Cedric GibbonsFilmography

Ransom

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Donna Reed, Leslie Nielsen, Juano Hernandez, Robert Keith, Alexander Scourby

Synopsis: Viewers familiar with the 1996 Mel Gibson blockbuster Ransom may be disappointed that there are no smirking villains, car chases, or bloody fistfights in the original 1956 version of the same story. Even so, the earlier Ransom! has much to offer on a purely dramatic level. Based on the Richard Maibaum Read More

These Wilder Years

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Pidgeon, Betty Lou Keim, Don Dubbins

Synopsis: The MGM melodrama These Wilder Years marked the first onscreen pairing of Hollywood stars James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck. Lonely middle-aged businessman Steve Bradford (Cagney) returns to his old town in hopes of finding the son he fathered 20 years earlier. Choosing his career over marriage Read More

The Rack

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Paul Newman, Wendell Corey, Walter Pidgeon, Edmond O'Brien, Anne Francis

Synopsis: The Korean conflict of the early '50s saw widespread use of psychological torture by the North Korean communists on enemy prisoners of war. That young American GIs cracked under this brainwashing at higher rates than the troops of our allies led to much soul searching within the military and the Read More

High Society

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, John Lund

Synopsis: High Society is a glossy Technicolor-and-VistaVision musical remake of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story (1940), decked out with million-watt star power and a Cole Porter score. Set amongst the rich and famous in Newport, RI, the story revolves around the wedding plans of socialite Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly Read More

Tribute to a Badman

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Cagney, Don Dubbins, Stephen McNally, Irene Papas, Vic Morrow

Synopsis: The catch-all title Tribute to a Bad Man had been floating around MGM for years (at one point, it was the working title for The Bad and the Beautiful) before it was finally affixed to this big-budget western. Originally intended as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy, the film was recast with James Cagney Read More

The Opposite Sex

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Jeff Richards, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Harry James, Dick Shawn, Jim Backus

Synopsis: The Opposite Sex is an opulent musical remake of Clare Booth Luce's The Women (1939). June Allyson stars in the old Norma Shearer role, playing the virtuous wife who loses her husband to scheming Joan Collins (as the Joan Crawford character). At first agreeing to a divorce, June decides to win Read More

The Fastest Gun Alive

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, Broderick Crawford, Russ Tamblyn, Allyn Joslyn

Synopsis: In this western, a pacifistic store owner does all he can to avoid association with his father, a notorious gunfighter. One day he gets drunk and shows off his own considerable skills with a pistol. Unfortunately, this attracts the attention of the man who fancies himself the town's fastest draw Read More

The Swan

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Louis Jourdan, Agnes Moorehead, Jesse Royce Landis

Synopsis: Frances Howard starred as Princess Alexandria in the 1925 silent version of Ferenc Molnar's play The Swan; Lillian Gish assumed the role in the 1930 talkie version. The third and final adaptation starred Grace Kelly, who had one slight advantage over her predecessors; she would soon become a real Read More

Invitation to the Dance

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Igor Youskevitch, Claire Sombert, Carol Haney, David Kasday

Synopsis: MGM's Invitation to the Dance was the fruition of Gene Kelly's long-standing dream to create a plotless "concert" feature. Eschewing dialogue, Kelly tells three stories entirely through the medium of dance. The first sequence is a mime-like Pagliacci story, with Kelly as the Clown and Igor Youskevitch Read More

The Last Hunt

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget, Russ Tamblyn

Synopsis: Set in the West of the late 19th century, Richard Brooks' film stars Robert Taylor as Charles Gilson, a brutal buffalo hunter who kills purely for sport and enjoyment. Stewart Granger portrays Sandy McKenzie, a former hunter on whom Gilson is seeking revenge. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Somebody Up There Likes Me

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Paul Newman, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Everett Sloane, Eileen Heckart, Sal Mineo

Synopsis: Once you get past the fact that handsome Paul Newman could never pass for plug-ugly boxer Rocky Graziano in real life, you will be able to accept Somebody Up Their Likes Me as one of the more accomplished movie biopics of the 1950s. Based on Graziano's autobiography (co-written with Rowland Read More

Gaby

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Leslie Caron, John Kerr, Cedric Hardwicke, Taina Elg, Margalo Gillmore

Synopsis: The third film version of Robert E. Sherwood's play Waterloo Bridge, Gaby is also the most antiseptic of the three. In the original 1931 film, Mae Clarke is cast as a British streetwalker who falls despearately and tragically in love with aristocratic military officer Douglass Montgomery. In the Read More

Meet Me in Las Vegas

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Agnes Moorehead, Lili Darvas, Jim Backus

Synopsis: A whole slew of guest stars makes Meet Me in Las Vegas a special treat for movie buffs. The central plot concerns wealthy rancher Chuck Rodwell (Dan Dailey), who takes a Vegas vacation with his mother (Agnes Moorehead). At the same time, ballerina Maria Corvier (Cyd Charisse) also arrives in Las Read More

Forbidden Planet

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly

Synopsis: MGM's first big-budget science fiction film, Forbidden Planet, combined state-of-the-art special effects with a storyline based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. In the 23rd century, Cmdr. J.J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen) guides United Planets cruiser C-57-D on a rescue mission to faraway planet Read More

Lust for Life

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, James Donald, Pamela Brown, Everett Sloane

Synopsis: This filmed biography of Vincent Van Gogh was adapted by Norman Corwin from the best-selling novel by Irving Stone, which was in turn inspired by the written correspondence between Van Gogh and his brother Theo. Kirk Douglas plays the tormented genius, whose obsessive devotion to his art engulfs Read More

The Catered Affair

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds, Barry Fitzgerald, Rod Taylor

Synopsis: Bette Davis goes the "kitchen sink drama" route in The Catered Affair. As the frowsy wife of Bronx cabdriver Ernest Borgnine, Davis insists that her daughter Debbie Reynolds have a high-class wedding--caterers and all. Reynolds and future hubby Rod Taylor want a simple ceremony, but Davis' mind is Read More

Bad Day at Black Rock

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan

Synopsis: This powerfully tense, fast-paced suspense drama also yields a grim social message about racial prejudice. Spencer Tracy is John J. MacReedy, a one-armed stranger who comes to the tiny town of Black Rock one hot summer day in 1945, the first time the train has stopped there in years. He looks for Read More

I'll Cry Tomorrow

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert, Jo Van Fleet, Don Taylor

Synopsis: Susan Hayward pulls out all the stops, and then some, in this cinemadaptation of singer Lillian Roth's autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow. In as harshly realistic a manner as possible in the still censor-dominated Hollywood of 1955, the film recounts Roth's rise to fame, her precipitous fall and her Read More

Kismet

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Howard Keel, Ann Blyth, Dolores Gray, Vic Damone, Monty Woolley

Synopsis: This fourth film version of the warhorse Edward Knoblock theatrical piece Kismet was based on the Broadway musical version of the same property. Howard Keel stars as Hadji, the poet of old Baghdad, who goes from beggar to millionaire in a single day. Hadji's daughter Marsinah (Ann Blyth) falls in Read More

Blackboard Jungle

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Glenn Ford, Sidney Poitier, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Vic Morrow

Synopsis: In this gritty urban drama, war veteran Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) wants to begin his career as a teacher and is given an assignment at a boys high school in inner-city New York. However, he soon discovers the school is overrun by delinquents, led by Artie West (Vic Morrow), an insolent hood who Read More

Trial

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Dorothy McGuire, Arthur Kennedy, John Hodiak, Katy Jurado

Synopsis: Adapted by Don M. Mankiewicz from his own novel, Trial is a surprisingly timely story of how justice can sometimes be compromised by "special interests". It all begins when Mexican youth Angelo Chavez (Rafael Campos) is placed on trial for the murder of a white teenaged girl. Battling the Read More

Love Me or Leave Me

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell, Robert Keith, Tom Tully

Synopsis: One of the gutsiest movie musicals of the 1950s, Love Me or Leave Me is the true story of 1930s torch-singer Ruth Etting, here played by Doris Day. While working in a dime-a-dance joint, Ruth is discovered by Chicago racketeer Martin "The Gimp" Snyder (fascinatingly played with nary a redeeming Read More

It's Always Fair Weather

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray, Michael Kidd

Synopsis: Cooked up by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, It's Always Fair Weather could well have been titled On the Town Ten Years Later. Like 1949's On the Town (also a Comden/Green collaboration), this MGM musical follows the exploits of three servicemen buddies, played by Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd Read More

Interrupted Melody

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Eleanor Parker, Roger Moore, Cecil Kellaway, Peter Leeds

Synopsis: Interrupted Melody is the inspirational filmed biography of world-renowned Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence. Eleanor Parker plays Ms. Farrell, while her vocal renditions, ranging from selections from Madame Butterfly to MGM's own Over the Rainbow, were dubbed by Eileen Farrell, who would be Read More

Moonfleet

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, George Sanders, Joan Greenwood, Viveca Lindfors, Jon Whiteley

Synopsis: Director Fritz Lang was attracted to the British period piece Moonfleet because of the relatively unregenerate nature of its greedy "hero" Stewart Granger. Young Jon Whitely, who is in the legal custody of Granger, learns that he is to inherit a valuable diamond. Hoping to get his own hands on the Read More

Diane

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Pedro Armendáriz, Roger Moore, Marisa Pavan, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Lana Turner stars as Diane in this opulent costume drama. Set in 16th century France, the film finds the gorgeous Diane de Pottiers rising to a position of absolute power through her manipulation of the men in her life. Those men include King Francis I (Pedro Armendariz), Prince Henri (Roger Read More

Hit the Deck

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Jane Powell, Tony Martin, Debbie Reynolds, Walter Pidgeon, Vic Damone

Synopsis: Hit the Deck is the second film version of the same-named 1927 hit Broadway musical. Though updated for the 1950s, the basic plot remains the same. Sailors Tony Martin, Vic Damone and Russ Tamblyn spend their entire shore leave in pursuit of three beautiful gals. Martin is "that way" about Ann Read More

Many Rivers to Cross

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, Victor McLaglen, Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn

Synopsis: Packaged and sold as an outdoor actioner, Many Rivers to Cross is as much a comedy as anything else. Robert Taylor stars as 18th century trapper Bushrod Gentry, who is himself entrapped into marriage by the spunky Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker). Escaping his marital responsibilities (which Read More

The King's Thief

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, David Niven, George Sanders, Roger Moore

Synopsis: Director Robert Z. Leonard brought his 31-year association with MGM to a rousing close with The King's Thief. Set in England during the reign of Charles II (drolly portrayed by George Sanders), the film stars Edmund Purdom as Michael Dermott, who sets about to steal the crown jewels on behalf of Read More

The Scarlet Coat

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Cornel Wilde, Michael Wilding, Sr., Anne Francis, George Sanders, Robert Douglas

Synopsis: The infamous Benedict Arnold affair is the basis of the lively MGM costumer The Scarlet Coat. Arnold is played with suitably subtle menace by Robert Douglas, while his principal co-conspirator, Major John Andre, is essayed by Michael Wilding. The largely speculative storyline concerns the efforts Read More

The Glass Slipper

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Leslie Caron, Michael Wilding, Sr., Keenan Wynn, Estelle Winwood, Elsa Lanchester

Synopsis: The Glass Slipper is a charming retelling of the Cinderella story, eminently suitable for both kids and adults. Leslie Caron plays Ella, the plain-Jane stepsister of beautiful but mean-spirited Birdena (Amanda Blake) and Serafina (Lisa Daniels). While stepmother Widow Sonder (Elsa Lanchester) Read More

The Marauders

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dan Duryea, Keenan Wynn, Jeff Richards, Jarma Lewis, John Hudson

Synopsis: During her brief stay at MGM, starlet Jarma Lewis received starring roles in two programmers. One of these was The Marauders, in which she appeared with Dan Duryea, Keenan Wynn and Jeff Richards. The bulk of the film's drama is handled by Richards, cast as a homesteader who refuses to move despite Read More

