Best movies like The Payoff
She put her husband on the spot... and her heart on the auction block!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Payoff Starring James Dunn, Claire Dodd, Patricia Ellis, Alan Dinehart, and more. If you liked The Payoff then you may also like: Night in New Orleans, Nobody's Fool, Rackety Rax, Risky Business, Roadblock and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
An honest sports columnist's greedy wife persuades him to go easy on a cheat, famous for crooked sports deals.
The Payoff
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Nobody's Fool
A naive country boy goes to New York City, where he gets mixed up with real estate swindlers.
Rackety Rax
Gambler/racketeer "Knucks" McGloin takes note of just how much money and action (aside from the game itself) takes place around and about the annual Rose Bowl football game, and decides this is one sweet proposition and could be even sweeter if one had his own college and football game and had a large say beforehand as to the outcome of any game this team had. So he ups and creates his own college---Carnasie after his own neighborhood. His gangster rival. Gilatti, thinks this give McGloin a definite inside advantage and, if there is one thing a gambler can't abide, it is that someone has an inside advantage and they are not that someone. Gilatti gets himself a college football team. Education marches on.
Risky Business
Radio commentator Dan Clifford takes desperate chances to save the life of a young girl who has been kidnapped.
Born to Sing
A group of children put on a show in order to prove that a down and out musician was the real composer of a Broadway show's songs.
Three on a Ticket
A private detective, who has been shot, stumbles into the office of Michael Shayne (Hugh Beaumont), and dies before Shayne can question him. Shayne finds a baggage ticket in his hand. He claims it and finds the checked-bag contains the loot from a robbery. Now, he has about fifty minutes left of the running time to find the crooks, bring them to justice and return the money to the rightful owners. And needs all of it.
It Could Happen to You
Charlie Lang is a simple, kindhearted New York City cop. When he realizes he has no money to tip waitress Yvonne Biasi, Lang offers her half the winnings of his lottery ticket. Amazingly, the ticket happens to be a winner, in the sum of $4 million. True to his word, Lang proceeds to share the prize money with Biasi, which infuriates his greedy wife, Muriel. Not content with the arrangement, Muriel begins scheming to take all the money.
Go Into Your Dance
An irresponsible Broadway star gets mixed up with gambling and gangsters.
Girls Can Play
The Hollywood Post's sports writer, Jimmy Jones (Charles Quigley), yearns to be a crime reporter, and thus looks for foul play on even the most routine assignments. In writing a piece about a girl's softball team, Jimmy discovers that their sponsor, Foy Harris (John Gallaudet), is a notorious racketeer who has supposedly gone straight. Jimmy suspects Foy is still up to no good. He begins hanging around the team to do a bit of snooping, and also to be near the cute new pitcher, Ann Casey (Jacqueline Wells).
Come Closer, Folks
A fast-talking pitchman working the con-games on the streets, works himself up into an executive position of a large department store, with the aide of his shill, Mae. But the owner, Elmer Woods, of the department store has a blonde-beauty daughter, Peggy, who goes to work on him.
Smart Money
Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
Those Glory Glory Days
Girls growing up in 1960-61 London develop a passion for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the first British team in the 20th century to win the English league and FA Cup "double". Twenty years later, one of the girls tracks down players of the '60-'61 Spurs for a documentary.
Guest Wife
Christopher Price, a small-town bank executive, continues to be loyal to and idolize his boyhood friend, Joseph Jefferson Parker, a famous war correspondent. But Chris's wife, Mary, is none to fond of Joe and tired of her husband's idolizing. On the eve of the Price's second-honeymoon trip to New York City, Joe arrives and tells Chris that he needs someone to pose as his wife in order to fool his boss in NYC, who thinks Joe got married to an overseas woman while on an assignment. Chris pushes Mary into posing as Joe's wife. In New York, this leads to many complications and misunderstandings, with Mary finally deciding to teach Chris and Joe a lesson by making them believe she is in love with Joe.
He Couldn't Say No
A lowly office clerk angers his fiancee and future mother-in-law by spending money intended for marriage furniture on a statue of a pretty girl, which he refuses to part with at any cost.
By Whose Hand?
A man tries to hide aboard a moving train after murdering a jewelry magnate.
Missing Evidence
G-Man Bill Collins swings into action when a crooked sweepstakes racket begins insinuating itself upon the honest citizenry of the US. The crooks have flooded the market with counterfeit lottery tickets, reducing many an unwary speculator to poverty.
The Bride Wore Crutches
A cub reporter goes after his story in a big way when he single-handedly exposes a crime ring.
Mysterious Crossing
While crossing on the train ferry to New Orleans, roving reporter Addison Francis Murphy borrows money from singing hillbilly "Carolina," then loses it all in a crap game. Outside on deck, Murphy sees two men shaking hands, and after he looks away, hears a splash of water and discovers both men have disappeared...
The Last Express
A woman finds herself unwillingly mixed up in a series of murders. At the behest of the district attorney, private detective Duncan MacLain (Kent Taylor) investigates the probability of corruption in high government circles.
When G-Men Step In
Having paid for the education and legal training of his younger brother, Bruce, with the idea that he would become a lawyer and join his business, Frederick Garth, a racketeer posing as an honest businessman, is dismayed when he learns that Bruce has become a G-Man instead.
Forced Landing
In this high-flying mystery set aboard a cross-country flight to New York, some of the passengers are kidnappers who are trying to locate a hidden cache of loot. Unfortunately, something goes wrong during the trip and the pilots must land the plane in the Arizona desert during a terrible storm. There all of the passengers and crew find cramped accommodations in a lonely farmhouse where murder, mystery and mayhem occur.
A Guy, a Gal and a Pal
A young woman devises a clever scheme to secure a train reservation by pretending to be married to a stranger.
Gambling Lady
A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's. Under pressure to allow cheating, Mike "walks out," leaving tough-minded daughter Lady Lee to earn a living the only way she knows. She soon becomes a success gambling among the rich, but, falling out with the syndicate, she considers the marriage proposal of blueblood Garry Madison. Can such a match work despite snobbery and old associations?
Love Is a Racket
A gossip columnist helps a Broadway ingenue who's beholden to a penthouse gangster.
Down the Stretch
A jockey tries to overcome the reputation of his father, who once threw a race.
Rome Express
The theft of a famous painting leads to murder and many suspects on a plush train speeding from Paris to Rome.
Harmon of Michigan
A former University of Michigan football star (Tom Harmon) rejects an opportunity to play professional football. Instead, he marries his college sweetheart (Anita Louise) and begins a career as a college football coach.
Young Man of Manhattan
Two flappers try to get their newspaper reporter boyfriends to pay attention to them.
Hollywood Stadium Mystery
A boxer is killed in the ring, and the only clue is a tune that a man was whistling.
Night in New Orleans
A policeman's family helps to exonerate him of murder charges in the death of a man he had under interrogation.