‘Good Sam': The Downside of Helping Others

Epoch Times

25-04-2025

NR | 1h 54m | Drama | 1948
Is
Sam Clayton's (Gary Cooper) winning ways with people see him excel as manager at his town's leading department store. Still, even years later, he and his wife Lucille (Ann Sheridan), or Lu, haven't saved enough to buy their dream home.
Sam keeps giving the family's savings to needy folk. Never mind that Lu and their two school-going children are needy, too. At church, Rev. Daniels (Ray Collins) glorifies the Golden Rule, accelerating Sam's altruism. To an exasperated Lu, Sam's always been that way with families who aren't, well, family.
Lu knows about Sam's largesse. He loans his car to the Butlers, whose car breaks down before their family picnic, invites the Nelsons over for dinners that the Claytons can barely afford themselves and allows Lu's wastrel brother Claude (Dick Ross) to shack up at their house as a jobless bachelor.
Sam loans the family car to the Butler family, in "Good Sam."
RKO Pictures
Sam figures that what Lu doesn't know, can't hurt her. Except that it does. She discovers that he's secretly gifted their nest egg to former neighbors, the Adams, so they can afford to have a baby and start their gas station business.
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Soon, the Claytons are in trouble: a lawsuit, attorney fees, and a pile of loans that otherwise grateful beneficiaries show no signs of repaying. Lu's had enough. At her request, and with more than a touch of understatement, Rev. Daniels agrees to intervene, 'Maybe Sam's overdoing it a little.'
McCarey, who'd started his career in the 1920s, made several do-gooder and feel-good family films by the time the Depression had come and gone, such as '
Again, McCarey foregrounds the traditional institutions of marriage and family and the selflessness that holds both together. Here, he comically cautions against charity going overboard; his film's title is a pun on the epithet 'Good Samaritan.' Sam's good deeds hover between sensible and senseless, depending on who's at the receiving end. Watch for the scene with a lady on the bus.
Sam (Gary Cooper) and the lady on the bus (Florence Auer, uncredited), in "Good Sam."
RKO Pictures
Aside from the laughs, however, McCarey isn't advocating for a mindless generosity at the cost of self-respect and self-worth. Without giving the ending away, implicit in his warm, fuzzy narrative is a cold, hard reminder that debtors must be responsible for their debt, as creditors must be with their credit.
A Benefactor Bereft of Balance
Cooper is goofier here than in most of his roles; in some scenes, like Sam, he overdoes it. Other scenes run on longer than they should. But like James Stewart, Cooper's able to pull off otherwise implausible scenes seemingly effortlessly. Sam's kindness isn't deliberate or calculated, it's more like a reflex; he can't help himself. And Cooper inhabits that character with every gesture.
The gorgeous Sheridan has a tough time passing off as a humdrum housewife, and the screenplay, unfairly, depicts Lu, an obviously devoted wife and mother, as too much of a vixen. She doesn't resent Sam's kindness, merely that it too often comes at the expense of kindness to his own family. Is a little balance, she wonders, too much to ask for? Once, she sighs to Sam, 'We have no life of our own.' With her expressive eyes and throaty laughter, Sheridan shines with some amusing lines.
When Lu's pleading with Rev. Daniels to intervene, she admits that she knows marriage ought to be a case of give and take. But she finds it odd that Sam gets to give everything away while she's supposed to just take it. Deadpan she says, 'He is his brother's keeper and he's got too many brothers. He started with my brother, and he's built up from there.'
(L–R) Car mechanic Nelson (Clinton Sundberg), Lu (Ann Sheridan), Sam (Gary Cooper), and Claude (Dick Ross), in 'Good Sam.'
RKO Pictures
Car mechanic Nelson (Clinton Sundberg) strolls into the house and plonks himself at the dining table—on Sam's invitation, of course. A horrified and already overwrought Lu rushes to serve breakfast.
Nelson explains with mock propriety, and without a hint of irony, that he doesn't entertain freeloaders, as he says, 'You'd be surprised how many people don't pay. It'd amaze you the number of deadbeats there are … worthless, no-good.'
With all the irony she can muster, Lu smilingly introduces her fashionably late-riser brother, 'Have you met my brother, Claude?'
You can watch 'Good Sam' on YouTube, Prime Video, and DVD.
'Good Sam'
Director: Leo McCarey
Starring: Gary Cooper, Ann Sheridan, Ray Collins
Not Rated
Running Time: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 1, 1948
Rated: 3 stars out of 5
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