The Prodigal

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Edmund Purdom, Louis Calhern, Audrey Dalton, James Mitchell, Neville Brand

Synopsis: One critic has noted that The Prodigal was aptly titled, inasmuch as it was all too prodigal with the funds of the then-flagging MGM studios. In its retelling of the 22-verse Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, the film helpfully fills in the story details inconsiderately left out of the Old Read More

The Tender Trap

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, David Wayne, Celeste Holm, Jarma Lewis, Lola Albright

Synopsis: Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith's Broadway hit The Tender Trap is transformed into a beguiling Frank Sinatra film vehicle. Sinatra plays a Manhattan showbiz agent, Charlie Y. Reader, who enjoys the attentions of several willing young ladies. At an audition, Charlie meets aspiring actress Julie Read More

Rose Marie

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas, Bert Lahr, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: 1954's Rose Marie is the third film version of the 1924 Otto Harbach-Oscar Hammerstein-Rudolph Frinl operetta of the same name. Though not a completely faithful adaptation, this version is closer to the original than the (admittedly enjoyable) Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald version of 1936. Ann Blyth Read More

Deep in My Heart

Crew: Art Director

Actors: José Ferrer, Helen Traubel, Merle Oberon, Walter Pidgeon, Doe Avedon

Synopsis: Deep in My Heart is the MGM-ified biography of composer Sigmund Romberg, here played by José Ferrer. Evidently the scripters didn't feel that the life of Romberg (as set down by author Elliott Arnold, whose book was used as the film's basis) had enough drama to fill out two hours and ten minutes. Read More

Rhapsody

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Vittorio Gassman, John Ericson, Louis Calhern, Michael Chekhov

Synopsis: Rhapsody is high-gloss soap opera in the grand MGM manner. Elizabeth Taylor stars as Louise Durant, the beautiful but spoiled daughter of millionaire Nicholas Durant (Louis Calhern). Accustomed to getting whatever she wants, Louise sets her sights on violin student Paul Bronte (Vittorio Gassman). Read More

Executive Suite

Crew: Art Director

Actors: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon

Synopsis: Cameron Hawley's novel Executive Suite appeared around the same time as two other tales of big-business intrigue, the 1954 film A Woman's World and the 1955 Rod Serling teleplay Patterns. Elements of all three properties inevitably overlap. In Executive Suite, a furniture-store executive dies Read More

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Howard Keel, Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Rall, Marc Platt, Jane Powell

Synopsis: Based extremely loosely on the Stephen Vincent Benet story Sobbin' Women," Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is one of the best MGM musicals of the 1950s. Most of the story takes place on an Oregon ranch, maintained by Adam Pontabee (Howard Keel) and his six brothers, played by Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn Read More

Green Fire

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Grace Kelly, Paul Douglas, John Ericson, Murvyn Vye

Synopsis: Set in the coffee fields of Colombia, Green Fires stars Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly. Granger plays emerald prospector Rian X. Mitchell, who intends to explore an old deserted mine despite the protests of his partner Vic Leonard Paul Douglas and the threat of death at the hands of local bandit Read More

Rogue Cop

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Janet Leigh, George Raft, Steve Forrest, Anne Francis

Synopsis: MGM romantic Robert Taylor turns nasty in this low-budget crime melodrama. Taylor plays a cop who subsidizes his income with bribes and payoffs from various criminals and politicians. Taylor's brother (Steve Forrest), a rookie on the police force, is as honest as his brother is crooked. The Read More

Her Twelve Men

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Robert Ryan, Barry Sullivan, Richard Haydn, Barbara Lawrence

Synopsis: After a fruitful 15-year association, Greer Garson and MGM parted company with Her Twelve Men. The William Roberts-Laura Z. Hobson screenplay was adapted from Louise Baker's autobiographical novel Miss Baker's Dozen, the title of which pointed out the fact (which the film's title does not) that Read More

The Student Prince

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, John Ericson, Louis Calhern, Edmund Gwenn

Synopsis: Edmund Purdom plays Prince Karl, but Mario Lanza sings the bold tunes coming out of Purdom's mouth, in this MGM remake of the 1927 Ernst Lubitsch silent picture based on the renowned 1924 operetta by Sigmund Romberg and Dorothy Donnelly, which itself was based on the novel and play by Wilhelm Read More

Brigadoon

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Elaine Stewart, Barry Jones

Synopsis: Reportedly, Vincente Minnelli turned down the opportunity to film Brigadoon on location in Scotland insisting that MGM's studio mockups looked more Scottish than the genuine article. This lavish adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical stars Gene Kelly as an American tourist who Read More

Men of the Fighting Lady

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Louis Calhern, Dewey Martin, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: Leave it to MGM to turn the Korean War into a splashy, big-budget, all-star extravaganza. Men of the Fighting Lady is set on the US aircraft career of the same name. Van Johnson stars as Lt. Howard Thayer, while other MGM stalwarts in the cast include Walter Pidgeon, Kennan Wynn and Louis Calhern. Read More

Valley of the Kings

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, Carlos Thompson, Samia Gamal, Kurt Kasznar, Victor Jory

Synopsis: Using the dry historical tome Gods, Graves and Scholars as its source, MGM came up with the rip-roaring adventure film Valley of the Kings. Robert Taylor plays Mark Brandon, an Indiana Jones-style archaeologist who embarks upon an expedition to Egypt. Brandon has agreed to help Ann Mercedes (Eleanor Parker Read More

The Last Time I Saw Paris

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor

Synopsis: Loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Paradise Revisited, MGM's The Last Time I Saw Paris is a star-studded soap opera, luxuriously lensed by director Richard Brooks. In his last film as an MGM contractee, Van Johnson plays reporter Charles Wills, who while covering the VE Day celebrations in Read More

The Long, Long Trailer

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, Gladys Hurlbut

Synopsis: At the height of their TV fame, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were contracted by MGM to make two theatrical films. The first of these, The Long, Long Trailer, stars Lucy and Desi as an upwardly mobile couple who decide to buy a trailer so they can live together while his job takes him around the Read More

Prisoner of War

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Dewey Martin, Steve Forrest, Oscar Homolka, Robert Horton

Synopsis: The horrors suffered by American prisoners of war at the hands of the North Koreans during the Korean war provide the basis of this drama. Allegedly based on the true stories of those who survived the tortures, it centers on an intelligence officer (Ronald Reagan) who is sent into a POW camp to Read More

Easy to Love

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Van Johnson, Tony Martin, John Bromfield, Edna Skinner

Synopsis: The Cole Porter title tune is but one of the musical highlights in the (literally) splashy Esther Williams musical Easy to Love. Reshuffling plot devices utilized in previous Williams vehicles, the film casts Williams as Julie Hallerton, the star of Ray Lloyd's (Van Johnson) aquacade. She loves Read More

Latin Lovers

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Ricardo Montalban, John Lund, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Lana Turner stars in this musical/romantic comedy amalgam from director Mervyn Leroy. Turner plays Nora Taylor, a wealthy heiress who finds herself seeing a psychiatrist because she can't decide whether she is loved for herself or her money. When her rich boyfriend (John Lund) takes off for Read More

Take the High Ground

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Elaine Stewart, Russ Tamblyn, Carleton Carpenter

Synopsis: "You guys will never be soldiers!" With these words Richard Widmark opens and closes Take the High Ground. Widmark plays a tough drill sergeant, whipping his recruits through basic training in preparation for shipment to Korea. Carleton Carpenter is the standard-issue private who just can't seem Read More

The Actress

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins, Ian Wolfe

Synopsis: The Actress is based on Years Ago, one of several autobiographies by actress/playwright Ruth Gordon. Jean Simmons stars as blossoming teenager Ruth Gordon Jones, who is determined to become a famous stage star despite the objections of her stubborn ex-sea captain father Clinton Jones (Spencer Tracy Read More

The Big Leaguer

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Vera-Ellen, Jeff Richards, Richard Jaeckel, William Campbell

Synopsis: Big Leaguer was the inauspicious feature-film debut for director Robert Aldrich. Edward G. Robinson stars as the real-life Hans Lobert, the baseball scout in charge of the New York Giants' Florida training camp. Each year, a new crop of would-be ballplayers are given a two-week tryout under Read More

The Band Wagon

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan

Synopsis: One of the most subtle and sophisticated of the musical comedies that came out of MGM's Arthur Freed Unit in the '40s and '50s, The Band Wagon stars Fred Astaire as Tony Hunter, a movie star whose career is in a downturn. Looking for a boost, Tony decides to try starring in a Broadway musical. His Read More

Escape from Fort Bravo

Crew: Art Director

Actors: William Holden, Eleanor Parker, John Forsythe, William Demarest, William Campbell

Synopsis: A nail-biting Indian deadlock remains the climax of this otherwise overly verbose Western filmed in M-G-M's then-new Ansco colors (forerunner of Eastmancolor). After ruthlessly dragging an escaped prisoner through the Arizona desert, Union Army Captain Roper (William Holden) suffers rebuke from Read More

Torch Song

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Sr., Gig Young, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry Morgan

Synopsis: Joan Crawford's first Technicolor feature has come to be known as a textbook example of "high camp." Crawford stars as musical comedy luminary Jenny Stewart, who has been hardened by the worst life has to offer. Romance enters her life in the form of her new piano accompanist, blinded war-veteran Read More

The Girl Who Had Everything

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Fernando Lamas, William Powell, Gig Young, James Whitmore

Synopsis: A good man tries to warn his daughter away from a bad man who has stolen her heart in this melodrama. Steve Latimer (William Powell) is a successful defense attorney who has gone out of his way to give his daughter Jean (Elizabeth Taylor) every advantage in life. However, Steve's generosity and Read More

Cry of the Hunted

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Vittorio Gassman, Barry Sullivan, Polly Bergen, William Conrad, Mary Zavian

Synopsis: On the whole, the MGM B product of the 1950s contained some of the studio's best-ever "small" pictures. Filmed on location in the Louisana swamplands, Cry of the Hunted boils down to an extended chase, with escaped convict Vittorio Gassman as the fox and sheriff Barry Sullivan as the hound. Sullivan Read More

Sombrero

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Ricardo Montalban, Vittorio Gassman, Yvonne De Carlo, Cyd Charisse

Synopsis: This tuneful romantic melodrama is set in a tiny Mexican village and is comprised of three storylines. One tale concerns a pair of young lovers from rival villages who will not be able to marry until a long time feud is ended. In another tale, an heir to a large fortune falls in love with an Read More

The Story of Three Loves

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Ethel Barrymore, Leslie Caron, Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Farley Granger

Synopsis: This anthology film tells three stories of love involving the passengers of an ocean liner at sea. In the first, "The Jealous Lover," James Mason plays Charles Coudray, a well-known ballet director. When someone asks Coudray why he staged his masterpiece, "Astarte," only once, he tells the story Read More

A Slight Case of Larceny

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Eddie Bracken, Elaine Stewart, Marilyn Erskine, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: "Slight" is right: this harmless comedy programmer is as inconsequential as it is enjoyable. It's the tale of two Army buddies: go-getter Geechy Cheevers (Mickey Rooney) and sedate family man Freddie Clopp (Eddie Bracken). Inveigling his way into Freddie's household, Geechy drives everyone bonkers Read More

Lili

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kurt Kasznar

Synopsis: Based on the story by Paul Gallico, Lili stars Leslie Caron as the title character, a 16-year-old waif who runs off to join a carnival. Embittered, crippled puppeteer Mel Ferrer treats Lili with contempt; only by speaking through his puppets is Ferrer able to express his genuine love for the girl. Read More

Give a Girl A Break

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marge Champion, Gower Champion, Debbie Reynolds, Helen Wood, Bob Fosse

Synopsis: After providing excellent support in previous MGM musicals, the singing-dancing team of Marge and Gower Champion were rewarded with their own starring vehicle, Give a Girl a Break. Marge plays one of three actresses competing for the leading role in a Broadway show directed by Gower. The other two Read More

