Anne ShirleyFilmography

Music in Manhattan

Actors: Anne Shirley, Dennis Day, Phillip Terry, Raymond Walburn, Jane Darwell

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a pair of small-potatoes performers try to make it to the big-time after winning an amateur talent contest. Though this leads them to a few professional gigs, something is missing from their act and they are not popular. Believing a little cash will boost their career, the Read More

The Man from Frisco

Actors: Michael O'Shea, Anne Shirley, Gene Lockhart, Dan Duryea, Stephanie Bachelor, Tommy Bond

Synopsis: This 91-minute Republic "special" stars Michael O'Shea as Matt Braddock, an aggressive Henry Kaiser-like shipbuilder operating in 1880s California Though his business innovations are brilliant, Braddock's pugnacious attitude loses him the support of the locals when he plans to build a big new Read More

Bombardier

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Randolph Scott, Anne Shirley, Eddie Albert, Walter Reed

Synopsis: A major moneymaker for RKO Radio, Bombardier stars Pat O'Brien and Randolph Scott as trainers at a school for bomber pilots. O'Brien and Scott argue over teaching methods, while their students vie for the affections of Anne Shirley. O'Brien's methods prove sound during a bombing raid over Tokyo. Scott Read More

Government Girl

Actors: Olivia de Havilland, Sonny Tufts, Anne Shirley, Jess Barker, James Dunn

Synopsis: Olivia De Havilland hadn't wanted to star in RKO's Government Girl, but was forced to do so by her home studio Warner Bros. Perhaps in retaliation, De Havilland delivers a strident, overbaked performance, which serves only to make this so-so wartime comedy something of an endurance test for modern Read More

Lady Bodyguard

Actors: Eddie Albert, Anne Shirley, Raymond Walburn, Edward S. Brophy, Donald MacBride

Synopsis: The Lady Bodyguard of the title is pretty but somewhat physically frail A. C. Baker (Anne Shirley). An advertising representative for an insurance company, A. C. gets into trouble when she okays several $1000 life-insurance policies as a publicity stunt. One of the recipients is Terry Moore (Eddie Albert Read More

The Mayor of 44th Street

Actors: George Murphy, Anne Shirley, William Gargan, Richard Barthelmess, Joan Merrill

Synopsis: In this drama, an ex-vaudevillian dancer opens up a dance band agency and help street kids at the same time by hiring them to help out. Unfortunately, the local gang of hood's leader resists his attempts. More trouble ensues when the dancer helps a convict gain parole by hiring him. It later turns Read More

The Powers Girl

Actors: George Murphy, Anne Shirley, Carole Landis, Dennis Day

Synopsis: For the benefit of those who came in late, the John Robert Powers modelling agency was at one time the most famous and powerful enterprise of its kind in New York City. Acknowledging this prominence is the 1942 musical comedy The Powers Girl, with Anne Shirley and Carole Landis starring as sisters Read More

Four Jacks and a Jill

Actors: Ray Bolger, Anne Shirley, June Havoc, Desi Arnaz, Jack Durant

Synopsis: This quickie RKO musical is the second retread of Street Girl (1929); the 1937 musical That Girl from Paris was the first remake. This time around, the four jacks are musicians Nifty (Ray Bolger), Happy (Eddie Foy Jr.), Nat (Jack Briggs), and Eddie (William Blees). Their singer Opal (June Havoc) Read More

West Point Widow

Actors: Anne Shirley, Richard Carlson, Richard Denning, Frances Gifford, Maude Eburne

Synopsis: In this romance, a hospital nurse marries a West Point football hero. She soon gets pregnant, but this doesn't stop her from annulling the marriage so as not to interfere with her husband's military career. Though she keeps it a secret, her plan is to marry him again after he graduates from the Read More

Unexpected Uncle

Actors: Anne Shirley, James Craig, Charles Coburn, Ernest Truex

Synopsis: From first frame to last, foxy Charles Coburn thoroughly dominates the proceedings in the bubbly RKO Radio comedy Unexpected Uncle. Living in retirement in Florida, ex-tycoon Seton (Charles Coburn) gets bored with sitting around doing nothing, and decides to extend himself to others for the first Read More

