Alan CurtisFilmography

Apache Chief

Actors: Alan Curtis, Tom Neal, Carol Thurston, Russell Hayden, Fuzzy Knight

Synopsis: Apache Chief was the second film to be lensed with the Garutso Balanced Lens, which gave the illusion of a three-dimensional effect (the first was Deputy Marshal). Alan Curtis plays the title character, a pacifistic Native American named Young Eagle. When his tribesmen begin killing off white Read More

Code of Courage

The Enchanted Valley

Actors: Alan Curtis, Anne Gwynne, Donn Gift, Joseph Crehan

Synopsis: The peaceful, solitary existence of a crippled lad and his grandfather living in a remote wooded valley is disturbed when two armed robbers accompanied by moll visit. On the lam from the law, the crooks are desperate and dangerous. But as time passes and they get to know the strange and gentle Read More

Philo Vance's Gamble

Actors: Alan Curtis, Terry Austin, Frank Jenks, Tala Birell, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: The second of PRC's trio of "Philo Vance" mysteries, Philo Vance's Gamble stars Alan Curtis as S. S. Van Dine's erudite amateur sleuth. The plot is set in motion when a valuable emerald is smuggled into the U.S. The gem promptly disappears, resulting in two murders. Following the trail of clues Read More

Philo Vance's Secret Mission

Actors: Alan Curtis, Sheila Ryan, Tala Birell, Frank Jenks, James Bell

Synopsis: S.S. Van Dine's gentleman detective is reduced to an ordinary "hard boiled" gumshoe in this inexpensive mystery. Philo Vance (Alan Curtis) is hired by a magazine publisher, ostensibly as a technical advisor for a crime periodical. This is a cover for his "secret mission": to learn the truth behind Read More

Renegade Girl

Synopsis: Alan Curtis plays a hired Union agent who's been dispatched to capture a Confederate gal who's the leader of some ravaging rebels. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Flight to Nowhere

Synopsis: In this low-budget espionage adventure, an ex-FBI agent is convinced by an active agent to help him find a stolen map showing the location of invaluable uranium deposits located on a remote South Pacific island. Later the two, and a few others, end up in a hotel in Death Valley with the maps. Read More

Inside Job

Actors: Preston S. Foster, Alan Curtis, Ann Rutherford, Joe Sawyer

Synopsis: In this crime drama, two ex-hoods find their attempts to straighten up and fly right are foiled by a blackmailing gangster who threatens to expose their past who forces them to rob the department store they work at. Outwardly, the crooks go along with the scam, but they have also devised a scam of Read More

Shady Lady

Actors: Charles Coburn, Robert Paige, Ginny Simms, Alan Curtis, Martha O'Driscoll

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a former card shark finally gets paroled and decides to take his singing niece to Chicago to make a new start. Unfortunately, the musical niece ends up working at a gangster's nightclub and the gambler, unable to resist the lure of easy money, returns to card playing. Later an Read More

The Daltons Ride Again

Actors: Alan Curtis, Kent Taylor, Lon Chaney, Jr., Noah Beery, Jr., Martha O'Driscoll

Synopsis: In this action western, the notorious Dalton Boys have decided to go straight and move to Argentina. Just before they leave, they learn of a friend whose land is about to be seized by a greedy land company. Before they can help, the man is killed by a company assassin. The brothers do manage to Read More

See My Lawyer

Actors: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Alan Curtis, Grace McDonald, Noah Beery, Jr.