Jeopardy

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Ralph Meeker, Lee Aaker

Synopsis: The answer is: A turgid melodrama. The question: What is Jeopardy? Barbara Stanwyck stars as a suburbanite on a Mexican vacation with her husband (Barry Sullivan) and son (Lee Aaker). The threesome runs afoul of escape convict Ralph Meeker. Stanwyck's dilemma: Attempting to rescue her husband from Read More

Scandal at Scourie

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Corcoran, Agnes Moorehead, Arthur Shields

Synopsis: Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon were together again for the last time in Scandal at Scourie. Filmed on location in Canada, the plot concerns a childless Protestant couple, the McChesneys (Garson and Pidgeon), whose lives are profoundly altered by an orphaned Catholic girl named Patsy (Donna Corcoran Read More

Remains to Be Seen

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Van Johnson, Louis Calhern, Angela Lansbury, John Beal

Synopsis: June Allyson plays a band singer working in New York City; Van Johnson is the manager of a fancy apartment house where a murder is committed. The victim is Allyson's wealthy uncle, and since she can't account for her actions at the time of the crime, Our Heroine is the principal suspect. The real Read More

The Clown

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Tim Considine, Jane Greer, Loring Smith, Philip Ober

Synopsis: An unofficial remake of The Champ, The Clown concerns Dodo Delwyn (Red Skelton), a down-and-out performer with abundant and obvious talent, but also a self-destructive tendency to overindulge his drinking and gambling habits. Once a Ziegfeld headliner, Dodo is now lucky to get jobs playing a clown Read More

The Great Diamond Robbery

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Cara Williams, James Whitmore, Kurt Kasznar, Dorothy Stickney

Synopsis: MGM was never quite sure what to do with their resident funster Red Skelton, and The Great Diamond Robbery betrays this uncertainty. Skelton plays Ambrose C. Park, a diamond cutter who is led to believe that he's the long-lost heir to a fortune. Actually, Ambrose has been duped by shyster lawyer Read More

Small Town Girl

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jane Powell, Farley Granger, Ann Miller, S.Z. Sakall, Robert Keith, Bobby Van

Synopsis: A remake of the 1936 Janet Gaynor vehicle of the same name, Small Town Girl stars Jane Powell in the title role. Powell plays Cindy Kimball, daughter of village judge Gordon Kimball (Robert Keith). When wealthy playboy Rick Livingston (Farley Granger) is arrested for speeding, Judge Kimball Read More

Dream Wife

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Walter Pidgeon, Betta St. John, Eduard Franz

Synopsis: Clemson Reade (Cary Grant) is the kind of man who wants to marry an old-fashioned girl, one who will stay home and take care of her husband. However, he's fallen in love with Priscilla "Effie" Effington (Deborah Kerr), who has an exciting career with the State Department that she has no intention Read More

Ride, Vaquero!

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Anthony Quinn, Kurt Kasznar

Synopsis: Set in the southernmost regions of Texas, Ride, Vaquero stars Robert Taylor as a steely-eyed gunman named Rio. In league with Mexican bandit Jose Esqueda (Anthony Quinn), Rio participates in the sacking of Brownsville. Only one man seems to have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Read More

Fast Company

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Howard Keel, Polly Bergen, Marjorie Main, Robert Burton

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a young woman inherits a race horse. She wants to race it but encounters difficulty with its trainer who wants to be able to buy the horse for himself. To do so, he makes sure the horse keeps losing races. The woman refuses to sell it. Later, race track con artists try to Read More

I Love Melvin

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Una Merkel, Richard Anderson, Jim Backus, Allyn Joslyn

Synopsis: Singin' in the Rain co-stars Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds were re-teamed in the ebullient little musical I Love Melvin. O'Connor plays Melvin Hoover, the hapless assistant to Look magazine photographer Mergo (Jim Backus). When he falls in love with chorus girl Judy LeRoy (Reynolds), Melvin Read More

The Naked Spur

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell

Synopsis: The powerhouse combination of star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann score another cinematic bullseye in The Naked Spur. Stewart plays a taciturn frontiersman who loses his home while he's off fighting the Civil War. To raise enough money for a new grubstake, Stewart becomes a bounty hunter Read More

Julius Caesar

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud, Louis Calhern, Greer Garson, Edmond O'Brien, Deborah Kerr

Synopsis: Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed this exquisite version of William Shakespeare's play. Louis Calhern is Julius Caesar, whose conquests have enabled him to rise to the status of Roman dictator. But his ascent to almost God-like status has given pause to influential members of the Roman Senate. Chief Read More

Young Bess

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jean Simmons, Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Charles Laughton, Kay Walsh

Synopsis: This costume drama was based on the historical fiction of Margaret Irwin, which embellishes the facts of the early years of England's eventual Queen Elizabeth I. It's told in flashback style, starting with the horrible day when King Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) sends away the future queen, young Read More

Battle Circus

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, June Allyson, Keenan Wynn, Robert Keith, William Campbell

Synopsis: In his only MGM film, Humphrey Bogart plays the commanding officer of a M*A*S*H unit during the Korean War. Bogart runs his operation by the book, though he can take time out now and again for compassion. When nurse June Allyson shows up, Bogie is irritated by her foolhardiness and misplaced Read More

Kiss Me Kate

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Keenan Wynn, Bobby Van

Synopsis: Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is a musical within a musical -- altogether appropriate, since its source material, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, was a play within a play. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson star as famous Broadway singing team who haven't worked together since their acrimonious Read More

Love Is Better Than Ever

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Larry Parks, Elizabeth Taylor, Josephine Hutchinson, Elinor Donahue, Tom Tully, Ann Doran

Synopsis: Though completed in 1950, Love Is Better Than Ever was held back from release until 1952, due in great part to the "political undesirability" of star Larry Parks, whose career was effectively ruined after he humbled himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Parks plays Broadway Read More

Pat and Mike

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Aldo Ray, Jim Backus, William Ching, Sammy White

Synopsis: Pat (Katharine Hepburn), a college phys-ed instructor, enters into professional competition as a golf and tennis player. Mike (Spencer Tracy), a likeable but unscrupulous sports promoter, first attempts to bribe Pat to lose, but later becomes her manager. Pat performs brilliantly until her Read More

The Prisoner of Zenda

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, James Mason, Louis Calhern, Jane Greer, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Mistaken identity and underhanded dealings set the stage for this adventure story based on Anthony Hope's classic novel. Rudolph Rassendyll (Stewart Granger) is a British tourist visiting the nation of Ruritania in the Balkans. A number of people comment upon Rassendyll's remarkable resemblance to Read More

Invitation

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Dorothy McGuire, Ruth Roman, Louis Calhern, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Bronislau Kaper's haunting musical score for A Life of Her Own (1951) was recycled in the romantic melodrama Invitation. Dorothy McGuire stars as Ellen Bowker, a wealthy young woman with a rare heart condition. Knowing that his daughter may have only a year or so to live, Ellen's father Simon Read More

The Merry Widow

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Lana Turner, Fernando Lamas, Una Merkel, Richard Haydn, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Based on an operetta by Franz Lehar, this remake of the 1934 original finds a wealthy widow (Lana Turner) returning to her husband's native land to dedicate a memorial to him. The king (Thomas Gomez) of the country, deep in debt, tries to convince her to stay by offering a young count (Fernando Lamas Read More

The Plymouth Adventure

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Gene Tierney, Van Johnson, Lloyd Bridges, Leo Genn

Synopsis: Plymouth Adventure earned a footnote in film history as the last directorial effort by the prolific Clarence Brown. Otherwise, this colorful re-creation of the Pilgrims' journey to America is a workmanlike job, never inspired but always interesting. Spencer Tracy stars as bull-stubborn Captain Read More

Million Dollar Mermaid

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Donna Corcoran

Synopsis: Who else but Esther Williams could star in a romantic drama (with musical numbers) bearing a title like this? In Million Dollar Mermaid, Williams plays Annette Kellerman, a real-life Australian swimming star who took up the sport as a child to strengthen her legs, which were severely weakened by a Read More

Just This Once

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Janet Leigh, Peter Lawford, Lewis Stone, Marilyn Erskine, Richard Anderson

Synopsis: Peter Lawford goes through his standard "rich, spoiled young playboy" paces in the MGM comedy Just This Once. In danger of squandering his entire fortune, the wastrelly Mark MacLene (Peter Lawford) is put on a strict allowance by an old family friend, Judge Samuel Coulter (Lewis Stone). To make Read More

Rogue's March

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Peter Lawford, Richard Greene, Janice Rule, Leo G. Carroll, John Abbott

Synopsis: Rogue's March was described by one observer as an eastern western. A mustachioed Peter Lawford stars as Capt. Dion Lenbridge of His Majesty's Service. Branded a traitor, Lenbridge is cashiered from the regiment. In fact, Lenbridge isn't a traitor, but he spends the next 84 minutes proving it. He Read More

My Man and I

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Shelley Winters, Ricardo Montalban, Wendell Corey, Claire Trevor, Robert Burton

Synopsis: While Shelley Winters is top-billed, Ricardo Montalban is the real star of My Man and I. Montalban plays Mexican transient farmer Chu-Chu Ramirez, determined to make something of himself and improve his lot in life. He falls in love with disillusioned alcoholic Nancy (Winters), intending to help Read More

Sky Full of Moon

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Carleton Carpenter, Jan Sterling, Keenan Wynn, Robert Burton, Elaine Stewart

Synopsis: Sky Full of Moon gets under way when Vegas gambling-joint owner Al (Keenan Wynn) rescues rodeo rider Harley Williams (Carleton Carpenter) from drowning. Harley is then "adopted" as a good-luck charm by Al's change girl Dixie Delmar (Jan Sterling). When their lucky gambling streak comes to an end Read More

The Belle of New York

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred Astaire, Vera-Ellen, Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, Alice Pearce

Synopsis: A lesser Fred Astaire effort, Belle of New York is set during the turn of the century. Astaire plays a footloose and fancy-free playboy who falls in love with Salvation Army lass Vera-Ellen. To prove his worth to the girl, Astaire breaks down and gets a job. Naturally, there's plenty of Read More

Scaramouche

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Eleanor Parker, Janet Leigh, Mel Ferrer, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: This delightful adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's swashbuckling novel stars Stewart Granger as Andre Moreau, an 18th-century French nobleman who is publicly humiliated by the Marquis de Maynes (Mel Ferrer). Challenged to a sword duel by the Marquis, Andre, who knows nothing about fencing, runs away Read More

Desperate Search

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Howard Keel, Jane Greer, Patricia Medina, Keenan Wynn, Robert Burton

Synopsis: Desperate Search is a lower-echelon MGM programmer, elevated by the crisp direction of cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis. Jane Greer plays the mother of two small children who are on board an airliner which crashes. The children survive, but are stranded in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. With Read More

Young Man with Ideas

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Ruth Roman, Denise Darcel, Nina Foch, Donna Corcoran

Synopsis: The Young Man with Ideas in this MGM production is idealistic lawyer Maxwell Webster (Glenn Ford). Too self-effacing for his own good, Webster vegetates in Montana with his wife Julie (Ruth Roman) and children for nearly 10 years before starting life anew in California. Living penuriously while Read More

Singin' in the Rain

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell

Synopsis: Hollywood, 1927: the silent-film romantic team of Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) is the toast of Tinseltown. While Lockwood and Lamont personify smoldering passions onscreen, in real life the down-to-earth Lockwood can't stand the egotistical, brainless Lina. He prefers the Read More

Everything I Have Is Yours

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marge Champion, Gower Champion, Dennis O'Keefe, Monica Lewis, Dean Miller

Synopsis: The husband and wife dance team of Marge Champion and Gower Champion are aptly cast as Chuck and Pamela Hubbard, a pair of happily married hoofers, in this musical. The Hubbards have dreamed for years of taking their act to Broadway, and after much hard work and perseverance, they finally get Read More