The Devil and Daniel Webster

Actors: Edward Arnold, Walter Huston, James Craig, Jane Darwell, Simone Simon, Anne Shirley

Synopsis: This classic fantasy was based on a story by Stephen Vincent Benet. Jabez Stone (James Craig) is a simple New England farmer who has been suffering from a long run of bad luck. One day he mutters that he'd sell his soul for a little money and a decent crop. Moments later, who should appear but The Read More

Saturday's Children

Actors: John Garfield, Anne Shirley, Claude Rains, George Tobias, Roscoe Karns, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: This third film version of Maxwell Anderson's play Saturday's Children stars Claude Rains as the impecunious but proud father of a large brood. Rains' daughter Anne Shirley marries idealistic John Garfield, a would-be inventor who works for Shirley's father. Feeling that he's been tricked into Read More

Vigil in the Night

Actors: Carole Lombard, Brian Aherne, Anne Shirley, Julien Mitchell, Robert Coote

Synopsis: A dedicated nurse in a British hospital takes a nervous rookie under her wing. When the new nurse messes up and causes a patient's death, she protects her and loses her job. She eventually finds work at another bigger and more rundown hospital and there falls in love with a handsome young doctor. Read More

Anne of Windy Poplars

Actors: Anne Shirley, James Ellison, Henry Travers, Patric Knowles, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: This sequel to 1934's Anne of Green Gables stars Anne Shirley as Anne Shirley, the plucky Canadian orphan girl created by novelist Lucy Maude Montgomery. Now all grown up, Anne takes on the job of vice-principal of the only school in Windy Poplars Unfortunately, she must contend with the Read More

Sorority House

Actors: Anne Shirley, James Ellison, Barbara Read, Helen Wood

Synopsis: Sorority House is based on Mary Coyle Chase's short story Chi House. Anne Shirley plays a middle-class college student who is pledged to a snooty sorority. As Shirley struggles to qualify for membership, she becomes disillusioned by the prospect when she realizes the shallowness of her wealthy Read More

Career

Actors: Anne Shirley, Edward Ellis, Samuel S. Hinds, Leon Errol

Synopsis: Set in a tiny midwestern town, this sentimental drama centers on the rivalry between two life-long acquaintances whose early friendship falls apart when they woo the same woman. She makes her choice and marries the one who eventually takes over the town bank. Meanwhile the other man becomes a Read More

Law of the Underworld

Actors: Chester Morris, Anne Shirley, Eduardo Ciannelli, Walter Abel, Richard Bond

Synopsis: When two lovers are framed for a jewelry store robbery in which the clerk was killed, the only person capable of saving them from the death penalty is the gangster who actually committed the crime. A remake of the 1930 thriller The Pay Off, Law of the Underworld tells the tale of Shirley and Bond Read More

Mother Carey's Chickens

Actors: Anne Shirley, Ruby Keeler, James Ellison, Fay Bainter, Walter Brennan

Synopsis: Katharine Hepburn's association with RKO Radio Pictures came to an abrupt end when she refused to star in the studio's adaptation of Kate Douglas Wiggins' sentimental novel Mother Carey's Chickens. Hepburn was replaced by musical-comedy favorite Ruby Keeler, who though woefully miscast did her Read More

A Man to Remember

Actors: Anne Shirley, Edward Ellis, Lee Bowman, William Henry, John Wray, Granville Bates

Synopsis: A remake of 1933's One Man's Journey, A Man to Remember was the auspicious film directorial debut of Garson Kanin. Told in flashback from the vantage point of a funeral, the film details the life of small-town general practioner Doctor Abbott (Edward Ellis). Arriving in the town of Westport during Read More

Boy Slaves

Actors: Anne Shirley, Roger Daniel, James McCallion, Alan Baxter, John Fitzgerald

