The Man Who Had Everything (1920) User Reviews (4)

A Solid Performance by an Underrated Actor!

[Shelly_Servo3000 · 6/10 · 12 August 2002]

Today, people think of Jack Pickford as the alcoholic, womanizing sister of Mary Pickford and the husband of tragic silent movie actress Olive Thomas. It's too bad, because Jack Pickford was a great young actor in his own right, with charisma to spare and talent to boot.

"The Man Who Had Everything" is a neatly packaged morality play. The plot is simple and predictable. However, Pickford's performance is great and lifts the movie into a touching story of one man's greed and redemption.

It's a hard movie to find, but I suggest that one looks for it.

Jack Pickford proves he was a good actor.

[billintucson3 · 6/10 · 19 August 2007]

In real life Jack Pickford was a "man who had everything". He was not only the brother of the rich and influential Mary Pickford but he was a good actor in his own right although not in the same top echelon as his more famous and more talented sister.

The film has an interesting plot and is fun to watch because Pickford gives a good performance, although at this young age (24), he already looks a bit dissipated.

As his father's secretary, Priscilla Bonner makes a sweet and touching heroine, but Shannon Day is much too obvious and mean spirited as the vamp. Character actor Alex B. Francis lends credibility to the not very credible role of the blind beggar who's reverse curse "May you always have everything you want" has a surprising result.

*****WARNING — MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ***************** "The Man Who Had Everything" casts Jack as the spoiled and selfish son of a millionaire, who finally comes to his senses and becomes a concerned and industrious human being, something he was too weak to do in real life

how to make nothing much of a good idea

[kekseksa · 13 February 2018]

Jack Pickford was an odious young man and not a particularly wonderful actor but the idea of the beggar's curse on which it is based - that he should have everything he wants - is a rather good one. This is the work of hugely prolific short story writer and novelist Ben Ames (later the man behind two noir classics, Leave Her to Heaven 1945 and The Strange Woman 1946) but it is only a short story and the film does peter out dreadfully towards the end, particularly as Green has made everything far too explicit and there is no real tension of any kind.

The moral of the tale incidentally (and one does encounter the phenomenon in other films of the period) is that one should be very wary of women who wear anything resembling the remains of a pheasant on top of their head. It sems one should always prefer the type of woman who has a perfectly simple little fox-carcass strung around her neck, perhaps because one can chat to it while embracing her. Ah, those were the days!

If you must see this movie, make a point of watching the 50-minute version

[JohnHowardReid · 4/10 · 10 October 2010]

The Grapevine DVD presents the full-length movie as originally released to theatres in 1920. It runs 66 minutes. But that's not good news. At 50 minutes, the movie may well be tolerably entertaining, but at 66 it comes across as a dull and distinctly dreary affair, dominated by (1) a lack-luster Jack Pickford who fails to capitalize on his initial welcome and becomes dead boring about two-thirds of the way through, and (2) Lionel Belmore, our favorite inn-keeper, who distinctly lacks the charisma to play a big industrialist -- particularly one so inadequately and unconvincingly drawn as Mark Bullway. True, the support characters, led by goody-two-shoes Priscilla Bonner and vampish Shannon Day, attempt to put up a good fight, but they are defeated by director Alfred E. Green who seems determined to focus the lion's share of audience attention on sulky Jack Pickford and beefy, bombastic Belmore. Both of them, alas, quickly wear out their initial promise and turn into damp squibs.