When in Rome

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Paul Douglas, Joseph Calleia, Carlo Rizzo, Tudor Owen

Synopsis: During the Vatican Holy Year of 1950, confidence trickster Joe Brewster (Paul Douglas) disguises himself as a priest and heads to the Holy City. It is Brewster's intention to use his faux clerical garb to evade arrest by the American authorities. But through the influence of American priest Father Read More

Washington Story

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Patricia Neal, Louis Calhern, Sidney Blackmer, Philip Ober

Synopsis: Washington Story stars Van Johnson as mildly liberal congressman Joseph T. Gresham. For reasons that he can't fathom, Gresham has been targeted for abuse by powerful columnist Gilbert Nunnaly (Philip Ober). Working in cahoots with Nunnaly is journalist Alice Kingsley (Patricia Neal), who pretends Read More

The Wild North

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Wendell Corey, Cyd Charisse, Morgan Farley

Synopsis: Filmed on location in Canada, The Wild North stars Stewart Granger as renegade trapper Jules Vincent. Forced to kill in self-defence, Vincent hides out in the wilderness, obliging RCMP constable Pedley (Wendell Corey) to chase after him in some of the most treacherous territory in Northern Read More

You for Me

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Peter Lawford, Jane Greer, Gig Young, Howard Wendell

Synopsis: You for Me stars Peter Lawford as a profligate playboy who's a nice guy underneath. After suffering a hunting accident which leaves him with a butt full of buckshot, Lawford is interred in the hospital that his donations have kept afloat. Nurse Jane Greer refuses to treat Lawford any better than Read More

Talk About a Stranger

Crew: Art Director

Actors: George Murphy, Nancy Davis, Dennis Price, Lewis Stone, Kurt Kasznar

Synopsis: Young Robert Fontaine, Jr. (Billy Gray) lives with his hard-working father (George Murphy) and mother (Nancy Davis), who is soon to give birth to a second child, on their northern California citrus farm. He's lonely on the farm and has been saving to buy a dog. One day, a mysterious stranger (Kurt Read More

Lovely to Look At

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Red Skelton, Marge Champion, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gower Champion

Synopsis: The reason the 1935 Astaire/Rogers film version of Roberta was unavailable for years was that, in 1952, MGM bought the property and refilmed it under the title Lovely to Look At. Inheriting one-half of a Parisian dress salon from his late aunt, Red Skelton travels to France with his showbiz Read More

Fearless Fagan

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Janet Leigh, Carleton Carpenter, Keenan Wynn, Richard Anderson, Ellen Corby

Synopsis: The unbreakable bond between a young man and his pet lion provides the action in this comedy. The trouble begins when the young man becomes a private in the army. Because he cannot bear to sell his lion Fagan to a mean-spirited circus trainer, the private asks his sergeant to help him find a good Read More

Holiday for Sinners

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gig Young, Janice Rule, Keenan Wynn, William Campbell, Richard Anderson

Synopsis: This minor MGM feature stars Gig Young, Janice Rule, Keenan Wynn and Richard Anderson as diverse individuals caught up in New Orleans' Mardi Gras celebration. Young is cast in the leading role as a doctor, whose plans for the celebration are altered when punch drunk prizefighter Wynn commits Read More

The Bad and the Beautiful

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan

Synopsis: Kirk Douglas plays the corrupt and amoral head of a major film studio in this Hollywood drama, often regarded as one of the film's industry's most interesting glimpses at itself. Actress Gloria Lorrison (Lana Turner), director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell Read More

Carbine Williams

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Stewart, Jean Hagen, Wendell Corey, Carl Benton Reid, Paul Stewart

Synopsis: The tougher postwar screen image of James Stewart is given a good workout in the fact-based Carbine Williams. In 1952, the world at large knew Marsh Williams as the developer of the US Army's M-1 carbine rifle. The film builds up to this event by detailing Williams' previous existence as a Read More

Glory Alley

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ralph Meeker, Leslie Caron, Kurt Kasznar, Gilbert Roland, John McIntire

Synopsis: Authentic New Orleans locations enhance the overall enjoyment of the prizefight melodrama Glory Alley. A mere few seconds before a championship bout, Socks Barbarrosa (Ralph Meeker) decides to throw in the towel so far as his boxing career is concerned. Socks' friends, family and handlers assume Read More

Skirts Ahoy!

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Joan Evans, Vivian Blaine, Barry Sullivan, Keefe Brasselle

Synopsis: Esther Williams generously shares screen time with Joan Evans and Vivian Blaine in Skirts Ahoy! The three leading ladies play WAVE officers who experience a daunting series of romantic misadventures. Whitney Young (Williams) had joined the WAVES after leaving her fiancé at the altar. Conversely Read More

Above and Beyond

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, James Whitmore, Larry Keating, Larry Gates

Synopsis: Above and Beyond is the story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as told from the perspective of the man who flew the mission. Robert Taylor stars as Col. Paul Tibbetts, commander of the Enola Gay. Once selected for this extremely dangerous mission, Tibbetts must hand-pick a crew worthy of the Read More

The Girl in White

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Arthur Kennedy, Gary Merrill, Mildred Dunnock, Jesse White

Synopsis: June Allyson portrays real-life doctor Emily Dunning in this respectful biopic. Emily chooses a medical career despite turn-of-the-century prejudice against female physicians. The only job open to her is in a slum hospital in the Bowery, where she performs with courage and perseverance, exposing Read More

No Questions Asked

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, George Murphy, Jean Hagen, Richard Anderson

Synopsis: Barry Sullivan plays an eager young lawyer who is willing to sacrifice any and all scruples on the upward climb. He is put on retainer by a gangster, and soon is ankle-deep in an insurance racket. When he wants to pull out, Sullivan is framed for a gangland murder. No Questions Asked was in line Read More

The Unknown Man

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Ann Harding, Barry Sullivan, Keefe Brasselle, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Highly respected defense attorney Dwight Bradley Mason (Walter Pidgeon) is able to clear young Rudi Wallchek (Keefe Brasselle) of a murder rap. When it's all over, however, Rudi lets slip a careless comment which leads Mason to believe that his client was guilty after all. Using the evidence at Read More

Lone Star

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Broderick Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi

Synopsis: During the 1845 battle for Texas' independence, a cattle baron (Clark Gable) spars with an evil senator (Broderick Crawford) over the state's future and for the affections of newpaperwoman Ava Gardner. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Excuse My Dust

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Sally Forrest, MacDonald Carey, William Demarest, Monica Lewis

Synopsis: Excuse My Dust is one of the few Red Skelton musicals in which Skelton is not obliged to share screen space with the likes of Eleanor Powell, Esther Williams or Fernando Lamas. Set in 1900, the film stars Red as zany inventor Joe Belden. Enchanted by the new-fangled horseless carriages, Belden Read More

The Light Touch

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, George Sanders, Kurt Kasznar, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: Filmed on location in Italy, The Light Touch served as a showcase for MGM's newest female star Pier Angeli. The title refers to the nimble-fingered technique utilized by art thief Sam Conride (Stewart Granger). Sam is a cog in the wheel of the operation controlled by illegal art peddler Felix Read More

Mr. Imperium

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Ezio Pinza, Marjorie Main, Barry Sullivan, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Ezio Pinza stars as the title character, a prince who falls for nightclub singer Fredda Barlo (Lana Turner) when the two meet on vacation in Italy. After more than a decade, they reunite, only now Barlo is a Hollywood superstar and Imperium has ascended to the throne of king. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Read More

The People Against O'Hara

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien, Diana Lynn, John Hodiak, Eduardo Ciannelli

Synopsis: Fish-market worker Johnny O'Hara (James Arness) is named as a suspect when his boss -- with whom he had a dispute the previous day -- is shot to death in an apparent robbery. When he's arrested, his family appeals to their old friend James Curtayne (Spencer Tracy), who was once a renowned criminal Read More

Night into Morning

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ray Milland, John Hodiak, Nancy Davis, Lewis Stone, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Ray Milland plays a happily married college professor whose wife and child perish in a fire. Despondent, Milland loses himself in drink, despite the efforts of his friends and fellow faculty members. He is on the verge of suicide before he is salvaged the love of Nancy Davis (who off-screen was Read More

Across the Wide Missouri

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, John Hodiak, Adolphe Menjou, Maria Elena Marques

Synopsis: Clark Gable is the largely nonheroic hero of the sprawling western Across the Wide Missouri. A cunning trapper who lives purely by his wits, Gable avoids being scalped by the Blackfoot Indians by marrying Maria Elena Marques, the chief's daughter. This marriage of convenience also allows Gable to Read More

An American in Paris

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, Nina Foch

Synopsis: Gene Kelly does his patented Pal Joey bit as Jerry Mulligan, an opportunistic American painter living in Paris' "starving artists" colony. He is discovered by wealthy Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), who becomes Jerry's patroness in more ways than one. Meanwhile, Jerry plays hookey on this setup by Read More

Three Guys Named Mike

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Van Johnson, Howard Keel, Barry Sullivan, Phyllis Kirk

Synopsis: Pretty stewardess Marcy Lewis (Jane Wyman) must choose between Three Guys Named Mike in this frothy MGM concoction. There's Mike Lawrence (Van Johnson), a science student who moonlights as a bartender. There's Mike Tracy (Barry Sullivan), a wheeler-dealer ad executive. And finally, there's Mike Read More

The Man with a Cloak

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Calhern, Leslie Caron, Joe de Santis

Synopsis: Set in 19th-century New York, this mystery begins when a Frenchwoman shows up at the home of one of Napoleon's former marshals. The alcoholic man is badly crippled and slowly dying, but this doesn't stop the forthright lady from pushing him to change his will to include his estranged grandson so Read More

Westward the Women

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, John McIntire, Henry Nakamura, Julie Bishop

Synopsis: Though Frank Capra wrote the original story treatment for MGM's Westward the Women, he was too busy to direct the film, and handed the reigns instead to his former Liberty Films partner William A. Wellman. This stark, no-nonsense outdoor drama stars Robert Taylor as a trail guide named Buck, who Read More

Texas Carnival

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Paula Raymond

Synopsis: MGM's new musical screen team of Esther Williams and Howard Keel were given plenty to do in the pleasant if unambitious songfest Texas Carnival. Williams plays Debbie Telford, one-half of a carnival performing team. The other half is Corny Quinnell (Red Skelton), who breaks up the act when he is Read More

Callaway Went Thataway

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Dorothy McGuire, Howard Keel, Jesse White, Fay Roope

Synopsis: Callaway Went Thataway is an amiable spoof of early television's "Hopalong Cassidy" craze. Fred MacMurray and Dorothy McGuire star as Mike Frye and Deborah Patterson, advertising copywriters who have pulled off quite a coup by purchasing the old "Smokey Callaway" Westerns for TV. Trouble begins Read More

Vengeance Valley

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker, Joanne Dru, Sally Forrest, John Ireland

Synopsis: The old "Cain and Abel" plot device is redefined within Western terms in MGM's Vengeance Valley. Burt Lancaster stars as ranch-hand Owen Daybright, who has been raised as a son by rancher Arch Stroble (Ray Collins). Stroble's natural son Lee (Robert Walker) has always been envious of Owen, who in Read More

Quo Vadis?

