Gambling Ship, starring Cary Grant in one of his earliest film roles, is now available for fans to bring home on Blu-ray from Universal Home Entertainment.

Be forewarned, it’s not one of the better films starring the legendary actor. If you’re a fan of Cary Grant, I can understand why Gambling Ship might pique your curiosity. It’s certainly why I decided it was worth giving it a watch. But despite its 71-minute run time, this is the type of film that can quickly lose one’s attention. There are better Grant films worth watching like North by Northwest, Charade, To Catch a Thief, The Philadelphia Story, etc.

The cast isn’t the problem here in as much as it is the material that they have to work with. Studios were churning out films like a factory during the heyday of Hollywood. I don’t know how Gambling Ship performed at the box office, but it was probably one of the films that Paramount Pictures could make just because they could.

There are no bonus features.

Synopsis

Screen legend Cary Grant stars as a gangster trying to put his troubled past behind him in Gambling Ship. Weary Chicago racketeer Ace Corbin (Grant) and Eleanor La Velle (Benita Hume), the mistress of infamous gambling ship operator Joe Burke (Arthur Vinton), put their troubled pasts behind on a train bound to New York. With their true identities concealed, the two fall madly in love. A disastrous combination results when Ace makes efforts to purchase the debt-ridden gambling ship from Joe and steals the gambling trade of his old enemy and gangster Pete Manning (Jack La Rue).

DIRECTORS: Louis Gasnier and Max Marcin
SCREENWRITERS: Max Marcin and Seton I. Miller
CAST: Cary Grant, Benita Hume, Glenda Farrell, Jack LaRue, and Roscoe Karns

Paramount Pictures released Gambling Ship in theaters on June 23, 1933.

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