Synopsis: Boy Slaves is an effective indictment of the exploitation of reform school labor. Several troublesome boys are offered an opportunity to work on a turpentine farm run by the seemingly benign Charles Lane, with the promise that their good behavior will ensure their early release from the Read More

Condemned Women

Actors: Louis Hayward, Anne Shirley, Esther Dale, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: In this drama, a falsely convicted woman falls in love with the prison psychologist who tries to liberate her. She ended up in prison to protect her boyfriend who was just about to finish law school. The doctor and patient tryst in the prison furnace room. When he is not around, the woman must Read More

Girls' School

Actors: Anne Shirley, Nan Grey, Dorothy Moore, Gloria Holden, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: In this comedy, wealthy girls attend boarding school to learn proper etiquette. The well-mannered character of the class is disrupted when one of the proper young women plans to elope with a handsome young simpleton. Unfortunately she is outfoxed by a young teacher who elopes with the boy before Read More

Meet the Missus

Actors: Victor Moore, Helen Broderick, Anne Shirley, Alan Bruce, Edward H. Robins

Synopsis: Meet the Missus poked fun at the contest crazes of the 1930s. Helen Broderick stars as a woman who spends every spare moment entering contests, much to the discomfort of her browbeaten hubby Victor Moore, who is left with all the housework. She finally makes the finals in the "Happy Noodles Read More

Stella Dallas

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Produced by Sam Goldwyn, this second film version of Olive Higgins Prouty's Stella Dallas is by far the best. The combined talents of Goldwyn, director King Vidor and star Barbara Stanwyck lift this property far above the level of mere soap opera. Stanwyck is perfectly cast as Stella Martin, the Read More

Too Many Wives

Actors: John Morley, Anne Shirley, Gene Lockhart, Dudley Clements, Barbara Pepper

Synopsis: Poor Barry Trent (John Morley) has Too Many Wives in this RKO programmer. Actually, Barry starts out with no wife at all, which doesn't rest well with his new boss. To save his job, Barry pretends to have a spouse: now all he has to do is find the girl to fill the role. Thanks to a series of Read More

M'Liss

Actors: Anne Shirley, John Beal, Guy Kibbee, Douglas Dumbrille, Moroni Olsen

Synopsis: Loosely based on a story by frontier writer Bret Harte, this romantic western drama tells the story of an innocent, carefree mountain-raised girl who causes quite a stir every time she comes to town to bring her boozy father home from the bar. One day, the flirtatious gal is kissed by the town Read More

Chatterbox

Actors: Anne Shirley, Phillips Holmes, Edward Ellis, Erik Rhodes, Margaret Hamilton

Synopsis: Stagestruck Vermont girl Jenny Yates (Anne Shirley) manages to land a job with a ragtag stock company. This she does over the objections of her grandfather (Edward Ellis), who'd disowned Jenny's mother when she became an actress. After a series of amusing and bemusing setbacks, Jenny is discovered Read More

Make Way for a Lady

Actors: Herbert Marshall, Anne Shirley, Gertrude Michael, Margot Grahame, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: Anne Shirley is the teenaged "lady" in this filmization of Elizabeth Jordan's novel My Daddy and I. Shirley plays the daughter of widowed Herbert Marshall, who suffers in silence as his daughter tries to "match" him with every eligible woman in sight. Misinterpreting a delicate situation, Shirley Read More

School for Girls

Actors: Sidney Fox, Paul Kelly, Lois Wilson, Toby Wing, Lucille La Verne

Synopsis: Produced by M.H. Hoffman's Liberty Pictures, School for Girls is based on Reginald Wright Kauffman's story Our Undisciplined Daughters. It all begins when innocent heroine Annette Eldridge (Sidney Fox) gets mixed up with a slimy jewel thief. Taking the rap for her boyfriend, Annette ends up doing Read More

Chasing Yesterday

Actors: Anne Shirley, O.P. Heggie, Helen Westley, Elizabeth Patterson, John Qualen

