark with some bad direction. Or maybe no direction, could happen with two directors. The most interesting character in the film is John Ireland who plays a sleazy tabloid columnist, but a man with an impeccable nose for news and trouble.Glenn Ford's fans should like Mr. Soft Touch and Evelyn Keyes is absolutely radiant as the social worker. They teamed a few times as well for Columbia, but never got the acclaim that Ford did with Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Of course Mr. Soft Touch isn't Gilda.