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Patricia Laffan

Synopsis: Originally advertised as "Colossal Quo Vadis," this opulent MGM production is far and away the most elaborate of the many versions of Henryk Sienkiewicz' novel. The plot, as always, concerns the romance between a beautiful early Christian woman (Deborah Kerr) and the initially agnostic Roman Read More

The Sellout

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Paula Raymond, John Hodiak, Audrey Totter, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Gerald Mayer proved once more that he had talent above and beyond being the nephew of MGM-head Louis B. Mayer with his direction of The Sellout. The story begins with a bang, as big-city newspaper editor Haven Allridge (Walter Pidgeon) falls victim to the small-town tyranny of corrupt sheriff Read More

Royal Wedding

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, Sarah Churchill, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: Two real-life events were incorporated into the plot of the 1951 MGM musical Royal Wedding. One, the marriage of Fred Astaire's sister Adele to a British nobleman had occurred years earlier; the other, the wedding of England's Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip was only four years in the past. Read More

The Great Caruso

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Mario Lanza, Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Jarmila Novotna, Richard Hageman

Synopsis: The film traces Naples-born Caruso's ascension from adolescent choir singer to the uppermost ranks of the opera world. Caruso is brought to America, getting off to a bad start by inadvertently insulting the impresario (Carl Benton Reid) responsible for his Metropolitan debut. This complication has Read More

The Tall Target

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou, Marshall Thompson, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: The Tall Target is based on a true story: the attempted assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, even before he was able to assume his duties in Washington. Dick Powell stars as New York detective John Kennedy, who learns of the assassination plot early on. When his superiors refuse to Read More

The Strip

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Sally Forrest, William Demarest, James Craig, Kay Brown

Synopsis: Mickey Rooney returned to his "home" studio MGM, after a three-year absence, in the location-filmed melodrama The Strip. Rooney is cast as Stanley Maxton, an aspiring drummer who has the misfortune to fall within the orbit of bookie Sunny Johnson (James Craig). Out of the goodness of his heart Read More

Strictly Dishonorable

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ezio Pinza, Janet Leigh, Millard Mitchell, Gale Robbins, Maria Palmer

Synopsis: Strictly Dishonorable is a musicalized version of Preston Sturges' cynical Broadway comedy of the same title, previously filmed sans songs in 1931. Ezio Pinza, fresh from his stage triumph in South Pacific, stars as Augustino Caraffa, an opera star whose amorous adventures are legend. Janet Leigh Read More

Rich, Young and Pretty

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jane Powell, Danielle Darrieux, Wendell Corey, Vic Damone, Fernando Lamas

Synopsis: Rich, Young and Pretty succinctly describes Jane Powell, the heroine of this frothy MGM musical. Vacationing in Paris with her father, Jim Stauton Rogers (Wendell Corey) -- a cattle baron-turned-politician, Elizabeth Rogers (Powell) falls in love with handsome Andre Milan (Vic Damone, in his film Read More

Soldiers Three

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Walter Pidgeon, David Niven, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack

Synopsis: Allegedly based on a Rudyard Kipling novel, this draws most of its inspiration from the 1939 film made of Kipling's narrative poem Gunga Din. Stewart Granger, Robert Newton and Cyril Cusack play three boisterous English soldiers stationed on the Northern India frontier. Walter Pidgeon and David Niven Read More

Inside Straight

Crew: Art Director

Actors: David Brian, Arlene Dahl, Barry Sullivan, Mercedes McCambridge, Paula Raymond

Synopsis: Director Gerry Mayer, nephew of MGM-head Louis B. Mayer, proved that nepotism had nothing to do with his hiring by turning out the first-rate historical melodrama Inside Straight. The film begins in 1870 San Francisco, as the city is threatened with financial disaster due to overspeculation on the Read More

The Red Badge of Courage

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Audie Murphy, Bill Mauldin, John Dierkes, Royal Dano, Arthur Hunnicutt

Synopsis: The backstory of The Red Badge of Courage involves the toppling of MGM's old Louis B. Mayer regime in favor of Dore Schary and his young Turks. It is also the tale of how an intended epic was ruthlessly whittled down to a lower-berth programmer. Since this story has already been related in detail Read More

Shadow in the Sky

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ralph Meeker, Nancy Davis, James Whitmore, Gladys Hurlbut

Synopsis: A minor but effective MGM programmer, Shadow in the Sky stars Ralph Meeker as a shell-shocked World War II veteran. He is taken in by sympathetic relatives, who hope that a stable environment will help Meeker overcome his neuroses. But even these people find their compassion strained to the Read More

Go for Broke!

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Gianna Maria Canale, Kane Nakano, George Miki, Akira Fukunaga, Ken K. Okamoto

Synopsis: Robert Pirosh wrote and directed this little-known World War II drama from MGM that commemorates the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a combat unit composed of Japanese-Americans who fought valiantly during World War II, with many of the actual veterans of the combat unit appearing as actors in the Read More

Father's Little Dividend

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Elizabeth Taylor, Don Taylor, Billie Burke

Synopsis: This sequel to the 1950 comedy hit Father of the Bride finds Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett returning as Stanley and Ellie Banks, the parents of newlywed Kay Dunstan (Elizabeth Taylor). In the first film, Stanley Banks was forced to endure the chaotic events leading up to the wedding. This time Read More

The Law and the Lady

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Michael Wilding, Sr., Fernando Lamas, Marjorie Main, Hayden Rorke

Synopsis: The Law and the Lady is the third film version of the venerable Frederick Lonsdale stage play The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Greer Garson follows in the footsteps of Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford as a beautiful confidence trickster, working in concert with a suave jewel thief (Michael Wilding). Jane Read More

Kind Lady

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ethel Barrymore, Maurice Evans, Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn, Betsy Blair

Synopsis: This remake of the 1935 version is considered far superior to the original. It is the harrowing story of a kindly old British woman with a love of art who is tricked into allowing an artist, his wife, and another couple into staying in her house. They then begin holding her prisoner in her home Read More

The Painted Hills

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lassie the Dog, Paul Kelly, Bruce Cowling, Gary Gray, Art Smith

Synopsis: Alexander Hull's novel Shep of the Painted Hills was refashioned into a traditional Lassie vehicle by screenwriter True Boardman. The noble collie turns avenger this time out, hoping to bring the murderer of her master to justice. The perpetrator, played by Bruce Cowling, is hounded (no pun Read More

Show Boat

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ava Gardner, Joe E. Brown, Marge Champion

Synopsis: The third and (to date) last film version of the Edna Ferber/Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Show Boat falls just short of greatness but is still a whale of a show. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson are in fine fettle as irresponsible gambler Gaylord Ravenal and showboat ingenue Magnolia Read More

Too Young to Kiss

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Van Johnson, Gig Young, Kathryn Givney

Synopsis: Can it be that June Allyson is Too Young to Kiss in this bit of MGM fluff? Well, not really. Pianist Cynthia Potter (Allyson) is well into her 20s, but she's posing as a 14-year-old musical prodigy. It's part of her desperate effort to become a client of highly selective concert-promoter Eric Read More

Cause for Alarm

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling, Margalo Gillmore, Brad Mora

Synopsis: While a man recuperates from a heart-attack, he obsesses with the thought that his wife and his doctor are having an affair, so decides to write a letter to the D.A. accusing the two of trying to kill him. After his wife mails the letter for him, he tells her of its contents which provokes his Read More

The Asphalt Jungle

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe

Synopsis: The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliantly conceived and executed anatomy of a crime -- or, as director John Huston and scripter Ben Maddow put it, "a left-handed form of human endeavor." Recently paroled master criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), with funding from crooked attorney Emmerich Read More

Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marjorie Main, James Whitmore, Dorothy Malone, Phyllis Kirk, Fred Clark

Synopsis: In their never-ending efforts to create a movie series to match the success of "The Thin Man," MGM came up with the fast-paced programmer Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone. Based on characters created by Craig Rice, the film stars James Whitmore as lawyer and part-time sleuth John J. Malone (this Read More

Three Little Words

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, Vera-Ellen, Arlene Dahl, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: MGM's Three Little Words is a "twin" musical biopic, covering the lives and careers of songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Fred Astaire plays Kalmar, a frustrated magician, while Red Skelton is cast as Ruby, a wannabe baseball player. After "meeting cute" during a disastrous vaudeville show Read More

The Magnificent Yankee

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Louis Calhern, Ann Harding, Philip Ober, Ian Wolfe, Eduard Franz

Synopsis: Louis Calhern repeats his Broadway role as Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in this 1950 cinemazation of Emmet Lavery's stage play The Magnificent Yankee. The film is for the most part confined to the Holmes home in Washington, where the good gray judge parries affectionately with his Read More

The Next Voice You Hear

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Whitmore, Nancy Davis, Gary Gray, Lillian Bronson, Art Smith

Synopsis: The Next Voice You Hear was a pet project of MGM producer Dore Schary, who lavished more attention on this modestly budgeted drama than he did on some of his "bigger" projects. Though based on characters first introduced in the 1942 film Joe Smith, American, Next Voice was not a sequel to the Read More

Summer Stock

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria de Haven, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: Summer Stock represented Judy Garland's swan song at MGM. Garland plays the owner of a New England farm which entrepreneur Gene Kelly hopes to convert into a summer theatre. Gloria DeHaven, a member of Kelly's troupe, also happens to be Garland's sister. Aware that the farm is having financial Read More

The Toast of New Orleans

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Mario Lanza, David Niven, J. Carrol Naish, James Mitchell

Synopsis: So far as their fans were concerned, Mario Lanza and Kathryn Grayson could have stood up against a blank wall and sung uninterruptedly for 96 minutes in Toast of New Orleans. MGM, however, adhered to the policy that all movies must have plots. This one finds Lanza playing Pepe Abellard Duvalle, a Read More

A Lady without Passport

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, John Hodiak, James Craig, George Macready, Steven Geray

Synopsis: A Lady Without Passport stars Hedy Lamarr in the title role. Lamarr plays Marianne Lorress, a concentration-camp refugee who takes up residence in Cuba while waiting permission to enter the U.S. Immigration agent Pete Karczag (John Hodiak) decides to use Marianne as bait to entrap Palinov (George Macready Read More

The Happy Years

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dean Stockwell, Darryl Hickman, Scotty Beckett, Leon Ames, Margalo Gillmore

Synopsis: Owen Johnson's novel The Lawrenceville School Stories (compiled from short stories originally published in The Saturday Evening Post) was the basis for The Happy Years. The film is set at an early 20th-century boy's prep school; Dean Stockwell plays an habitual troublemaker sent to this school as Read More

Devil's Doorway

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Louis Calhern, Paula Raymond, Marshall Thompson, Edgar Buchanan, James Mitchell

Synopsis: Devil's Doorway was the first of many top-rank westerns directed by Anthony Mann. RobertTaylor is cast against type as a Native American named Lance Poole. Returning to his people's land after the Civil War, Poole discovers that the Indians are being victimized and persecuted--and, thanks to Read More

Grounds for Marriage

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Kathryn Grayson, Paula Raymond, Barry Sullivan, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Grounds for Marriage is another attractively packaged sausage from the MGM assembly line. Van Johnson is a doctor, while Kathryn Grayson is an opera singer. They marry, but the pressures of their careers lead them to the divorce court. But they still love another, so any and all prospective Read More

Key to the City

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Marilyn Maxwell, Frank Morgan, Raymond Burr

Synopsis: George Sidney directs this pleasant romantic comedy concerning mayoral love. During a convention of mayors in San Francisco, Clarissa Standish (Loretta Young), the mayor of a small town in Maine, meets Steve Fisk (Clark Gable), the down-to-earth leader of a tiny northern California community. Read More

Dial 1119

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Sam Levene, Leon Ames

Synopsis: Louis B. Mayer's nephew Gerald proved himself an able director with the MGM "B" thriller Dial 1119. Marshall Thompson stars as an emotionally disturbed young man who pulls out a gun at a bar and holds the patrons hostage. As the police gather outside, the film concentrates on the various bar Read More

Pagan Love Song

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Howard Keel, Minna Gombell, Charles Mauu, Rita Moreno

Synopsis: Pagan Love Song derives its title from a 1929 tune written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. The plot is cut from the same cloth as MGM's previous Esther Williams musicals. Sporting a black wig and deep tan, Williams plays American lass Mimi Bennett, who while on vacation in the South Seas is Read More

It's a Big Country

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ethel Barrymore, Gary Cooper, Van Johnson, Gene Kelly, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: Comprised of eight unrelated episodes of inconsistent quality, this anthology piece of American propaganda features some of MGM Studios' best directors, screenwriters and actors; it is narrated by Louis Calhern. Stories are framed by the lecture of a university professor. In one tale a Boston Read More

