Sadly, this is the kind of movie that Hollywood has forgotten how to make. It's filled with quirky character bits and plot reversals. Briefly, George Brent plays an earnest and unstoppable salesman working for an incendiary boss, and in love with the boss's daughter. I've worked with salesman like this before. They'll go to insane lengths to get the job done. It was fun to see one portrayed on the screen. This was the kind of movie that Hollywood once made that made the public fall in love them. Regrettably, if you want to see this sort of movie now, don't bother going to the local megaplex. Stay home and check out Turner Classic Movies. I'll take a dozen showings of THE GO-GETTER over a single $100,000,000 effects-jammed swollen monstrosity any day. The only special effects that I really want are great writing and great acting. THE GO-GETTER has both.
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gort-89 January 2001
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bkoganbing16 March 2018The title role of The Go Getter is played by George Brent who after a bit of heroism in losing his leg during a crash of a navy blimp finds himself out of the service. He decides that selling is his forte, but can't get a job.
I'm not quite clear how high pressure selling equates to what Brent was doing in the navy. Still due to a bit of office politics and some help from the boss's daughter Anita Louise, Brent gets a position with Charles Winninger's lumber company.
Winninger is most of the show in The Go Getter. His choleric fits of temper and the almost fiendish delight in the games he plays with his stuffed shirt manager John Eldredge really give The Go Getter the spark it does have. Your sympathies are pulled toward Brent because he's a hero and Eldredge is such a drip.
The Go Getter is a passably amusing comedy. Although you would think people would go out of their way to help someone like Brent, depression of not. -
vincentlynch-moonoi2 October 2018I like George Brent and I find it interesting to see some of his earlier films. But there are several things I don't like about this film.
And let's start with its split personality. When you start watching the film, it seems pretty clear that it's a drama. On an American dirigible, Brent's character believes that when in the military you accept all orders with the principle that "it shall be done". The dirigible crashes and while Brent survives, he loses a leg. Then he finds no one will hire him, partly because of his disability. So...starts off as a good drama. And then suddenly becomes a comedy. It should be one or the other, or, as is done well rarely, a film should weave comedy and drama together; this film doesn't do that.
The second like is Charles Winninger's buffoonish character. I guess it was supposed to be that way, but if so, it was way overdone. I have liked Winninger in a number of films...but not here.
And then there's the plot, which gets sillier and sillier. The vase caper gets just plain foolish. And the idea that Brent will swim nearly 20 miles to shore when he is out to sea? Without one leg. Bizarre.
Some of the acting is fine. Brent does a good job, as does Anita Luise (the love interest).
My advice...pass it by. -
George Brent is the only big name WB star in this one, and he plays Bill Austin, a sailor who loses his right leg to a dirigible crash. So he is honorably discharged by the navy, but at a time when anybody with any kind of disability was looked upon as defective, Austin is looking for work during the Great Depression among an army of unemployed men who have no disability. The search goes on for months. Finally, he is determined to get a job as a salesman at the Rick's Lumber Company, and he manages to do just that, although he has to go over the head of the two actual heads of the company to the retired owner of the company.
He succeeds beyond the point of the lumber company to even deliver product, and then Austin solves even that problem. It's just a shame we really don't get to see how he does it except for one brief scene. Austin has been somebody that the owner, Cappy Ricks sees almost like a son. But when he threatens to take Cappy's daughter away from him via marriage (Anita Louise as Margie), Cappy is not so happy about having to live alone and decides it is time to give Austin the "blue vase" test.
Now that test eats up a very large part of the film running time and amounts to an impossible task that nobody has ever been able to perform before. If Austin passes he gets to run the Shanghai office and Cappy figures he gets to keep his daughter. If he fails, he has agreed to fire Austin and he figures he STILL gets to keep his daughter.
How you feel about this film is going to amount to how much you enjoy the mechanics of this "blue vase" test. If you find it tedious you would probably rate this film a 5. If you find it fascinating and funny - I did - you would probably rate this film a 7 or 8.
Kudos to casting John Eldredge as the unlikable actual head of Cappy's lumber part of the business. He has zero compassion and likeability and he plays this role completely believably. What is unbelievable is that he was Cappy's daughter's beau until Bill Austin came along.
There really is little intense conflict going on and thus this is a nice film to watch if you are recovering from a nervous breakdown. What is really interesting is how some lines of dialogue that seem very precode got thrown into this production code era film and the censors either approved it or didn't notice in the first place. I'd recommend this one as unusual and entertaining. -
brackenhe29 November 2011Believe it or not, this film was directed by Busby Berkley and there's not an elaborate dance number, or scantily dressed women, in the film. It's about a navy man who loses his leg in a dirigible accident because he goes down with the ship. As he tells his captain, It Shall Be Done. Bill Austin, played by George Brent, is the man who won't take "no" for an answer. For some reason, he knows he'd be good in the lumber business and finagles a job with the Ricks Lumber Company owned by Cappy Ricks, played by a delightful Charles Winneger. Cappy has been put out to pasture by a couple of company managers who think he's too old for the game. He's bought a batch of useless lumber and if Bill can sell it in the worse lumber markets of Nevada, he can have the job. Of course, he does and becomes the best salesman of the company. He also falls in love with Cappy's daughter, played by Anita Louise. Cappy is a little less willing to let her go, and devises all sorts of crazy tasks to test his mettle. It gets pretty wacky by the end, but all ends well for everyone. It's a fun & funny film, and Brent proves once again he could be as light hearted as the script, not as wooden as he's sometimes regarded (not by me, though.) Mary Treen has a funny scene as the newlywed bride of one of Bill's Navy buddies.