Synopsis: Bearing little relation to the hit Broadway play on which it was based, See My Lawyer was the last and least of Olsen and Johnson's starring vehicles for Universal. The zany Hellzapoppin stars play a couple of nightclub entertainers who want to break their contract with proprietor R. J. Wagenhorn Read More

Frisco Sal

Actors: Susanna Foster, Turhan Bey, Alan Curtis, Andy Devine, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: In this costume drama, a woman travels from New England to California's Barbary coast to avenge her brother's death. There she becomes a saloon singer in a sleazy bar, the bar frequented by the killer. The bar's owner, and the local crime lord begin fighting over control of coastal operations. The Read More

The Naughty Nineties

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Alan Curtis, Rita Johnson, Henry Travers

Synopsis: Abbott and Costello's The Naughty Nineties offers a million laughs and a nickel's worth of plot. Most of the film takes place aboard a 19th century showboat, owned by kindly Captain Sam (Henry Travers). Bud Abbott plays the showboat's leading man Dexter Broadhurst, while Lou Costello is handyman Read More

Follow the Boys

Actors: George Raft, Vera Zorina, Charles Grapewin, George Macready, Charles Butterworth, Regis Toomey, Grace McDonald

Synopsis: Paramount Pictures did their patriotic duty with this World War II era musical, with a number of the studio's biggest stars making cameo appearances. Tony West (George Raft), his sister Kitty (Grace McDonald), and their father Nick (Charles Grapewin) tour together as The Three Wests, a failing act Read More

Phantom Lady

Actors: Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Elisha Cook, Jr., Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Engineer Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is at a seedy midtown Manhattan bar early one evening, drowning his sorrows over a failed marriage, when he strikes up a conversation with a woman (Fay Helm). She's well dressed, with a very ornate hat topping off her ensemble, and also seems even sadder and Read More

The Invisible Man's Revenge

Actors: Jon Hall, Alan Curtis, Evelyn Ankers, Leon Errol, John Carradine

Synopsis: The fifth in the Invisible Man series stars Jon Hall as Robert Griffin, a convict who takes the invisibility serum and then goes on a crime spree. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Destiny

Actors: Gloria Jean, Alan Curtis, Frank Craven, Grace McDonald, Vivian Austin

Synopsis: When director Julien Duvivier's episodic, all-star drama Flesh and Fantasy proved a bit too long in previews, Universal decided to remove the film's opening segment, which dealt with the foredoomed romance between an escaped criminal and a blind girl. Because this segment was too good to waste Read More

Hitler's Madman

Actors: Patricia Morison, John Carradine, Alan Curtis, Howard Freeman, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: Hitler's Madman is based on an all-too-real wartime atrocity. John Carradine portrays Heydrich, the vicious SS officer put in charge of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Heydrich is killed by the Czech underground, prompting the Nazis to plan a horrible retaliation. The Gestapo selects the Czech Read More

Two Tickets to London

Actors: Michèle Morgan, Alan Curtis, C. Aubrey Smith, Barry Fitzgerald, Tarquin Olivier

Synopsis: Too expensive for a "B"-picture, yet not quite an A, Two Tickets to London is an acceptable vehicle for French leading lady Michele Morgan and Universal contract player Alan Curtis. The stars are cast as Jeanne, a café entertainer, and Dan Driscoll, an American naval officer unjustly imprisoned Read More

Gung Ho!

Actors: Randolph Scott, Grace McDonald, Noah Beery, Jr., Alan Curtis, J. Carrol Naish, Robert Mitchum

Synopsis: Accepted in 1943 as standard wartime propaganda, Gung Ho can be seen today as an outrageous exercise in raging machismo. Randolph Scott plays Thorwald, a marine colonel assigned to assemble a crack squadron of fearless jungle fighters for the all-important raid on Japanese-held Makim Island (which Read More

Crazy House

Actors: Cass Daley, Basil Rathbone, Patric Knowles, Martha O'Driscoll, Leighton Noble, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Olsen and Johnson's followup to their zany, iconoclastic Hellzapoppin' was the more conventional Crazy House. The premise: Having nearly laid waste to Universal while filming Hellzapoppin', O & J are thrown out of the studio when they arrive with plans for a new picture. Only momentarily daunted Read More

Remember Pearl Harbor

Actors: Don "Red" Barry, Alan Curtis, Fay McKenzie, Sig Rumann, Ian Keith

Synopsis: No sooner had the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 than Republic Pictures managed to register the title Remember Pearl Harbor for copyright, beating out all the "major" studios in the process. The title was far more dramatic than the film attached to it, which has something to do Read More

