Carl EsmondFilmography

Agent for H.A.R.M.

Synopsis: This spy-thriller pokes fun at James Bond movies as it tells the story of a master American spy who must protect a scientist from Russian agents who want his formula for stopping alien spores that turn human flesh into fungus. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Morituri

Actors: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin, Trevor Howard, Marlin Beneath

Synopsis: Bernhard Wicki directed this hard-hitting World War II espionage drama. Marlon Brando plays Robert Crain, a German deserter who is coerced by British Intelligence officer Colonel Statter (Trevor Howard) to impersonate a Gestapo officer in order to get aboard a German blockade runner that is Read More

Hitler

Actors: Richard Basehart, Cordula Trantow, Maria Emo, Martin Kosleck, Berry Kroeger

Synopsis: This was the last film by director Stuart Heisler, and in his uneven output it was not one of the most memorable. The evil dictator (Richard Basehart) is shown to be very much involved with his love life, as though impotency and a severe Oedipal complex alone could account for his dominion over Read More

Brushfire

Actors: John Ireland, Everett Sloane, Jo Morrow, Al Avalon, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Presaging the upcoming Vietnam War without knowing it, this routine drama directed by Jack Warner, Jr. (his only directorial effort) is set in Vietnam where the recent battles with the French have concluded and two soldiers have remained in the country to set up their own plantation. Their lives Read More

Maverick: Diamond Flush

Synopsis: Whenever the betwiching Roxane Berard guest-stars on Maverick, there's bound to be some elegant larceny, with at least one member of the Maverick clan ending up the victim. In this particular episode, Berard is cast as Danielle de Lisle, an apparent damsel in distress who asks Beau Maverick (Roger Read More

One Step Beyond: The Lonely Room

Synopsis: The scene is Paris, where lonely Henri Lamont (Fabrizio Mioni) loves the beautiful Therese (Lisa Montell) from afar. Henri would give anything to speak to Therese, but is overcome by shyness. Then, one day, our hero glances out his window and sees a romantic couple strolling by--a couple who turns Read More

Errol Flynn Theatre / Man in the Iron Mask

Thunder in the Sun

Actors: Susan Hayward, Jeff Chandler, Jacques Bergerac, Blanche Yurka, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: A somewhat wooden rendition of an improbable western, this tale of Basques crossing the U.S. in 1847 with a load of grapevines has stock characters in slightly different guises. Susan Hayward is Gabrielle, a member of the Basque party who inexplicably speaks with a French accent (Basques speak Read More

From the Earth to the Moon

Actors: Joseph Cotten, George Sanders, Debra Paget, Don Dubbins, Patric Knowles

Synopsis: The resurgence of interest in Jules Verne following the release of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) led to a brief cycle of Verne-based films. Produced in Mexico by Benedict Bogeaus, From the Earth to the Moon stars Joseph Cotten as eccentric Civil War-era scientist Victor Barbicane. Claiming Read More

Lola Montès

Actors: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Oskar Werner, Ivan Desny, Will Quadflieg

Synopsis: Max Ophuls' final film (and his only movie in color) is a cinematic tour-de-force masquerading as a biography, in this case a dazzling fictionalized life of the notorious 19th century dancer, actress, and courtesan. A still beautiful, but weary and disillusioned (and, as we later discover, ailing) Read More

The World in His Arms

Actors: Gregory Peck, Ann Blyth, Anthony Quinn, John McIntire, Andrea King, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn play two seal-hunting rivals in this adventure film set in the days when Alaska was a Russian territory. Peck is adventuring seafarer Jonathan Clark, who falls in love with Russian Countess Marina Selanova (Ann Blyth) while the countess is in San Francisco fleeing an Read More

Mystery Submarine

Actors: MacDonald Carey, Märta Torén, Robert Douglas, Carl Esmond, Ludwig Donath

Synopsis: The trendy elegance of director Douglas Sirk's later big-budget soap operas is nowhere to be found in Sirk's Atomic-Age melodrama Mystery Submarine. MacDonald Carey stars as Brett Young, a U.S. undercover agent whose job it is to prevent atomic secrets from falling into the wrong hands. Marta Toren Read More