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SnoopyStyle17 September 2021Bill Austin (George Brent) is a crew member of the US Navy airship Macon. He loses a leg as one of the last man to leave his post after its crash. Next, he gets a job from old school owner Cappy Ricks who is supposedly retired. Cappy is not happy with the new management of Lloyd Skinner. Despite being initially dismissed by Skinner, Bill ends up being their best salesman. Cappy's daughter Margaret takes a liking to the go getter. When Bill asks for Margaret's hand, Cappy disapproves and sets him up with an impossible task.
I don't really understand Cappy's disapproval of the couple's relationship. It would be more likeable for the test to be for Bill to take over the company. That way, Skinner would be working the hardest against him. He could do all kinds of dastardly deeds against him. This needs a bit of recalibration of Cappy. -
ksf-24 April 2018Would be interesting to know the real timing of this film... released JUST after the crash of the Hindenburg. Was it just a coincidence... that the film talks about the crash of a zeppelin? Acc to imdb, production was occurring December of 1936, which makes it look like it was all in the works prior to the real life disaster, but I guess they could have still added that on to the beginning. That's the opening scene, then the story moves on from there. George Brent is Bill Austin, injured and retired from the Navy, looking for work. Anita Louise is Margaret, daughter of the ornery lumber company president. Austin lands a job, and starts dating Margaret... hijinx ensue. This one goes all around the mulberrry bush; Lots of executive office politics. Tests. Silliness. We admire the lengths he goes to for the girl he loves, but who would put up with all that?? Austin sounds too good to be true. Will it work out, or will it come crashing down? It's all okay. The main attraction here is director Busby Berkeley.. this was one of his films that DIDN'T have the elaborate dance numbers that made him so famous. Plot is a little goofy, but we go on a journey with Austin that may or may not work out in the end.
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bobshearer71116 March 2018Just a heartwarming story that make you smile from beginning to end.
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JohnHowardReid29 October 2016It's hard to believe that this screenplay by Delmer Daves was based on a novel (by Peter B. Kyne), as it bears all the earmarks of an expanded short story. Something like forty-five minutes of footage is devoted to an elaborate, over-talkative build-up that leads us to the story proper – a very amusing sequence, lasting about 35 minutes, in which our hero attempts to buy a blue vase, with all the cards stacked against him. It is only in this sequence that director Busby Berkeley gives any indication of his training as a dance director. George Brent is the go- getter of the title and he turns in a very good performance. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about Charles Winninger. His scenes in which he shouts and screams to little purpose should have been drastically trimmed. Ninety-two minutes is far too long for a support feature anyway. In my day, if a support feature ran over seventy minutes, it would never be booked by anyone, but would stay in the exchange and gather dust.
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planktonrules16 November 2013When the film begins, the airship Macon is in flight. Unfortunately, as in real life, the dirigible crashed. One of the crew, Bill (George Brent), loses a leg in the accident and because of this he's honorably discharged from the Navy. Now in the job market once again, he's having a hard time finding work. However, Bill is a real go-getter and when the boss of a corporation turns him down, he tries with several other folks at the same corporation. Finally, he meets with the retired boss, Cappy Ricks* (Charles Winninger), who takes a liking to him and pushes for the new President to give Bill a chance. Well, it turns out that Bill is amazing at his job--yet the President still seems to have it out for Bill. But Cappy sure likes him.
At this point in the film, I was enjoying the movie quite a bit. The plot was a bit like a Horatio Alger tale about hard work, determination and success. However, the plot and the personality of one of the main characters COMPLETELY CHANGED--so much so that it showed very bad writing. And, because I had been enjoying it so much, it really was frustrating to watch.
Although Cappy LOVED Bill through most of the film, suddenly Cappy hates him because Bill has asked Cappy's daughter (Anita Louise) to marry him. Now to make it even more confusing, Cappy had nothing against Bill initially, he just wants his daughter to NEVER marry! What?!?! What parent longs to have their daughter become an old maid?! And, if they do decide to marry, wouldn't you be happy that they are marrying someone you really, really like and respect?! This plot twist is just insane.
From this abrupt change, Cappy doesn't just behave irrationally but this nice old guy (Charles Winninger) becomes cruel and vicious and takes pleasure tormenting Bill. As for Bill, he just puts up with it! Late in the film, after Bill marries, the demands Cappy places on him are just insane...INSANE!! I almost wonder if the original writer died or was abducted by aliens midway through the film. This portion was intelligently written and inspiring. The second half is simply horrible--dumb, unlikable and silly. The other possibility is that the writer suffered a traumatic brain injury! All I know is that the film really, really lost my attention and all my good will when it abruptly changed.
*Cappy Ricks is NOT an original character to this film. There have been at least three other films with this character in it. However, the person playing him was never the same and exactly who Cappy was and his personality was not consistent either. -
mossgrymk4 October 2021Amazing how as soon as you take Busby B out of a theatrical setting and plunk him down in a standard drama like this the guy turns into...Archie Mayo.