We Go Fast

Actors: Lynn Bari, Alan Curtis, Sheila Ryan, Don DeFore, Ernest Truex

Synopsis: This 20th Century-Fox programmer revolves around the misadventures of two not-overly-bright motorcycle patrolmen. Waitress Rose Coughlin (Lynn Bari) causes a rift between cycle cops Bob Brandon (Alan Curtis) and Herman Huff (Don Defore) when she falls in love with both. Rose then jilts the two of Read More

High Sierra

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Arthur Kennedy, Joan Leslie, Alan Curtis

Synopsis: In a manner of speaking, Humphrey Bogart had George Raft to thank for his ascendancy to stardom: after all, if Raft hadn't turned down both High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, Bogart might have continued playing second-billed gangsters to the end of his days. Adapted from W. R. Burnett's novel by Burnett Read More

New Wine

Actors: Ilona Massey, Alan Curtis, Binnie Barnes, Albert Basserman, Billy Gilbert

Synopsis: Also released as The Great Awakening, New Wine purports to recreate an incident in the life of Austrian composer Franz Schubert. Though the real-life Schubert was chubby and homely, he is played on screen by the slim-and-handsome Alan Curtis. Unable to convince the world of his talent, Schubert is Read More

Buck Privates

Actors: Lee Bowman, Alan Curtis, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, The Andrews Sisters, Jane Frazee

Synopsis: Filmed on a B-picture budget, Buck Privates was Universal's biggest box-office hit of 1941, firmly securing the movie popularity of the studio's hot new team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The story is fairly evenly divided between the antics of Bud and Lou-here cast as sidewalk salesmen Slicker Read More

Four Sons

Actors: Don Ameche, Eugenie Leontovich, Mary Beth Hughes, Alan Curtis, George Ernest

Synopsis: This remake of John Ford's classic WW1 drama Four Sons has been updated to the Europe of the late 1930s. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, four sons of German-Czech parentage go off in separate ideological directions. Chris (Don Ameche) remains loyal to the concept of a free Read More

Hollywood Cavalcade

Actors: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, J. Edward Bromberg, Alan Curtis, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: Hollywood Cavalcade was a fictionalized history of silent films and the growth of the movie industry. Don Ameche portrays a character based on equal portions of Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith, while Alice Faye's silent star is an amalgam of Mabel Normand and Gloria Swanson. Ameche breaks into Read More

Good Girls Go to Paris

Actors: Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, Alan Curtis, Joan Perry, Isabel Jeans

Synopsis: Spunky Joan Blondell is practically the whole show in the diverting comedy Good Girls Go to Paris. Blondell is cast as ambitious college-campus waitress Jenny Swanson, who yearns to see the sights in Gay Paree. She gets her chance by latching onto British exchange professor Ronald Brooke (Melvyn Douglas Read More

Sergeant Madden

Actors: Wallace Beery, Tom Brown, Alan Curtis, Laraine Day, Fay Holden

Synopsis: In this interesting drama, a highly respected straight-arrow Irish cop is pleased when his son follows him onto the force. Unfortunately, the son is more interested in promotions than in upholding the law and he makes few friends among his peers. When he shoots a child caught stealing, the others Read More

Burn 'em up O'Conner

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Cecilia Parker, Nat Pendleton, Harry Carey, Addison Richards

Synopsis: The zippy world of auto-racing provided the basis of this off-beat actioner that centers on an auto magnate who is relentlessly driven to break every speed record with his cars. Unfortunately, his drivers keep dying on the track. This doesn't stop the obsessed manufacturer from continuing his Read More

The Shopworn Angel

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon, Hattie McDaniel, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: The second motion picture version of a Saturday Evening Post story by Dana Burnet, this romantic melodrama was also the second pairing of actors James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Stewart plays Private Bill Pettigrew, a naïve young Texan in New York for basic training prior to being shipped Read More