Watch the Birdie

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Arlene Dahl, Ann Miller

Synopsis: Watch the Birdie is a remake of Buster Keaton's The Cameraman; in fact, Keaton served as technical advisor, though it seems that most of his advice went unheeded. Red Skelton stars as photo-shop proprietor Rusty Cameron, who dreams of becoming an ace cinematographer. This gets him mixed up with a Read More

Nancy Goes to Rio

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jane Powell, Ann Sothern, Barry Sullivan, Carmen Miranda, Louis Calhern

Synopsis: Ann Sothern closed out her MGM contract with the Technicolor musical Nancy Goes to Rio. As Frances Elliot, Sothern is billed second to Jane Powell, who plays Nancy Barklay. A popular Broadway star, Frances heads to Rio for R&R before starting her next production. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Frances Read More

King Solomon's Mines

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Richard Carlson, Hugo Haas, Lowell Gilmore

Synopsis: MGM's expensive remake of the 1937 British adventure film King Solomon's Mines stars Stewart Granger as fearless-explorer Alan Quartermaine, and Deborah Kerr as the spunky Irish lass who hires him on to locate her husband. Kerr's spouse has disappeared somewhere in Africa while attempting to Read More

Kim

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Dean Stockwell, Paul Lukas, Robert Douglas, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Errol Flynn is top-billed in Kim, but the title character is played by Dean Stockwell. The son of an Irish sergeant, young Kim wanders through the streets and hills of Colonial India, disguised as a native boy. Kim's adventures include an episode with a horse trader (Errol Flynn) who is actually a Read More

To Please a Lady

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Roland Winters, Will Geer

Synopsis: Arrogant Mike Brannan (Clark Gable) is a famous driver of midget race cars and is the type of man crowds love to hate. He earned his bad-boy image after he is blamed for causing a fatal crash during a race. Wanting to see if all the hoopla is true, tough columnist Regina Forbes (Barbara Stanwyck) Read More

Please Believe Me

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Deborah Kerr, Robert Walker, Peter Lawford, Mark Stevens, James Whitmore

Synopsis: Producer Val Lewton abandoned the "psychological horror" efforts of his RKO days when he moved to MGM in 1950. Lewton's Please Believe Me is a simple, sometimes simplistic romantic comedy, designed principally as a showcase for Deborah Kerr. The star plays Alison Kirbe, an English girl who Read More

Stars in My Crown

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Dean Stockwell, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Stars in My Crown is an episodic movie about a rural Southern community in the 19th century. Though the film features a number of characters, it focuses on a preacher who moves into the city and helps solve the town's problems. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

Ambush

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, John Hodiak, Arlene Dahl, Don Taylor, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Ambush is a tight, well-paced western, expertly assembled by veteran director Sam Wood, whose last film this was. Robert Taylor stars as an Indian scout, sent to rescue a woman who is somewhere deep in Apache territory. The woman's sister, naturally, goes along for the ride: she is played by Arlene Dahl Read More

The Skipper Surprised His Wife

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Walker, Joan Leslie, Edward Arnold, Spring Byington, Leon Ames

Synopsis: Vincente Minnelli was slated to direct The Skipper Surprised His Wife, but Elliot Nugent stepped in when Minnelli was transferred to another MGM comedy, Father of the Bride. The titular skipper, Cmdr. William Lattimer, is played by Robert Walker, while his wife Daphne is portrayed by Joan Leslie. Read More

Side Street

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell, James Craig, Paul Kelly, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Farley Granger plays a casually larcenous New York City mailman who steals a shipment of money. Granger's excitement over this windfall turns to terror when he discovers that the money was part of a transaction between gangsters. Harassed by both crooks and cops, Granger lives to regret his Read More

Shadow on the Wall

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ann Sothern, Zachary Scott, Nancy Davis, Kristine Miller

Synopsis: A murder is witnessed by the victim's little daughter (Gigi Perreau), who immediately goes into a state of shock. All the girl has seen is the shadow of her mother's killer, but the audience knows that the murderer is Ann Sothern. At first Sothern is secure that the girl will never be able to Read More

The Yellow Cab Man

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Gloria de Haven, Walter Slezak, Edward Arnold, James Gleason

Synopsis: Obviously inspired by the success of Red Skelton's The Fuller Brush Man, The Yellow Cab Man stars Skelton as a Rube Goldberg-type inventor who can't seem to stay out of trouble. He also can't hold down a job, either, much to the consternation of girl friend Gloria De Haven. Through the auspices of Read More

The Reformer and the Redhead

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Dick Powell, David Wayne, Cecil Kellaway, Ray Collins

Synopsis: MGM's The Reformer and the Redhead was the first directorial collaboration of longtime screenwriting partners Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. The reformer is Andrew Rockton Hale (Dick Powell), a mayoral candidate. Hale butts heads with a corrupt political machine, which has recently ordered the Read More

The Black Hand

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, J. Carrol Naish, Teresa Celli, Marc Lawrence, Frank Puglia

Synopsis: Gene Kelly as an Italian-American attorney? Once you get past this, the rest of Black Hand ought to go down easy. This expose of organized crime is set in New York's "Little Italy" the late 19th century. The various Italian immigrant merchants find themselves at the mercy of the Black Hand, a Read More

Right Cross

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Dick Powell, Ricardo Montalban, Lionel Barrymore, Teresa Celli

Synopsis: Right Cross stars Dick Powell as cynical sportswriter Rick Gavery and Powell's wife June Allyson as boxing manager Pat O'Malley. Subbing for her incapacitated father (Lionel Barrymore), Pat grooms prizefighter Johnny Monterez (Ricardo Montalban) for the championship. Johnny holds a grudge against Read More

Father of the Bride

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Don Taylor, Billie Burke

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy received an Oscar nomination for his performance in this classic comedy. Stanley T. Banks (Tracy) is a securely middle-class lawyer whose daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) announces that she's going to marry her beau Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor). From that point on, everything in Read More

Two Weeks With Love

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jane Powell, Ricardo Montalban, Debbie Reynolds, Louis Calhern, Ann Harding, Phyllis Kirk

Synopsis: Two Weeks With Love is set in a Catskills resort in the early 1900s. Seventeen-year-old vacationer Patti Robinson (Jane Powell) feels that she's a bit too strait-laced to attract the male contingent, and dreams of being a "woman of the world." Naturally, the principal object of her affections Read More

Crisis

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Cary Grant, José Ferrer, Paula Raymond, Signe Hasso, Ramon Novarro

Synopsis: Cary Grant's utter credibility in the role of a brilliant, world-famous brain surgeon Dr. Eugene Norland Ferguson is the single element that keeps Crisis afloat. While vacationing in a politically unstable Latin American country, Ferguson and his wife, Helen (Paula Raymond), find themselves the Read More

Annie Get Your Gun

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern, J. Carrol Naish, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: Judy Garland was originally slated to star in MGM's film version of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, but she was forced to pull out of the production due to illness (recently discovered out-takes reveal a gaunt, dazed Garland, obviously incapable of completing her duties). She was replaced by Betty Hutton Read More

Mystery Street

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Marshall Thompson

Synopsis: Blonde good-time girl Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling), who lives in a cheap rooming house in a working-class section of Boston, run by the inquisitive and neurotic Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), goes out one night after a phone conversation with her boyfriend, proclaiming that she's got big plans Read More

The Duchess of Idaho

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Van Johnson, John Lund, Paula Raymond, Clinton Sundberg

Synopsis: This formula Esther Williams musical casts the star as Midwestern carnival swimmer Christine Duncan, in love with bandleader Dick Layn (Van Johnson). Attempting to smooth the course of romance for her friend Ellen Hallet (Paula Raymond), Christine makes a play for Ellen's wealthy boss Douglas J. Read More

A Life of Her Own

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Ray Milland, Tom Ewell, Louis Calhern, Ann Dvorak, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Lana Turner stars as an ambitious model who seeks her fortune in New York City. She is befriended by over-the-hill cover-girl Ann Dvorak, whose performance carries the story until she commits suicide twenty minutes into the film. Turner promises herself that she won't end up burned out like Read More

In the Good Old Summertime

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Judy Garland, Van Johnson, Buster Keaton, S.Z. Sakall, Spring Byington, Clinton Sundberg

Synopsis: In the Good Old Summertime is a musical remake of the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch comedy The Shop Around the Corner, which in turn was based on a play by Miklos Laszlo. The locale has been changed from Hungary to Chicago, but the turn-of-century time frame and the plot remain the same. Van Johnson and Judy Garland Read More

Madame Bovary

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jennifer Jones, James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, Christopher [Alf] Kent

Synopsis: MGM circumvented the censorship that would otherwise have prevented a film version of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary by adding a prologue and epilogue that assured any and all bluenoses that the story was strictly a work of fiction. James Mason appears as Flaubert, defending his inflammatory Read More

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Betty Garrett, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: So baseball pictures never make money, eh? Try telling that to MGM, which raked in a box office gross of $4 million on their 1949 baseball musical Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Set in 1906, the film concerns the adventures and misadventures of The Wolves, a champion ball club. The team's success Read More

The Doctor and the Girl

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Gloria de Haven, Janet Leigh, Bruce Bennett

Synopsis: Glenn Ford first appeared under the MGM banner in The Doctor and the Girl. Ford stars as Dr. Michael Corday, scion of a highly respected family of physicians. When he marries one of his patients, shopgirl Evelyn Heldon (Janet Leigh), Corday is thrown out of his house by his tradition-bound father (Charles Coburn Read More

Intruder in the Dust

Crew: Art Director

Actors: David Brian, Claude Jarman, Jr., Juano Hernandez, Charles Kemper, Will Geer, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Intruder in the Dust is one of the best of Hollywood's postwar "racial tolerance" cycle--a cycle that would come to an abrupt end in the politically paranoid 1950s. Based on a novel by William Faulkner, the film takes place in a small Mississippi town (it was filmed on location in and around Read More

The Stratton Story

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead, Bill Williams

Synopsis: Both Van Johnson and Gregory Peck were considered for the role of baseball star Monty Stratton in the 1949 biopic The Stratton Story before settling upon the real Stratton's own first choice, James Stewart. The film covers several years in the 1930s, as Texas farm boy Stratton rises from the Read More

Challenge to Lassie

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Edmund Gwenn, Donald Crisp, Geraldine Brooks, Reginald Owen, Alan Webb

Synopsis: A "new" Lassie (once again, a male collie in drag) starred in A Challenge to Lassie, MGM's fourth entry in their series based on characters created by Eric Knight. This time, Lassie is plunked into the plotline of William Ludwig's novel Greyfriars Bobby (remade by Disney under its original title Read More

Scene of the Crime

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Arlene Dahl, Gloria de Haven, Norman Lloyd, Tom Drake, Leon Ames

Synopsis: The Dore Schary regime at MGM brought a much-needed dose of stark realism to the venerable studio. Van Johnson sheds his boy-next-door image to play L.A. plainclothes lieutenant Mike Conovan. Determined to bring a cop killer to justice, Conovan will let no man stand in his way -- not even his Read More

The Bribe

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, John Hodiak

Synopsis: Federal agent Robert Taylor journeys to a mythical South American community, there to break up a war-surplus contraband racket. American playboy Vincent Price is the brains of the outfit, aided and abetted by the disreputable Charles Laughton and John Hodiak. Ava Gardner, Hodiak's wife, takes over Read More

The Sun Comes Up

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Lloyd Nolan, Claude Jarman, Jr., Percy Kilbride

Synopsis: In this drama, an embittered widow, a former concert singer, can't help but blame Lassie for her son's death. Needing help with her chores, she hires an orphan from the local home. At first she remains aloof towards the charming lad who quickly bonds with the collie dog, but as time passes she Read More

