Ann GillisFilmography

Trouble Zone

Big Town After Dark

Actors: Phillip Reed, Hillary Brooke, Richard Travis, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: Top-notch police reporter Lorelei Kilbourne (Hillary Brooke) decides to resign her job when her novel is published, and gives Big Town Illustrated Press editor-in-chief Steve Wilson (Philip Reed) her two-weeks' notice. Lorelei is surprised when Steve hires a replacement that day, Susan Peabody Read More

The Time of Their Lives

Actors: Lou Costello, Bud Abbott, Marjorie Reynolds, Binnie Barnes, John Shelton, Gale Sondergaard

Synopsis: While perhaps not Abbott & Costello's best film, The Time of Their Lives is certainly their most unusual. Lou Costello plays a Revolutionary War-era tinker, whose prized possession is a letter from George Washington, commending Costello as a loyal patriot. Costello's lady love is Anne Gillis Read More

Gay Blades

Actors: Allan Lane, Jean Rogers, Edward Ashley, Frank Albertson, Ann Gillis

Synopsis: The biggest surprise in Republic's Gay Blades is that the studio's resident skating star Vera Hruba Ralston doesn't appear. Allan Lane plays hockey star Andy Buell, whose prowess on the rink brings him to the attention of Hollywood leading lady Nancy Davis (played not by the real Nancy Davis Read More

Sweetheart of Sigma Chi

Actors: Ruth Allen, Robert Arthur, William Beaudine, Jr., Phil Brito, Edward S. Brophy

Synopsis: This musical is a remake of a 1933 film. Like the first, it is set on campus and chronicles the romantic travails of the school rowing champion who has recently come back from a military stint abroad. A young coed is mighty pleased to see him, but he keeps avoiding her. A subplot concerns a group Read More

Janie Gets Married

Actors: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Barbara Brown, Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, William Frambes, Robert Benchley

Synopsis: In this sequel to the 1944 teenage comedy Janie, Joan Leslie replaces Joyce Reynolds in the title role, playing the virtuous but amorous daughter of Edward Arnold and Ann Harding. Janie marries the soldier (Robert Hutton) she'd met in the earlier film, hoping to help him set the course of a Read More

The Cheaters

Actors: Joseph Schildkraut, Billie Burke, Eugene Pallette, Ona Munson, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: A snooty blue-blooded English family learns a bitter lesson about the realities of lower class living in this British comedy. It all happens because the ditzy wife makes a terrible mistake with their money and loses a fortune. Her husband, a banker is at his wit's end as he scrambles about looking Read More

Janie

Actors: Robert Hutton, Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Robert Benchley, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Janie, adapted from the Broadway play by Josephine Bentham and Herschel Williams, was one of a 1940s cycle of stage-to-film comedies about teenagers. Joyce Reynolds stars as Janie, a typical teen whose life is turned topsy turvy by the installation of a military base near her home town. Edward Arnold Read More

A Wave, a Wac and a Marine

Actors: Elyse Knox, Ramsay Ames, Ann Gillis, Alan Dinehart

Synopsis: Released by Monogram, A WAVE, a WAC and a Marine was packaged by Biltmore Productions, a partnership consisting of Abbott and Costello's agent Eddie Sherman and Lou Costello's father Sebastian Cristillo. Though Elyse Knox, Sally Eilers and Ann Gillis head the cast, the film is a showcase for Read More

Since You Went Away

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Monty Woolley, Agnes Moorehead

Synopsis: David O. Selznick's first production since 1940's Rebecca, Since You Went Away, based on Margaret Buell Wilder's bestselling novel, is a long but rewarding paean to the World War 2 "home front". Claudette Colbert plays the wife of a businessman who, though well past draft age, volunteered to serve Read More

In Society

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Kirby Grant, Marion Hutton, Ann Gillis

Synopsis: For their first film in a year, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello played it safe with a medley of old burlesque routines and slapstick setpieces -- and never mind a coherent plot. The boys play Eddie and Albert, a pair of plumbers hired to fix the pipes of a fancy society mansion. While a masquerade Read More

Texas Legionnaires

Actors: Roy Rogers, Ruth Terry, Paul Kelly

Synopsis: Though it bears the same title as an earlier Gene Autry western, Roy Rogers' The Man from Music Mountain isn't a remake. Rogers is appropriately cast as a cowboy who's hit it big as a radio singing star. Returning to his hometown for a special remote broadcast, Roy finds himself in the middle of a Read More

Bambi

Synopsis: The classic Felix Salter story Bambi provides the basis for this near-perfect Disney animated feature. We follow the male deer Bambi from birth, through his early childhood experiences with woodland pals Thumper the rabbit and Flower the skunk, the traumatic sudden death of Bambi's mother at the Read More

Meet the Stewarts

Actors: William Holden, Frances Dee, Grant Mitchell, Marjorie Gateson, Anne Revere

Synopsis: This lighthearted romantic comedy stars William Holden as working stiff Michael Stewart and Frances Dee as wealthy socialite Candace Goodwin. Falling in love with Michael, Candace agrees to marry him on his terms-namely, that they survive on his salary alone. Inevitably, Candace has trouble Read More

Tough As They Come

Synopsis: In this crime drama, an ambitious law student begins working for a corrupt finance company and becomes the neighborhood pennypincher. He is romantically interested in a wealthy young woman, but unfortunately, he is being pursued by a neighborhood girl. His company assigns him to repossess the Read More

'Neath the Brooklyn Bridge

Synopsis: The East Side Kids, featuring Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell and Huntz Hall, star in this spirited blend of action and comedy. The kids come to the rescue of a hysterical young girl who is discovered in the apartment with a murdered man. Convinced she's not the killer, the guys hide her as they comb the Read More

Mr. Dynamite

Actors: Lloyd Nolan, Irene Hervey, J. Carrol Naish, Robert Armstrong, Ann Gillis

Synopsis: Lloyd Nolan is thoroughly convincing as a big-league baseball pitcher in Mr. Dynamite--and never mind that the film never shows the inside of a ballpark! On the eve of the World Series, Tommy Thornton (Nolan), known to one and all as Mr. Dynamite, decides to spend some time at a New York amusement Read More

Nice Girl?

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Franchot Tone, Walter Brennan, Robert Stack, Robert Benchley

Synopsis: Nice Girl? answers its own question by casting the relentlessy nice Deanna Durbin in the title role. In her first truly adult role, Durbin plays Jane Dana, the blossoming daughter of high school principal Oliver Dana (Robert Benchley). Jane is being ardently courted by longtime boyfriend Don Webb Read More

Little Men

Actors: Kay Francis, Jack Oakie, George Bancroft, Jimmy Lydon, Ann Gillis

Synopsis: Little Men, Louisa May Alcott's followup to her successful novel Little Women, has never truly adapted well to the screen, though this 1940 version is better than most. Kay Francis stars as the all-grown-up Jo March, now in charge of a private school for young boys. Her most contentious charge is Read More

All This and Heaven Too

Actors: Bette Davis, Charles Boyer, Jeffrey Lynn, Barbara O'Neil, Virginia Weidler

Synopsis: An incredibly long but never dull adaptation of the Rachel Field best-seller, All This and Heaven Too was based on a once-notorious European scandal. Star Bette Davis, playing Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, is first seen as a French schoolteacher in a 19th century American seminary. When her Read More

My Love Came Back

Actors: Olivia de Havilland, Jeffrey Lynn, Charles Winninger, Eddie Albert, Jane Wyman

Synopsis: Olivia DeHavilland stars as a music student whose education is secretly subsidized by the aging owner of a phonograph factory (Charles Winninger). The old man hopes to vicariously live his own musical aspirations through the young woman's success. DeHavilland, however, is just as interested in Read More

Glamour Boy

Actors: Jackie Cooper, Susanna Foster, Walter Abel, Darryl Hickman, Ann Gillis

Synopsis: Former child star Jackie Cooper headlines this sentimental behind-the-scenes comedy drama. He plays an ex-child star who now jerks sodas for a living in Hollywood. He gets back into the movie business when he overhears a conversation between producers discussing their newest prodigy. Cooper butts Read More

Edison, The Man

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Rita Johnson, Lynne Overman, Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: In 1940, MGM turned out two films on the life of Thomas Alva Edison.The first, Young Tom Edison, starred Mickey Rooney and trotted out all the old Edison folklore, including the now-discredited incident in which Tom loses his hearing by being yanked onto a train by his ears. Edison the Man Read More