Synopsis: O.P. Heggie plays an ageing Parisian book collector who has spent four decades tracking down a rare volume. The trail leads to a small French village, where Heggie meets the daughter (Anne Shirley) of a woman he'd been in love with years earlier. He becomes the girl's guardian, smooths the path of Read More

Steamboat Round the Bend

Actors: Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, Eugene Pallette, John McGuire

Synopsis: Two of America's most distinguished humorists, Oklahoma's Will Rogers and Kentucky's Irvin S. Cobb, costar in Steamboat Round the Bend. Cobb isn't much of an actor, so it is Rogers who carries the comic weight of this fast-paced slice of Americana. Will uncharacteristically sticks to the script Read More

The Key

Actors: William Powell, Edna Best, Colin Clive, Hobart Cavanaugh, Halliwell Hobbes

Synopsis: The Key is a story of the Irish "troubles" which avoids taking sides, but spends most of its screen time with the British occupation troops. William Powell stars as a soldier for hire who works on behalf of the British in the Dublin of the early 1920s. Powell is as celebrated for his boudoir Read More

This Side of Heaven

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Fay Bainter, Mae Clarke, Tom Brown, Una Merkel

Synopsis: This Side of Heaven is an early, muted example of what would refine itself into the "screwball comedy" genre. Lionel Barrymore plays an accountant, who's also the head of a large family consisting principally of dizzy buffoons. Not only that, but the Barrymore clan is selfish, totally Read More

Anne of Green Gables

Actors: Anne Shirley, Tom Brown, O.P. Heggie, Helen Westley, Sara Haden

Synopsis: Former child actress Dawn O'Day changed her professional name for Anne of Green Gables, assuming the moniker of her character in the film, Anne Shirley. This first of three RKO films based on the novels of L. M. Montgomery finds young, orphaned, hoydenish Anne arriving at a Canadian household. Read More

Finishing School

Actors: Frances Dee, Billie Burke, Ginger Rogers, Bruce Cabot, John Halliday

Synopsis: The scandalous doings behind the high-toned exterior of a private school for rich young women provides the framework for this interesting but turgid drama. Much of the story centers on an unhappy socialite and her smart-alecky, world-wise roomy who has no morals at all when it comes to getting Read More

The Life of Jimmy Dolan

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Loretta Young, Guy Kibbee, Lyle Talbot

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a prizefighter goes on the lam after he engages in fisticuffs with a reporter and believes that he has killed him. He ends up at a crippled children's home. The film is also called The Kid's Last Fight. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

So Big

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Dickie Moore, Bette Davis, Mae Madison

Synopsis: This second of three film versions of Edna Ferber's novel So Big stars Barbara Stanwyck as Ferber's resilient heroine Selena Dejong Peake. Widowed early in the proceedings, Chicago truck farmer Selena sacrifices everything for her son Dirk (Dickie Moore as a child, Hardie Albright as a grown-up) Read More

Young America

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Doris Kenyon, Ralph Bellamy, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: Though Spencer Tracy is top-billed in Young America, the film is by no means a star vehicle. Tommy Conlon and Raymond Borzage (the son of director Frank Borzage) play budding juvenile delinquents Arthur and Nutty. After their latest misdemeanor, the boys are paroled by Judge Blake (Ralph Bellamy) Read More

Rasputin and the Empress

Actors: John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Ralph Morgan, Diana Wynyard

Synopsis: It's hard to separate fact and fancy from the many accounts of what happened on the set when all three of the fabulous Barrymores -- Ethel, John and Lionel -- appeared together for the only time in Rasputin and the Empress. As for the end result, John offers the subtlest (!) performance as Russian Read More

Three on a Match

Actors: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis, Buster Phelps

Synopsis: Three on a Match covers approximately 13 years in the lives of girlhood chums Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), Ruth Wescott (Bette Davis) and Vivian Deverse (Ann Dvorak). Having graduated from grammar school together in 1919, the girls stage a reunion ten years later. Hard-boiled Mary is now a chorus Read More

Emma

Actors: Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy, John Miljan

Synopsis: Emma is a turn-of-the-century domestic drama completely dominated by star Marie Dressler. She plays the maid of an upper middle class family, keeping her wits about her as her employers suffer crisis after crisis. When the master of the house (Jean Hersholt), a prominent inventor, is widowed, he Read More

The Purchase Price

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Lyle Talbot, Hardie Albright, David Landau

Synopsis: Barbara Stanwyck, displayed in all her pre-Code glory, once again plays "damaged goods" in Warner Bros.' The Purchase Price. Hard-boiled nightclub singer Joan Gordon (Stanwyck) gets fed up being the kept woman of her married boss, bootlegger Ed Fields (Lyle Talbot). Fleeing New York City, she ends Read More

Gun Smoke

Actors: Richard Arlen, Mary Brian, William "Stage" Boyd, Eugene Pallette, Charles Winninger

Synopsis: William Boyd is one of the stars of the Paramount western Gun Smoke -- only it's not the same William Boyd who later essayed the role of Hopalong Cassidy, but another actor who billed himself as William "Stage" Boyd. The plot was a familiar one to western devotees of the early 1930s: a bunch of Read More

Rich Man's Folly

Actors: George Bancroft, Frances Dee, Robert Ames, Julie Compton, David Durand

Synopsis: Charles Dickens' novel Dombey and Son is set in 1931 America in this interesting drama that centers on an egotistical, over-ambitious owner of a shipbuilding company. So focused is he on succeeding that he forgets his family and their needs. He begins looking for a successor to his wealth and Read More

Liliom

Actors: Charles Farrell, Rose Hobart, H.B. Warner, Estelle Taylor, Lee Tracy

Synopsis: This first film version of Ferenc Molnar's poignant fantasy Liliom was supposed to have reunited the director Frank Borzage and stars Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor of Fox's 1927 box-office smash Seventh Heaven. But Gaynor was enmeshed in one of her periodic contract disputes with the studio, so Read More

City Girl

Actors: Charles Farrell, David Torrence

Synopsis: Director F.W. Murnau began City Girl as a silent film, hoping to match the artistic triumph of his earlier Sunrise. Murnau was frustrated by two elements: Fox's decision to hastily convert the film into a talkie, and his inability to secure the services of Sunrise star Janet Gaynor. The director Read More

Four Devils

Actors: John Farrell MacDonald, Anders Randolf, Claire McDowell, Jack Parker, Philippe DeLacy

Synopsis: The circus provides the backdrop for this melodrama that chronicles the lives of four children raised within the big top. Two of them have grown to be lovers. Though they appear inseparable, trouble ensues when a usurper takes the girl away. The picture is considered a lost work -- no copies are Read More

Mother Knows Best

Actors: Madge Bellamy, Louise Dresser, Barry Norton, Albert Gran

Sins of the Fathers

Actors: Emil Jannings, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Arthur, Barry Norton, Jack Luden

Synopsis: The great German actor Emil Jannings closed out the American phase of his film career with the Paramount part-talkie Sins of the Fathers. Jannings is cast as Wilhelm Spangler, who works as a head waiter to provide for his pregnant wife (ZaSu Pitts). As their family grows and grows, Spangler Read More

The Callahans and the Murphys

Actors: Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Sally O'Neil, Lawrence Gray, Frank Currier

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Kathleen Morris, The Callahans and the Murphys was the first of several MGM films costarring veteran comediennes Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. These formidable ladies are cast as Mrs. Callahan and Mrs. Murphy, feuding tenement housewives who spend most of their time keeping Read More

Riders of the Purple Sage

Actors: Tom Mix, Beatrice Burnham, Arthur Morrison, Seesel Ann Johnson, Warner Oland

Synopsis: First filmed by Fox in 1918 with William Farnum, Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage became a typically lavish Tom Mix extravaganza, filmed on locations at picturesque Lone Pine, California. Mix plays Jim Lassiter, the bold Texas Ranger whose sister, Millie Erne (Beatrice Burnham), and her Read More