The Desert Hawk

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Richard Greene, Jackie Gleason, George Macready, Rock Hudson

Synopsis: The Desert Hawk deserves to be seen on the basis of its cast alone. No more believable than any of Universal's other sword-and-sand epics, this one stars Yvonne de Carlo as Princess Shaharazade (sic) and Richard Greene as Omar, aka the Desert Hawk. By day a humble blacksmith, the Desert Hawk Read More

Walk a Crooked Mile

Actors: Louis Hayward, Dennis O'Keefe, Louise Allbritton, Raymond Burr, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Filmed almost entirely on location, Walk a Crooked Mile was Columbia Pictures' "answer" to 20th Century-Fox's late-1940s cycle of documentary-style crime dramas. FBI agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Scotland Yard operative Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) team up to investigate a security leak Read More

Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman

Actors: Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Eddie Albert, Marsha Hunt, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: A woman struggles to reassemble her broken life in this drama that features Susan Hayward in her first starring role. The woman started out as a night-club singer, but abandoned her career after marrying a budding radio star. At first she does everything she can to insure his success, but when he Read More

Slave Girl

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, George Brent, Albert Dekker, Broderick Crawford, Lois Collier

Synopsis: Slave Girl is the sort of fare that the Universal higher-ups used to dismiss as "tits and sand;" nonetheless, this kind of entertainment (along with the equally lowbrow Abbott and Costello and Ma and Pa Kettle pictures) paid the bills for the studio's more ponderous projects. The slave girl of the Read More

Lover Come Back

Actors: George Brent, Lucille Ball, Vera Zorina, Charles Winninger, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Lucille Ball stars as the wife of a war correspondent, anxiously awaiting her husband's return. Ball is convinced that hubby (George Brent) is looking forward to feminine companionship after four long years at the front. Imagine her surprise when it looks as though her husband wasn't quite as Read More

The Catman of Paris

Actors: Carl Esmond, Lenore Aubert, Adele Mara, Douglas Dumbrille, Gerald Mohr

Synopsis: Horror films were not Republic Pictures' forte, as one can see while watching the stylish but pedestrian Catman of Paris. Carl Esmond stars as Charles Reigner, an amnesia victim who may or may not be fiendish "Catman" who has been cutting a homicial swath throughout Gay Paree. Essentially a Read More

Experiment Perilous

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, George Brent, Paul Lukas, Albert Dekker, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Officially based on a novel by Margaret Carpenter, Experiment Perilous would seem to be more inspired by MGM's psychological thriller Gaslight. Set at the turn of the century, the film stars Hedy Lamarr as Allida, the beautiful young wife of an elderly "gentleman" named Nick (Paul Lukas). Treating Read More

Her Highness and the Bellboy

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, Robert Walker, June Allyson, Carl Esmond, Agnes Moorehead

Synopsis: This tender but fluffy romantic comedy centers on the romantic travails of a beautiful European princesss who goes to New York to find the newspaper reporter she fell for when he was visiting her mythical country. She stays at the Big Apple's finest hotel and while there finds herself mistaken for Read More

Without Love

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Keenan Wynn, Gloria Grahame, Patricia Morison, Carl Esmond, Lucille Ball

Synopsis: In their third film together, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn created one of the box-office sensations of 1945, a sparklingly witty wartime comedy about a marriage entered on the theory that love only gums up a relationship. Invited by a drunken Quintin Ladd (Keenan Wynn), devoted scientist Read More

This Love of Ours

Actors: Merle Oberon, Charles Korvin, Claude Rains, Carl Esmond, Sue England

Synopsis: Doctor Charles Korvin walks out on his musician wife Merle Oberon when he suspects her of infidelity. Twelve years later their paths cross again; Oberon is now saddled with an abusive husband. Possessed of a protective instinct that he hadn't evinced in the first part of the film, Korvin rescues Read More

The Story of Dr. Wassell

Actors: Gary Cooper, Laraine Day, Signe Hasso, Dennis O'Keefe, Carol Thurston

Synopsis: The genesis of The Story of Dr. Wassell is said to have been a story told by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to director Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper stars as Corydon M. Wassell, a real-life country doctor from Arkansas who worked as a medical missionary in China in the years prior to WWII. Read More

The Master Race

Actors: George Coulouris, Osa Massen, Stanley Ridges, Carl Esmond, Lloyd Bridges, Nancy Gates

Synopsis: The Master Race argues persuasively that, although it appeared that the Nazis would lose WW2, it was foolish to assume that Hitler's legacy would not insinuate itself into the postwar era. Nazi bigwig Von Beck (George Coulouris) arrives in a small Belgian village on the eve of its liberation by Read More

Ministry of Fear

Actors: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Dan Duryea, Carl Esmond, Percy Waram, Hillary Brooke

Synopsis: An innocent man is drawn into a web of espionage when he unwittingly comes into possession of a crucial piece of microfilm in this shadowy, ominous film noir. Fritz Lang's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel is filled with unusual touches, beginning with the fact that protagonist Stephen Neale (Ray Milland Read More

Address Unknown

Actors: Paul Lukas, Carl Esmond, Peter Van Eyck, Mady Christians

Synopsis: A plot revealed through the correspondence between German-American businessman and his Jewish partner, Lukas, the German-American, returns to Germany during the early Nazi years and gets caught up in the racist philosophies. He goes to the point of denying even his partner's daughter, who is Read More

First Comes Courage

Actors: Merle Oberon, Brian Aherne, Carl Esmond, Fritz Leiber, Erville Alderson

Synopsis: With Dorothy Arzner in the director's chair, it's no wonder that First Comes Courage has a more feminist slant than most WWII "underground" films. Merle Oberon plays Nicole Larsen, a member of the Norwegian resistance. To obtain important war information, Nicole romances Nazi major Paul Dichter Carl Esmond Read More

Margin for Error

Actors: Joan Bennett, Otto Preminger, Carl Esmond, Howard Freeman

Synopsis: Clare Booth Luce's once-timely stage comedy Margin for Error was indifferently transferred to the screen in 1943. Milton Berle stars as Moe Finkelstein, a Jewish Brooklyn policeman assigned to guard Nazi consul Karl Baumer (Otto Preminger) in pre-WW II New York. Baumer is not only an anti-Semitic Read More

Panama Hattie

Actors: Red Skelton, Ann Sothern, Rags Ragland, Ben Blue, Marsha Hunt

Synopsis: Cole Porter's musical hit Panama Hattie originally starred Ethel Merman on Broadway. But Merman was not a proven movie commodity, thus it was Ann Sothern who appeared in the film version as Hattie, brassy but golden-hearted proprietress of a Canal Zone hotel. Accustomed to dealing with such Read More

Pacific Rendezvous

Actors: Lee Bowman, Jean Rogers, Carl Esmond, Paul Cavanagh, Blanche Yurka

Synopsis: Pacific Rendezvous is a B-picture remake of the 1935 MGM A-picture Rendezvous, updated to accommodate WW2. Lee Bowman plays the old William Powell role as a American naval intelligence operative (this time named Lt. Bill Gordon) assigned to decipher enemy code. His mission is compromised by his Read More

Seven Sweethearts

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Van Heflin, Marsha Hunt, Cecilia Parker, Peggy Moran

Synopsis: This MGM musical lifts the premise of Pride and Prejudice and plunks it down into the early 1900s. S.Z. Sakall is a restaurateur who has decreed that his seven daughters must marry in order of age -- the oldest one first. Kathryn Grayson isn't the oldest, but she has the sweetest singing voice Read More

The Navy Comes Through

Actors: Pat O'Brien, George Murphy, Jane Wyatt, Jackie Cooper, Carl Esmond, Desi Arnaz

Synopsis: A combat picture was virtually a license to print money in 1942, and RKO Radio's The Navy Comes Through was no exception (net profit: $542,000). Most of the film takes place on the ramshackle old merchant-marine freighter, skippered by Captain McCall (Ray Collins). The captain and his stalwart Read More

Sundown

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Cedric Hardwicke, Harry Carey, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: Adapted by Barre Lyndon from his own Saturday Evening Post short story, Sundown takes place in Africa during WW2. British army major Coombes (George Sanders) cannot abide the local Arab population, and he has even less time for district commissioner Crawford (Bruce Cabot), who has befriended the 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

Thunder Afloat

Actors: Wallace Beery, Chester Morris, Virginia Grey, Douglas Dumbrille, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Thunder Afloat is set during the first world war. Wallace Beery plays an veteran tugboat captain who harbors a grudge against younger ex-pal Chester Morris. When Morris joins the navy as an officer, he runs across Beery, who resparks the feud. Both men bury the hatchet and work shoulder to Read More

The Dawn Patrol

Actors: Errol Flynn, David Niven, Basil Rathbone, Donald Crisp, Melville Cooper

Synopsis: This 1938 remake of Howard Hawks' 1930 film The Dawn Patrol is faithful to the original's basic plotline. The story is set during World War I; the scene is the French headquarters of the British Royal Flying Corps, 59th division. The corps is suffering heavy losses, a fact that ace pilot Courtney (Errol Flynn Read More

April Blossoms

Actors: Richard Tauber, Jane Baxter, Carl Esmond, Paul Graetz

Synopsis: April Blossoms is based loosely on incidents in the life of composer Franz Schubert, here portrayed by legendary tenor Richard Tauber. The story concentrates on Schubert's ill-fated romance with Vicki (Jane Baxter), the daughter of a prominent Austria ballet master. Upon realizing that Vicki is Read More

Burgtheater

Actors: Werner Krauss, Olga Tschechowa, Hans Moser

Synopsis: In this convoluted melodrama, an elderly thespian falls for a rising young starlet. He admits his love for her and then announces that he will retire from the stage. The young woman pretends she loves him too, but her real motive is to give her struggling lover, also an aspiring actor, a break. Read More

Invitation to the Waltz

Actors: Lilian Harvey, Wnedy Toye, Carl Esmond, Richard Bird

Synopsis: Lilian Harvey, the toast of two continents, is her usual radiant self in Invitation to the Waltz. Harvey plays Jenny Peachey (honest!), a Drury Lane ballerina during the Napoleonic Wars. Swept off her slippers by the handsome Duke of Wurtemberg (Harold Warrender), Jenny gives up her dancing career Read More

Evensong

Actors: Evelyn Laye, Fritz Kortner, Emlyn Williams, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Evensong is based on the teary novel by Beverly Nichols, which had previously spawned a lachrymose (and enormously successful) stage play (Kismet) by Nichols and Edward Knoblock. The stunning Evelyn Laye stars as Irela, an Irish prima donna who rises to success sans a lover to share it Read More

Blossom Time

Actors: Richard Tauber, Athene Seyler, Carl Esmond, Jane Baxter

Synopsis: It's difficult to believe that Sigmund Romberg's treacly operetta Blossom Time was ever produced anywhere outside of a high school gymnasium, but in fact the play was extremely popular in its first run. While several American musicals utilized the mittel-European ambience of Blossom Time, the only Read More

Liebelei

Actors: Magda Schneider, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Luise Ullrich, Paul Hoerbiger, Olga Tschechowa

Synopsis: Liebelei is one of the earliest of the cinematic banquets directed by German filmmaker Max Ophuls. The film, set in imperial Vienna, concerns the romance between a young girl and a lieutenant. A powerful baron misreads the lieutenant's ardor, assuming that it is being directed towards his own Read More