Beau Geste

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward

Synopsis: This second of three movie versions of P.C. Wren's adventure novel Beau Geste is a virtual scene-for-scene remake of the 1927 silent version. We open on the now-famous scenes of a remote, burning desert fort, manned by the dead Foreign Legionnaires, then flash back to the early lives of the Geste Read More

The Under-Pup

Actors: Gloria Jean, Robert Cummings, Nan Grey, C. Aubrey Smith, Beulah Bondi

Synopsis: The Under-Pup served to introduce Universal's new preteen songstress--and potential Deanna Durbin replacement--Gloria Jean. Producer Joe Pasternak sagaciously based the leading character on Jean herself: A shy, self-effacing 11 year old girl, thrust into a glamorous lifestyle beyond her ken. She Read More

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Actors: Tommy Kelly, Jackie Moran, Ann Gillis, May Robson, Walter Brennan

Synopsis: The 1938 version of Adventures of Tom Sawyer appears to be producer David O. Selznick's dry run for Gone with the Wind, what with its similarities in period, costumes, color scheme and production design (both films shared the services of the great Hollywood art director William Cameron Menzies). Read More

Little Orphan Annie

Actors: Ann Gillis, Robert Kent, June Travis, John Farrell MacDonald, J.M. Kerrigan

Synopsis: Harold Gray's long-running comic strip Little Orphan Annie was first brought to the screen in 1932, with Mitzi Green as Annie. This 1938 version was produced by Paramount, with Ann Gillis (best known for her performance as Becky Thatcher in Selznick's Adventures of Tom Sawyer) as Gray's Read More

Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus

Actors: Tommy Kelly, Ann Gillis, Edgar Kennedy, Benita Hume

Synopsis: Peck's Bad Boy and his gang of mischievous misfits (including Spanky McFarland) make all kinds of trouble around the circus. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Off to the Races

Actors: George "Slim" Summerville, Jed Prouty, Shirley Deane, Spring Byington, Russell Gleason

Synopsis: The Jones Family is Off to the Races in this peppy series entry. Though Jed Prouty and Spring Byington are ostensibly the stars as Mr. and Mrs. Jones, top billing is bestowed upon Slim Summerville as the family's horse-happy Uncle George. Hoping to enter his prize nag in an important trotting Read More

The Garden of Allah

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Schildkraut, Tilly Losch

Synopsis: Marlene Dietrich stars as the noble Domini Enfilden in this third film version of Robert Hichens' 1904 novel. After caring for her dying father, Domini is told by her Mother Superior (Lucille Watson) that she should go to the Algerian desert to rest and seek sanctuary. On her way to the town of Read More

Postal Inspector

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Patricia Ellis, Bela Lugosi, Michael Loring, David Oliver

Synopsis: A postal inspector finds himself caught in a sticky situation as he tries to pin a rap for mail theft upon the owner of a prominent nightclub owner. The owner is guilty and only stole the mail so he could get the money he needs to pay off a murderous and impatient loan shark. Unfortunately, upon Read More

The Singing Cowboy

Actors: Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Lois Wilde, Lon Chaney, Jr.

Synopsis: In this western, Gene Autry plays a cowboy with a heart as big as Texas who heads for the city to try to raise money so that a crippled little girl can get the operation she needs to walk again. First he talks a coffee company into being his sponsor. They opt to broadcast their performance on Read More

King of Hockey

Actors: Dick Purcell, Anne Nagel, Marie Wilson, Wayne Morris, George E. Stone

Synopsis: King of Hockey was one of three low-budget hockey films released during the 1936-37 season, each one produced by a different studio. Dick Purcell stars as swell-headed hockey champ Gabby Dugan, whose career is abruptly terminated when he's accused of shaving points during a crucial game. Even Read More

Under Your Spell

Actors: Lawrence Tibbett, Wendy Barrie, Gregory Ratoff, Arthur Treacher, Gregory Gaye

Synopsis: Otto Preminger was able to make his directorial debut on Under Your Spell solely because Darryl Zanuck couldn't care less about the film's quality; it was a contractual obligation film for Lawrence Tibbett, who was proving a washout as a film star. In Spell, Tibbett plays Anthony Allen, a world Read More