Yellow Jack

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Andy Devine, Henry Hull

Synopsis: The Sidney Howard/Paul de Kruf Broadway play Yellow Jack was transferred to the screen by MGM in 1938. The film is set at the turn of the century, when yellow fever was the Number One killer in Latin America. Army doctors Lewis Stone, Charles Coburn and Stanley Ridges gather in Cuba to attempt to Read More

The Duke of West Point

Actors: Louis Hayward, Joan Fontaine, Tom Brown, Richard Carlson, Alan Curtis

Synopsis: Louis Hayward plays an arrogant Cambridge student who emigrates to America and enrolls at the West Point. Hayward's superior attitude earns him the enmity of his fellow students and the derisive nickname "the Duke". Those viewers familiar with college pictures will know as early as the opening Read More

The Firefly

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Allan Jones, Warren William, Billy Gilbert, Henry Daniell

Synopsis: In this adaptation of the operetta by Rudolf Friml, secret agent Nina Maria Azara (Jeannette MacDonald) is working undercover for the King of Spain as a singer known as the "Mosca del Fuego" or "Firefly." Her mission is to uncover Napoleon's plot to invade Spain before it is too late. This film Read More

Mannequin

Actors: Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Alan Curtis, Ralph Morgan, Mary Philips

Synopsis: Mannequin stars Joan Crawford as Jessie Cassidy, a girl of the tenements (though this being an MGM film, her slum dwellings are cleaner and more lavish than most middle-class bungalows!) Hoping to escape her grimy surroundings, Jessie marries Eddie Miller (Alan Curtis), a childhood acquaintance Read More

Don't Tell the Wife

Actors: Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Lynne Overman, Thurston Hall, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams

Synopsis: Guy Kibbee, moviedom's archetypal small-town bigshot, stars in RKO Radio's Don't Tell the Wife. On this occasion, Kibbee, playing Malcolm Winthrop, has greatness thrust upon him when he buys a few shares of supposedly worthless mining stock. Though it looks as though he and the entire town will be Read More

China Passage

Actors: Constance Worth, Vinton Haworth, Leslie Fenton, Gordon Jones, Alec Craig

Synopsis: A couple of American soldiers of fortune are hired by the wife of a Chinese general to deliver a priceless diamond to a shopkeeper in Shanghai in this low-budget whodunit from the RKO "B"-unit. Just as the gem reaches its destination all hell breaks lose. When the dust settles, the diamond is gone Read More

Winterset

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Margo, Eduardo Ciannelli, John Carradine, Edward Ellis

Synopsis: Maxwell Anderson combined the Sacco-Vanzetti story with elements of the still-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, and the result was the blank-verse theatrical piece Winterset. Burgess Meredith, Margo and Eduardo Cianelli repeat their Broadway roles, respectively playing the grown son of an Read More

Smartest Girl in Town

Actors: Ann Sothern, Gene Raymond, Helen Broderick, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes

Synopsis: Ann Sothern is a magazine model looking for a rich husband. Wealthy Gene Raymond attends a photo shoot; Sothern mistakes him for a male model and resists his advances. Eventually she falls for Raymond and decides to cease her search for quick wealth. The story resolves itself in a fast-moving Read More

The Last Outlaw

Actors: Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson, Henry B. Walthall, Margaret Callahan, Frank M. Thomas

Synopsis: After 25 years, notorious western outlaw Harry Carey is released from prison. He returns to his frontier home town, only to discover that the place has been streamlined and modernized beyond all recognition. Even worse, virtually everyone in town has forgotten Carey; most of the younger folk Read More

Walking on Air

Actors: Gene Raymond, Ann Sothern, Jessie Ralph, Henry Stephenson, Gordon Jones

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a strong-willed young woman hires a student to impersonate a boorish French count and brings him home to meet her parents. She wants him to be as appalling as possible so they will hate him and allow her to date the man she really loves who has recently been divorced. Read More