It Could Happen To You

The two sons of kindly candy store owner "Pa" Barrett are as different as night and day. While Fred is an upstanding law student, Bob, the adopted son, works as a bookie and is always trying to get rich quick. When Bob learns he could purchase a shady school that "helps" immigrants pass their citizenship test for $600, he decides to steal it from the till at the candy store. Pa, returning from Fred's commencement from law school, happens upon Bob and in the ensuing confusion son shoots father in cold blood. In an ironic turn of events, Fred ends up defending Bob in court for the murder of their own father. Bob is acquitted, but his guilty conscience may not let him escape the punishment he knows he deserves...

It Could Happen to You was a rare attempt by "B" movie studio Republic to make a "message" picture. Leading man Alan Baxter had studied drama with legendary director Elia Kazan. After making his debut opposite Sylvia Sidney in Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), he scored an impressive supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942). Later a perennial "heavy" known for playing unsavory characters, Baxter wound up a frequent guest star on episodic television in the 1950's and '60's. Though she had a relatively short career, sympathetic Andrea Leeds received an Oscar nomination the same year for her portrayal of an ill-fated aspiring actress in Stage Door (1937). The screenplay for It Could Happen to You was co-written by Samuel Ornitz, one of the "Hollywood Ten" brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on suspicion of being a communist, and Nathanael West, a few years later to be the author of the famed novel The Day of the Locust (1939), which sent up the big Hollywood studios.