Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Robert J. Maxwell The story of one of the Gilded Age's most colorful figures, the multimillionaire Jim Fisk (Edward Arnold) and two of his fictional partners, Cary Grant, who is there to wind up with the girl (Frances Farmer) and Jack Oakie, who provides whatever laughs are left over after Arnold and Grant are finished howling with glee over their own twisted schemes to make a fortune.It's a story with an ignoble message -- making scads of money by being ruthless, lying, treacherous, and philistine, is fun. Want to be happy? Keep your mind focused on being greedy. Well, it's not true. I've been ruthless, lying, treacherous, and philistine all my life and look where it's gotten me -- an abandoned railway car in the middle of the desert. Maybe I wasn't greedy enough. I've always regretted dropping that handful of pocket change into the kettle of a Santa Claus in New York. It was the tintinnabulation of his bells that got me. I've tried to make up for it by being as philistine as possible, papering my walls with Gustav Klimt posters, listening to Kenny G, but nothing works.So if you're looking for philosophical advice, you won't find it in this movie. But if you're looking for a whiz-bang biography of a couple of guys amassing a fortune and laughing all the way to the bank until one of them winds up paying the piper, this may be it.Rowland V. Lee's direction is nothing special but Edward Arnold practically embodied the sneaky rich guy of 1930s movies in such works as "Meet John Doe" and "Come And Get It." He's got the boisterous laugh of the self-satisfied, selfish, careless mogul down pat, although, to be honest, he looks like he should be running a butcher shop in Geldgierig-am-Rhein or someplace. I suppose Yorkville would do.There was a burst of interest for some reason in biographies of famous men and women in the Great Depression of the 1930s and a lot of the subjects were self-made men, inventors, financiers, and the like. Maybe, at the time, they represented wish-fulfilling fantasies on the part of the audience -- pleasant dreams with a golden cast -- which would have been a big improvement over the cadaverous green of their everyday nightmares.

mukava991 The Toast of New York, despite the lavish look, top-notch cast and occasional bursts of energy, is a ten-ton bore - chiefly, I think, because of the long-winded script and pedestrian direction. Others have commented on the production difficulties and personnel changes which may be responsible for the bland result. Early in the story we are treated to a colorful but talky exposition which sets the plot in motion: On the day the Civil War starts, Jim Fisk (Edward Arnold), itinerant peddler, and his partners in crime (Cary Grant and Jack Oakie) devise a scheme to buy cotton cheaply in the South, smuggle it North and sell it at a high price to New England mills, thus launching the career of one of the fabled financial speculators of the 19th century. But, instead of the whiz-bang, rise-and-fall saga laced with comedy which this introduction leads us to expect, we get 100 minutes of routine montages followed by more expository talk (mostly about financial deals), interspersed with boisterous crowd scenes and tepid romantic interludes with the exquisite Frances Farmer, who plays Josie Mansfield, an aspiring stage actress who is taken under Fisk's wing. None of this ever rises above the mundane. Edward Arnold gives his familiar robust, take-charge performance (see the 1937 screwball comedy EASY LIVING and the previous year's COME AND GET IT which this film resembles in theme and plot); Grant and Oakie are pretty much themselves as well, though the full impact of Grant's screen charisma is blunted in this non-comic role. Farmer is presented more as a comely production value than a full-blooded character. She spends most of her screen time in a series of splendid period gowns uttering banalities that barely suggest the emotional states of her character. She too played a similar role in COME AND GET IT, to far stronger effect. One would expect this kind of storytelling from a Warners assembly-line quickie, but it's terribly disappointing to encounter it in a 100-minute-plus grade-A production by RKO. I'll give it a "4" for Farmer and Arnold.

robb_772 While this fact-based picture is wildly inaccurate in it's depiction Jim Fisk's life and death, THE TOAST OF NEW YORK remains an entertaining portrait of the financial scene in New York during the late 1800s. Three writers are credited with a screenplay that does not skimp on moral and financial complexities (although the film's romantic triangle is handled rather routinely), and director Robert V. Lee manages to keep everything moving at a brisk pace while effectively juggling piercing melodrama with lovely moments of light comedy. Edward Arnold and Frances Farmer contribute terrific performances, and Cary Grant is also memorable playing second banana to Arnold's Fisk - although no one else in the cast makes much of an impression. This lavish, expensively budgeted film was a box office flop when originally released, but it holds up quite nicely all these decades latter and deserves to be rediscovered by a larger audience.

FilmFlaneur This is an entertaining film which, the further it strays from the world of Wall Street, the less interesting it becomes. At the centre of the drama is Jim Fisk, played by the avuncular Edward Arnold - a larger than life performance entirely suitable to the role. He largely dominates the film overawing Cary Grant (Nick) and Jackie Oakie (Luke), who are frequently reduced to the level of stooges. Fisk is a financial gambler, half-crook and a self-centred visionary, whose exploits (assuming the plot reflects something of historical truth) demanded an actor with the right sort of presence. Fisk's attempts to get rich quick are amusing and dynamic but, as soon as his romantic interest is ignited by Josie, the audience finds dramatic tension slackening off. Arnold's loveable rogue persona also serves to deflect any criticisms of his actions, the repeated speculation without conscience, which presumably leaves small investors and stockholders ruined. All of this related misery of course happens off screen and the human cost is largely swept under the carpet (although Josie does express concern for the "little people" for whom Fisk's actions have "cost their lives" towards the end). One couldn't see this film, with its casual treatment of capitalism, appearing during the Great Depression when sensitivities were different. It would certainly make an excellent vehicle for Marxist analysis.Grant has little to do. Nick's secret love for Josie is a curiously passionless affair, their mutual attraction telegraphed so far in advance it becomes a fait accompli in the eyes of the audience, without the principals having to do very much to prove it. Like Fisk, Luke, Drew, Vanderbilt, and all the other men in the picture, real vitality is gained by exposure to stocks and bonds than any sensual consideration of the opposite sex. Fisk's attraction to Josie, although a major event in his private life, is always just a corollary to his business interests - a distraction which Nick recognises and condemns. Later on Nick has another reason to discourage the liaison, but the absence of any true rivalry between Fisk and Nick for Josie's affections robs this side of the drama of any excitement. As Josie, Frances Farmer's innate cool beauty as an actress rises above all this romantic froth, but there is never any real sense that she and Fisk have much in common, no matter how much the script suggests otherwise. In short, their romance is as hollow as Fisk's conscience, and only his amiable sincerity rescues him from a charge of cynicism..The best parts of the drama lay with the big set pieces, rather than intimate moments between the principals. The gold corner, the rout of the ruffians by hose, the dash to the ferry, and Luke's incompetence on the parade ground, all stand out as amusing and well mounted, presumably reflecting where the studio's time and money was invested. One particularly relishes the rotund Fisk, dressed in his militia uniform, trying to bring the stock market to its knees like some fat Napoleon of finance. The duping of Drew, the three charlatans pretending to hold a board meeting while the transport magnate stews, is the finest bit of 'business' in the film.Trivia addicts may notice the presence of Billy Gilbert and James Finlayson down the cast list, both favourite regulars in Laurel and Hardy comedies. Finlayson in particular milks his small part (as the inventor with the self raising hat) so successfully that one regrets that he wasn't offered the larger part of Drew, where the grouchy meanness required is tailor-made for his persona. (Come to that, imagine Oliver Hardy as Fisk!)SPOILER "I thought I was bigger than any of them" reflects the bankrupt Fisk at the end as his grandiose plan collapses. His ensuing drop down the stairs, victim of an angry stockholder's bullet, is as much a physical representation of his financial fall from grace as it is anything else. (Ironically, it reminded me of the famous picture of Gordon's murder by the Mahdi at Khatoum.) But the conclusion of the film risks another descent - this time into bathos. His end is not so much tragic as formulaic, as there was nowhere else for the plot to go, and consequentially the resolution has little impact. Josie's sadness as she stoops by the dying man's side lacks real grief. There is a feeling that, as the fat financier dies with a smile and a quip on his lips, he has received a mild rebuke from the fates rather than any real come-uppance. His life has been just another investment that hasn't worked out, and the loveable scoundrel is free to continue his wheeler-dealing in the afterlife, not really bothered by his own demise. The viewer is left with a facile conclusion, barely satisfying beyond the shallow requirements of dramatic closure.