Mr. Soft Touch

United States

1949

93 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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DIR Gordon Douglas, Henry Levin

SCR Milton Holmes, Orin Jannings

DP Charles Lawton Jr., Joseph Walker

CAST Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, Beulah Bondi, Percy Kilbride, Clara Blandick, Ted de Corsia, Stanley Clements, Roman Bohnen, Harry Shannon, Gordon Jones, Jack Gordon, Ray Mayer, Angela Clarke, Mikel Conrad, Charles Trowbridge, Lora Lee Michel, William Rhinehart, Leon Tyler, William Edmunds, Mary Field

Just before Christmas, Joe Miracle, a returning WWII war hero, comes home to learn that gangster Barney Teener has taken over his nightclub and murdered Joe’s partner. Joe loots the club’s safe for $100,000 and then finds sanctuary in a settlement house ran by Jenny Jones. Mistaking him for a down-and-out musician, she helps him understand the importance of her work. “Early” Byrd, a newspaper columnist, learns Joe’s true identity and writes a column that puts Barney on his trail. The gangsters recover the money, after setting fire to the settlement house, but Joe steals it again, and returns to the gutted welfare house disguised as Santa Claus, and gives the money to Jenny to rebuild. There, Tenner and his gang catch up to Joe. –IMDb

Director

Gordon Douglas

Gordon Douglas (December 15, 1907 – September 29, 1993) was an American film director, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures. He was a native of New York City.

Biography
Hal Roach and Our Gang

Born Gordon Douglas Brickner, he began his career as a child actor. As a teenager he worked at the Hal Roach Studios, working in the office and appearing in bit parts in various Hal Roach films. He made walk-on appearances in at least three Our Gang shorts: Teacher’s Pet, Big Ears and Birthday Blues. By 1934 Douglas was assistant to director Gus Meins, and served as assistant director on Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s 1934 film Babes in Toyland, and on the Our Gang comedies made between 1934 and mid-1936.

Beginning with Bored of Education in 1936, Our Gang moved from two-reel (20-minute) comedies to one-reel (10-minute) comedies, and Douglas became the senior director of the series. Bored of Education won… read more

Gordon Douglas (December 15, 1907 – September 29, 1993) was an American film director, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures. He was a native of New York City.

Biography
Hal Roach and Our Gang

Born Gordon Douglas Brickner, he began his career as a child actor. As a teenager he worked at the Hal Roach Studios, working in the office and appearing in bit parts in various Hal Roach films. He made walk-on appearances in at least three Our Gang shorts: Teacher’s Pet, Big Ears and Birthday Blues. By 1934 Douglas was assistant to director Gus Meins, and served as assistant director on Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s 1934 film Babes in Toyland, and on the Our Gang comedies made between 1934 and mid-1936.

Beginning with Bored of Education in 1936, Our Gang moved from two-reel (20-minute) comedies to one-reel (10-minute) comedies, and Douglas became the senior director of the series. Bored of Education won the 1936 Academy Award for Live Action Short Film, and was the only Our Gang entry ever honored with the award. Douglas remained with the series as director for two years. His Our Gang shorts, featuring Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Porky, Buckwheat, Waldo, Butch and Woim, are the most familiar in the series’ 22-year canon.

Roach sold the Our Gang unit to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in May 1938. Douglas directed two MGM Our Gangs on loan from Roach before deciding that he could not get used to the more industrialized atmosphere at the larger studio. Returning to his home studio, Douglas directed Zenobia with Oliver Hardy and Harry Langdon, Saps at Sea with Laurel and Hardy, and All-American Co-Ed with former Our Gang member Johnny Downs.

Later years

Douglas’ last picture for Roach was the Nazi satire The Devil with Hitler (1942). He might have stayed with Roach indefinitely, but Roach turned his studio over to the U.S. Army for the production of wartime training films. Douglas moved on to RKO Radio Pictures, where he directed low-budget entries in the studio’s series featuring The Great Gildersleeve, Brown and Carney, The Falcon and Dick Tracy. He was sometimes billed as Gordon M. Douglas.

He migrated from RKO to Columbia Pictures in 1948, and then to Warner Bros. in 1950. At Warners Douglas directed a number of successful films, including Liberace’s Sincerely Yours (1955) and the sci-fi classic Them!. Later films for other studios included Bob Hope’s Call Me Bwana, Frank Sinatra’s The Detective, Sidney Poitier’s They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! and Elvis Presley’s Follow That Dream.

Death

Gordon Douglas died of cancer on September 29, 1993 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 85. He was survived by his wife Julia Mack Douglas, son Gary Douglas, daughter Cathie Graham, and a grandson. —Wikipedia

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Henry Levin

Henry Levin (5 June 1909 – 1 May 1980) began as a stage actor and director but was most notable as an American film director of over fifty feature films. He broke into film in 1943 as a dialogue director for the films Dangerous Blondes and Appointment in Berlin for Columbia Pictures. He then was contracted to Columbia Pictures as a director along with several other “potentials” who began as dialogue directors: Fred Sears, William Castle, Mel Ferrer and Robert Gordon.

At the end of his career, he finally did some television work, directing some episodes of Knots Landing in 1979 and his last work, the television movie Scout’s Honor where he died on the last day of production. Despite having been a stage actor, his only screen acting credit was in an episode of the 1974 television series Planet of the Apes. —Wikipedia