Adam's Rib

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell, David Wayne

Synopsis: Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Adam's Rib is a peerless comedy predicated on the double standard. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play Adam and Amanda Bonner, a husband-and-wife attorney team, both drawn to a case of attempted murder. The defendant (Judy Holliday) had tearfully Read More

The Great Sinner

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Ethel Barrymore

Synopsis: Based loosely on the Dostoyevsky novel, The Gambler stars Gregory Peck as a sensitive 19th-century Russian author. His "great sin" is gambling, which starts when he attempts to rescue aristocratic Ava Gardner from the gaming tables. He succeeds, only to lose himself to gambling fever, which costs Read More

On the Town

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin

Synopsis: Three sailors on a 24-hour pass -- Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) -- decide to soak up the sights and sounds of New York. Each one finds romance within those 24 hours: Gabey with aspiring dancer Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Chip with lady cabbie Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett Read More

Tension

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan, Tom D'Andrea, Lloyd Gough

Synopsis: Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart) has a problem that he won't admit to: his wife, Claire (Audrey Totter), wants more fun and excitement out of life than the quiet, soft-spoken pharmacist can give her. So she steps out on him regularly, something that Warren refuses to recognize until the day she Read More

Malaya

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Valentina Cortese, Sydney Greenstreet, John Hodiak

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy and James Stewart team up for this World War II adventure, based on an supposedly true incident from World War II. Stewart plays John Royer, an ex-newspaper reporter with a backhand knowledge of Malaya, and Tracy plays a criminal named Carnaghan, doing time in Alcatraz for smuggling. Read More

That Midnight Kiss

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Mario Lanza, José Iturbi, Ethel Barrymore, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: That Midnight Kiss served to introduce the film-going public to MGM's newest singing sensation, Mario Lanza. Just as he did with Deanna Durbin at Universal, producer Joe Pasternak removes the "stuffy" onus attached to classical music by presenting Lanza as a down-to-earth truck driver named Johnny Read More

East Side, West Side

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Van Heflin, Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse

Synopsis: Director Mervyn Leroy lends a burnished MGM gloss to this sordid tale of infidelity among rich New York East Siders. Barbara Stanwyck stars as Jessie Bourne, a charming society woman whose finds out that her husband Brandon (James Mason) is guiltily indulging in an illicit affair with the earthy Read More

Border Incident

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva, James Mitchell, Arnold Moss

Synopsis: As far removed from a "typical" MGM picture as it was possible to get back in 1949, Border Incident is a gritty, realistic crime melodrama. The story concerns the efforts by both the Mexican and American governments to stop the smuggling of Mexican migrant workers across the border. Representing Read More

Act of Violence

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Phyllis Thaxter, Mary Astor, Berry Kroeger

Synopsis: An unusually disturbing noir from a director better known for more mainstream fare like High Noon and From Here to Eternity, Act of Violence focuses on a WWII veteran haunted by his past. A film that was close to the director's heart, he said that it represented "the first time that I felt Read More

The Secret Garden

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Margaret O'Brien, Herbert Marshall, Dean Stockwell, Brian Roper, Gladys Cooper, Elsa Lanchester

Synopsis: The oft-filmed Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden was given the usual plush MGM treatment in 1949. Tempestuous orphan girl Mary Lennox (Margaret O'Brien) is sent to live with her reclusive, long-widowed uncle Archibald Craven (Herbert Marshall). The embittered Craven has an invalid Read More

The Red Danube

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore, Peter Lawford, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: One of the more palatable of Hollywood's anti-communist tracts of the late 1940s-early 1950s was MGM's The Red Danube. Janet Leigh plays Maria Buhlen, an Eastern Bloc ballerina who seeks political asylum in the British-occupied zone of Vienna. Maria's plight turns into a political tug-of-war Read More

Little Women

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: Of the many film versions of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, this 1949 MGM adaptation is by far the prettiest. Set in New England during the Civil War, the film relates the various adventures of the March sisters: Jo (June Allyson), Beth (Margaret O'Brien), Amy (Elizabeth Taylor) and Meg (Janet Leigh Read More

Any Number Can Play

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Alexis Smith, Wendell Corey, Audrey Totter, Frank Morgan, Mary Astor

Synopsis: In this light drama, Clark Gable once again played his stock-in-trade role of a rogue with a heart of gold. Charlie King (Gable) runs a casino, but, in a business that thrives among the unscrupulous, Charlie takes pride in running an honest game and treating his customers with fairness and Read More

Neptune's Daughter

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: Esther Williams and Red Skelton share equal screen time for once in the MGM Technicolor musical Neptune's Daughter. The title character is, of course, Williams, here cast as Eve Barrett, a bathing-suit manufacturer (and sometimes model). Skelton plays Jack Spratt, the masseur at a fancy polo club Read More

Battleground

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Marshall Thompson, James Whitmore

Synopsis: Incoming MGM production head Dore Schary ramrodded Battleground into the studio's schedule over the virulent protests of MGM boss Louis Mayer. The result was an award-winning box-office hit, as well as the beginning of the end of Mayer's power. This dramatization of the battles of Bastogne and the Read More

That Forsyte Woman

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Young, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: Though one might have expected friction between MGM's resident "nice lady" Greer Garson and Warner Bros. notorious "bad boy" Errol Flynn, the two got along splendidly during the filming of That Forsyte Woman. Based loosely on The Man of Property, book one of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, the Read More

The Barkleys of Broadway

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Oscar Levant, Billie Burke, Gale Robbins

Synopsis: The Barkleys of Broadway became Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "reunion" picture purely by accident. Originally conceived as a follow-up to the successful Astaire-Judy Garland vehicle Easter Parade, Barkleys was to have starred Fred and Judy as a successful musical comedy team that breaks up when Read More

A Date with Judy

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Leon Ames, Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor, George Cleveland, Carmen Miranda, Robert Stack, Lloyd Corrigan, Scotty Beckett

Synopsis: In this lightweight musical comedy, Judy Foster (Jane Powell) and Carol Pringle (Elizabeth Taylor) are teenagers and best friends who find their loyalties tested when they both fall for the same good-looking older man, Stephen Andrews (Robert Stack). This situation is particularly troublesome for Read More

State of the Union

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Florence Auer, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Irving Bacon, Art Baker, Van Johnson, Angela Lansbury, Adolphe Menjou, Tom Fadden

Synopsis: Frank Capra's only MGM film, State of the Union was adapted by Anthony Veiller and Myles Connolly from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. Spencer Tracy plays an aircraft tycoon who is coerced into seeking the Republican Presidential nomination by predatory Read More

Three Daring Daughters

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, José Iturbi, Jane Powell, Edward Arnold, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: Jeanette MacDonald made her first screen appearance in five years in the MGM confection Three Daring Daughters. Looking at least ten years younger than her 48 years, MacDonald is cast as glamorous magazine editor Louise Raton Morgan. Long divorced Louise returns from a Cuban vacation with a Read More

Tenth Avenue Angel

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Margaret O'Brien, George Murphy, Angela Lansbury, Phyllis Thaxter, Warner Anderson

Synopsis: Filmed in 1946, Tenth Avenue Angel is yet another treacly vehicle for little Margaret O'Brien. The juvenile star is cast as Flavia Mills, an 8-year-old tenement dweller who insinuates herself into the lives of several down-and-outers, among them ex-convict Steve Abbott (George Murphy). Flavia's Read More

A Southern Yankee

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Brian Donlevy, Arlene Dahl, George Coulouris, Lloyd Gough

Synopsis: Hot on the heels of Columbia's The Fuller Brush Man, MGM released another Red Skelton gagfest, A Southern Yankee. Set during the Civil War, the film casts Skelton as bumbling bellboy Aubrey Filmore. Yearning to help the Northern cause by becoming an undercover spy, Aubrey succeeds beyond his Read More

Command Decision

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Command Decision is a stagebound but consummately acted adaptation of William Wister Haines' Broadway play. Clark Gable, starring in the role essayed on Broadway by Paul Kelly, plays Air Force Brigadier General "Casey" Dennis. With time at a premium, Dennis sends waves of bomber squadrons into Read More

The Pirate

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Judy Garland, Lester Allen, Jerry Bergen, Gene Kelly, Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper, Jean Dean, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: When Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne appeared in S. N. Behrmann's The Pirate on Broadway, there were no musical numbers whatsoever. But with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in the leading roles of the 1948 filmization of The Pirate, the MGM production staff would have been drawn and quartered had there Read More

Easter Parade

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Peter Lawford, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin

Synopsis: Fred Astaire had announced his retirement before the cameras began to roll on Easter Parade, but he decided to accept the film's leading role when its original star Gene Kelly became incapacitated. The thinnish plot, which finds Astaire trying to turn chorus girl Judy Garland into a star in order Read More

Words and Music

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Perry Como, Judy Garland, June Allyson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: The life stories of Broadway tunesmiths Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are prettified for the screen in MGM's Words and Music. Billed fourth, the colorless Tom Drake plays Rodgers, but never mind that: the film belongs to Mickey Rooney, as the dynamic, self-destructive Lorenz Hart. Read More

The Three Musketeers

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Van Heflin, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) Read More

On an Island with You

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Peter Lawford, Ricardo Montalban, Jimmy Durante, Cyd Charisse

Synopsis: The title of this MGM musical alone should tip you to the fact that Esther Williams is the star. In this one, she plays a movie star (what an innovation!), Rosalind Reynolds, who is on location in Hawaii to shoot a picture. Peter Lawford plays the film's naval technical advisor, Lt. Lawrence Y. Read More

The Bride Goes Wild

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Hume Cronyn, Una Merkel

Synopsis: In this funny tale of deception and romantic fireworks, a rather prissy New England school marm finally gets a chance to achieve her dream and become a commercial artist when she is hired to illustrate the beloved "Uncle Bump's" latest children's book. She adores Bump's earlier works and is Read More

B.F.'s Daughter

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Charles Coburn, Keenan Wynn, Richard Hart

Synopsis: Barbara Stanwyck plays Polly Fulton, rebellious daughter of a wealthy industrialist (Charles Coburn). Polly marries a conservative economist professor (Richard Hart), but she chafes at his values and leaves him for socialist professor Van Heflin. Polly nearly ruins both her father's reputation and Read More

Luxury Liner

Crew: Art Director

Actors: George Brent, Jane Powell, Lauritz Melchior, Frances Gifford, Marina Koshetz

Synopsis: MGM whipped up another musical salad with Luxury Liner, featuring a glittering lineup of contractees including Jane Powell, Lauritz Melchior and Xavier Cugat. George Brent plays the skipper of a "love boat"-type cruise ship, while Ms. Powell plays his daughter. She entertains the passengers at Read More

Julia Misbehaves

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: After suffering nobly in several heavyweight MGM dramas, Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon begged the studio to cast them together in a comedy. Though not an all-out laff riot, Julia Misbehaves strives hard to please. Garson plays an ever-in-debt British music-hall performer who relies on the Read More

Homecoming

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Anne Baxter, John Hodiak, Ray Collins

Synopsis: When Homecoming was first released in 1948, some observers felt that Clark Gable's unusually sensitive performance was based on his own memories of losing his wife Carole Lombard in a 1942 plane crash. Intriguingly, Gable's Homecoming co-star is Lana Turner, with whom it was rumored that he was Read More

The Big City

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Margaret O'Brien, Robert Preston, Danny Thomas, George Murphy, Karin [Katharine] Booth

Synopsis: MGM's all-purpose title The Big City was deployed once more for this treacly 1948 drama. To prevent orphaned Midge (Margaret O'Brien) from being sent to an institution, Protestant minister Andrews (Robert Preston), Jewish cantor Feldman (Danny Thomas) and Catholic cop Patrick O'Donnell (George Murphy Read More

Summer Holiday

Crew: Art Director

Actors: John Alexander, Mickey Rooney, Gloria de Haven, Walter Huston, Ruth Brady, Virginia Brissac, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead

Synopsis: Summer Holiday is a musical remake of the 1935 MGM comedy-drama Ah, Wilderness!, which in turn was adapted from the play by Eugene O'Neill. Mickey Rooney (who played a supporting role in the 1935 film) stars as O'Neill's alter ego Richard Miller, a young man coming of age in early 20th century New Read More

Hills of Home

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Edmund Gwenn, Donald Crisp, Tom Drake, Janet Leigh, Rhys Williams

Synopsis: MGM's Lassie series was declining in popularity by 1948, so the studio decided to release its latest adventure of the famous collie as Hills of Home, so that non-Lassie fans might be inveigled into entering the theatre. Actually, Hills is one of the best entries in the series, due in no Read More

The Kissing Bandit

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, J. Carrol Naish, Mildred Natwick, Mikhail Rasumny

Synopsis: In this period musical, Ricardo (Frank Sinatra) is the son of a Mexican innkeeper who has come to California to take over a hotel owned by his family after the death of his father. Ricardo makes the startling discovery that his father was best known as a "kissing bandit," a dashing thief who Read More

Cynthia

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Morris Ankrum, Elizabeth Taylor, George Murphy, S.Z. Sakall, Scotty Beckett, Carol Brannan, Mary Astor, Harlan Briggs, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor receives her first screen kiss in the innocuous MGM confection Cynthia. Taylor plays the title character, a sickly, sheltered young lady who is never permitted the companionship of other teenagers. Frustrated though Cynthia may be, she has nothing on her parents Read More

Little Mister Jim

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Butch Jenkins, James Craig, Frances Gifford, Luana Patten, Spring Byington

Synopsis: MGM's newest child star Jackie "Butch" Jenkins--lisp and all--is the title character in this overlong family drama. The setting is a postwar army camp, where returning GIs live in Quonsets with their families. Jenkins' mother dies, whereupon his soldier dad becomes an alcoholic. Both father and Read More

Desire Me

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Robert Mitchum, Richard Hart, George Zucco, Cecil Humphreys, Morris Ankrum

Synopsis: Marise Aubert (Greer Garson) has begun seeing a psychiatrist to treat her overwhelming guilt. It seems that Marise was married to Paul (Robert Mitchum), who was sent overseas in World War II. She loved Paul deeply and remained faithful to him. She then receives tragic news that Paul died in Read More

The Unfinished Dance

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Margaret O'Brien, Cyd Charisse, Karin [Katharine] Booth, Danny Thomas, Esther Dale

Synopsis: An aspiring ballerina begins following a prima ballerina hoping that she will become her replacement. Unfortunately, another dancer is chosen, causing the determined twinkle-toes to cause a little accident to destroy the usurper's career. It works and the hapless ballerina's career is destroyed. Read More

Dark Delusion

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Warner Anderson, Art Baker, Lionel Barrymore, Marie Blake, Lucille Bremer

Synopsis: After 15 entries, MGM's "Dr. Kildare" series came to a quiet end with Dark Delusion. Although Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore), crusty chief surgeon at Blair General Hospital, is officially the leading character, most of the footage is devoted to Gillespie's outspoken protégé, Dr. Tommy Read More

This Time for Keeps

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Johnny Johnston, Lauritz Melchior, Jimmy Durante, Xavier Cugat

Synopsis: In this aqueous musical comedy, an opera singer brings his son to Michigan's Mackinac Island where the son falls in love with the star of the "aquacaper." It is difficult to woo her as she is constantly surrounded by her piano-playing bodyguard and her ever-present grandmother. It's musical and Read More

Song of the Thin Man

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Leon Ames, Warner Anderson, William Bishop, Bruce Cowling, Bess Flowers

Synopsis: In the sixth and final Thin Man whodunit, Nick (William Powell) and Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) look into the mysterious killing of bandleader Tommy Drake (Phillip Reed). The police quickly hone in on the owner of a gambling ship, Phil Brant (Bruce Cowling), who was about to lose Drake's band to a Read More

Cass Timberlane

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Zachary Scott, Tom Drake, Mary Astor

Synopsis: A visibly uneasy Spencer Tracy plays the title role in this lavish MGM screen version of Sinclair Lewis' 1945 magazine serial. A small-town bachelor judge, Cass Timberlane, takes a personal interest in beautiful stenographer Jinny Marshland (Lana Turner), who appears one day as a witness in his Read More

The Sea of Grass

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Walker, Melvyn Douglas, Phyllis Thaxter

Synopsis: Usually associated with erudite, urbane comedies, the legendary screen team of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy goes intensely dramatic in the expensive western Sea of Grass. Tracy plays cattle baron Colonel James Brewton, who staunchly opposes opening the western frontier to homesteaders. Read More

Song of Love

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Paul Henreid, Robert Walker, Henry Daniell, Leo G. Carroll

Synopsis: Song of Love is the MGM-ified version of the lives and loves of 19th century musicians Clara Wieck Schumann (Katharine Hepburn), Robert Schumann (Paul Henreid) and Johannes Brahms (Robert Walker, who the previous year had played another composer, Jerome Kern, in Til the Clouds Roll By). Clara Read More

Undercover Maisie

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ann Sothern, Barry Nelson, Mark Daniels, Leon Ames, Clinton Sundberg

Synopsis: MGM's "Maisie" series came to an end with this undistinguished entry. Eschewing show business for the time being, perennially stranded showgirl Maisie Revere (Ann Sothern) decides to join the Los Angeles police force. This she does primarily to be near her latest beau, Lt. Paul Scott (Barry Read More

The Beginning or the End

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Brian Donlevy, Warner Anderson, Art Baker, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Trevor Bardette, James Bush, Audrey Totter, Joseph Calleia, Hume Cronyn

Synopsis: Filmed not long after the actual events, The Beginning or the End is a sober, intelligent account of the development and deployment of the Atom Bomb. Step by step, the film details the progress of The Manhattan Project, from its inception in the early stages of the war through the dawn of the Read More

Killer McCoy

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Brian Donlevy, Ann Blyth, James Dunn, Tom Tully

Synopsis: In one of his first "adult" roles (he made his last Andy Hardy vehicle only a year earlier), Mickey Rooney plays Tommy McCoy, a dancer who performs in a going-nowhere nightclub act with his alcoholic father, Brian (James Dunn). Johnny Martin (Mickey Knox), a lightweight boxing champ who is Read More

Good News

Crew: Art Director

Actors: June Allyson, Morris Ankrum, Tom Dugan, Connie Gilchrist, Jane Green

Synopsis: This second film version of the DeSylva/Brown/Henderson Broadway musical Good News may not be the best of the Arthur Freed-produced MGM musicals, but it's certainly one of the peppiest. The film is set at Tait college during the Roaring 20s. The wisp of a plot involves Tait football-star Peter Lawford Read More

The Arnelo Affair

Crew: Art Director

Actors: John Hodiak, George Murphy, Frances Gifford, Dean Stockwell, Eve Arden

Synopsis: On the whole, the films of producer-writer-director Arch Oboler seldom came up to the lofty standards of his radio work, but each of his movie projects had a few meritorious moments. One of the better Oboler film efforts was The Arnelo Affair, produced by MGM in 1946. Frances Gifford delivers what Read More

The Hucksters

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Edward Arnold, Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr, Lillian Bronson, Ralph Bunker, Sydney Greenstreet, Adolphe Menjou, Kathryn Card, Jimmy Conlin, Ava Gardner

Synopsis: When he was first offered the film version of the best-selling Frederick Wakeman novel The Hucksters, Clark Gable turned it down, characterizing the book as "filthy and not entertainment." He finally agreed to star in the film after screenwriter Luther Davis' extensive laundering job. Gable plays Read More

Living in a Big Way

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Marie McDonald, Charles Winninger, Phyllis Thaxter, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Despite MGM's insistence that star Gene Kelly, just returning from military service in 1947, appear exclusively in big-budget Technicolor musicals, maverick director Gregory La Cava showcased Kelly in the modest black and white tunefest Living in a Big Way. Kelly is cast as an ex-GI who discovers Read More

It Happened in Brooklyn

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Peter Lawford, Jimmy Durante, Gloria Grahame

Synopsis: It Happened in Brooklyn was released at a time when the mere mention of the eponymous New York borough elicited loud laughter and extended applause. Frank Sinatra stars as ex-GI Danny Webson Miller, who makes a sentimental journey to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. Danny moves in with Read More

The Romance of Rosy Ridge

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, Joyce Arling, Janet Leigh, James Bell, William Bishop, Thomas Mitchell, Jim Davis, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: Janet Leigh made an impressive film-debut in MGM's The Romance of Rosy Ridge. Though the title suggests a lighthearted musical, the film is actually a fairly sober adaptation (with slight comic undertones) of a novel by Mackinlay Kantor. In the days following the Civil War, a Missouri farming Read More

Merton of the Movies

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Virginia O'Brien, Gloria Grahame, Leon Ames, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: The George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly play Merton of the Movies was previously filmed in 1923 with Glenn Hunter, and in 1932 (as Make Me a Star) with Stu Erwin. This time around, Red Skelton plays Merton, the small-town rube who aspires to become a dramatic actor in silent pictures. Bumbling his way Read More

If Winter Comes

Crew: Art Director

Actors: John Abbott, Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Hugh French, Binnie Barnes, Halliwell Hobbes, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: In this drama, set in England, an honorable textbook writer in a village becomes friends with a pregnant girl. The friendship costs him his marriage. Later, the girl dies, and the authorities wonder if it is murder. A coroner's inquest is held, and for a while the writer's social and professional Read More

Fiesta

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Esther Williams, Akim Tamiroff, Ricardo Montalban, John Carroll, Mary Astor

Synopsis: Esther Williams moves from the swimming pool to the bull ring in this musical drama. Antonio Morales (Fortunio Bonanova) was once a champion bullfighter; now in retirement, Antonio and his wife (Mary Astor) have high hopes that their son Mario (Ricardo Montalban) will follow in his father's Read More

The High Barbaree

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Thomas Mitchell, Marilyn Maxwell, Cameron Mitchell

Synopsis: In this war movie, set during WW II, a pilot must crash land in the Pacific after he is shot down. As he floats upon the waves, he begins remembering the mythical island of Barbaree that his grandfather used to tell him about. To keep his wounded companion alive, he begins telling his life story. Read More

The High Wall

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall, Dorothy Patrick, H.B. Warner, Warner Anderson

Synopsis: Former army pilot Robert Taylor is accused, on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence, of his wife's murder. Suffering from periodic blackouts, Taylor isn't so certain of his innocence himself. When offered a brain operation, Taylor refuses, knowing that if he is proven sane he will be Read More

Green Dolphin Street

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Patrick Aherne, Linda Christian, Van Heflin, Donna Reed, Gladys Cooper, Bernie Gozier, Richard Hart, Edmund Gwenn

Synopsis: The 161-minute costume drama Green Dolphin Street is set in 1840, on an island off the coast of Newfoundland, (or at least, the MGM backlot facsimile of same). Boiled down to essentials, it's the story of two sisters, blonde Marguerite Patourel (Donna Reed) and brunette
Marianne Patourel Read More

Holiday in Mexico

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Linda Christian, Ann Codee, Xavier Cugat, Hugo Haas

Synopsis: Too long by at least two reels, Holiday in Mexico is nevertheless one of the more enjoyable MGM Technicolor musicals of the 1940s. Walter Pigeon is top billed as Jeffrey Evans, American ambassador to Mexico. Captivated by the charms of her adopted homeland, Evans' impulsive daughter Christine Read More

Bad Bascomb

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Wallace Beery, Margaret O'Brien, Marjorie Main, J. Carrol Naish, Frances Rafferty

Synopsis: Bad Bascomb is an expensive MGM western, tailor-made for the blubbery talents of Wallace Beery. Beery plays the badman of the title, whose heart is softened by a sweet little child (Margaret O'Brien at her most cloying). Just about to make a clean getaway, Beery realizes that the child is in Read More

The Yearling

Crew: Art Director

Actors: