Scripters Henry and Phoebe Ephron, the parents of eventual writer/director Nora Ephron, were nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award. Bandleader Harry James made an uncredited appearance as a radio vocalist. Dealing with these problems, he gets help from reporter Harry Summers ( James Gleason), who had been writing newspaper articles about Lawrence and his winnings. Complicating matters, his wife suspects him of having an affair with Greenwich Village artist Hilda. When he tries to fence the diamond ring in Chicago, he's arrested. When he tries to raise the money by selling the merchandise at the department store, his boss ( Fred Clark) fires him. Answering a phone call, he wins $24,000 worth of merchandise from a radio quiz program and is overwhelmed by prizes which range from the useful to the absurd, including a side of beef, 7,500 cans of soup, 1,000 fruit trees, a Palomino pony, a portable swimming pool, a diamond ring, a French maid, an interior decorator ( Alan Mowbray) and portrait painter Hilda Jones ( Patricia Medina).Īll is well until Lawrence is told he must sell the prizes in order to pay an income tax of $7000.

Plot īill Lawrence (Stewart), employed at a department store in the Midwestern United States, supports a wife (Hale) and two teenage kids (Wood, Tommy Rettig) on an annual salary of $7,500. She received mixed reviews, and noted that her father 'enjoyed it'. A radio adaptation, broadcast April 26, 1951, on NBC's Screen Directors Playhouse, received much press coverage because Stewart's co-star was Margaret Truman, making her debut as a radio actress for a fee of $2,500. The film is mostly forgotten today, but was a successful vehicle for Stewart at the time. Caffrey of Wakefield, Rhode Island who won $24,000 worth of merchandise on Augfrom the CBS radio quiz program, Sing It Again. The screenplay was based on a John McNulty article, 'The Jackpot', in The New Yorker (February 19, 1949), about the true experiences of James P. The Jackpot is a 1950 American comedy film directed by Walter Lang, with James Stewart and Barbara Hale in the lead roles.

The big jackpot