Charles FarrellFilmography

The Deadly Game

Synopsis: Charles Farrell, once a heartthrob of the silent screen, is the snow-on-the-roof protagonist in Monogram's The Deadly Game. Farrell rescues the lovely June Lang from a jam, only to get involved with a complex murder case. Evidently, no one can be trusted, so Farrell has his hands full during the Read More

Tail Spin

Actors: Alice Faye, Constance Bennett, Joan Davis, Charles Farrell, Jane Wyman

Synopsis: The exploits of female pilots are followed in this high-flying drama. These women are extremely competitive and will stop at nothing to win their cross-country races. The story centers on one such determined pilot who is forced to leave the race circuit after her plane crashes. To become Read More

Night Journey

Synopsis: In this action film, a truck driver must carry a load of dynamite. Meanwhile, his girlfriend gets mixed up with a gang that sells stolen furs. Eventually, the truck driver must rescue his girlfriend from the bad guys and blows them and their loot to Kingdom Come. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide Read More

Just Around the Corner

Actors: Shirley Temple, Joan Davis, Charles Farrell, Amanda Duff

Synopsis: Just Around the Corner is the film in which little Shirley Temple ends the Depression all by herself! The story starts realistically enough, with 10-year-old Penny Hale (Temple) sharing a basement apartment with her widowed father Jeff (Charles Farrell, in his final Fox film). Once a prosperous Read More

Flight to Fame

Actors: Charles Farrell, Hugh Sothern, Alex D'Arcy, Jason Robards, Sr.

Synopsis: Once one of Hollywood's "top ten" screen attractions, Charles Farrell had slipped somewhat by the end of the 1930s, and obliging to accept roles in such B productions as Columbia's Flight to Fame. Farrell plays air force captain Lawrence, a Billy Mitchell type who finds himself constantly at odds Read More

Bombs Over London

Actors: Charles Farrell, Fritz Kortner, Margaret Vyner, Danny Green, Wallace Evennett

Synopsis: When his Hollywood starring career dried up in the mid-1930s, matinee idol Charles Farrell headed to England, where he played newspaper reporter Brian Gaunt in the fast-paced meller Midnight Menace. The storyline acknowledges the fact that Television was firmly established in England in 1937, with Read More

Moonlight Sonata

Actors: Ignace Jan Paderewski, Charles Farrell, Marie Tempest, Barbara Greene, Eric Portman

Synopsis: Shortly before his desultory political career, famed Polish concert pianist Jan Paderewski starred as himself in the British romantic drama Moonlight Sonata. The bulk of the film is set in Sweden, where Eric Molander (Charles Farrell) professes his love for beautiful young baroness Lindenborg (Marie Tempest Read More

Forbidden Heaven

Actors: Charles Farrell, Charlotte Henry, Beryl Mercer, Fred Walton, Phyllis Barry

Synopsis: Forbidden Heaven was accurately assessed by "B"-film historian Don Miller as "a weepie unabashed -- and a successful one." Silent-film heartthrob Charles Farrell stars as a British working stiff named Niba, who hopes one day to attain a Parliamentary seat. Niba's life is permanently altered when Read More

Boys Will Be Boys

Synopsis: While the Hollywood output of director William "One-Take" Beaudine was largely uninspired, he turned out several first-rate efforts while employed in England in the mid-1930s. Beaudine's Boys Will be Boys stars the inimitable Will Hay, cast in his standard role as a pompous, ineffectual Read More

The Flying Doctor

Actors: Charles Farrell, Mary Maguire, James Raglan, Joe Valli, Margaret Vyner

Synopsis: The real-life Flying Medical Association of Australia was the inspiration for the box-office hit The Flying Doctor. Hollywood's Charles Farrell is cast as "sundowner" Sandy Nelson, who aspires to tend to the sick in the Austrian outback. He gets his chance when he joins the F.M.A., taking aviation Read More

The Amazing Adventure

Actors: Cary Grant, Mary Brian, Peter Gawthorne, Henry Kendall, Leon M. Lion

Synopsis: Amazing Quest was the original British release title of the 1937 comedy Romance and Riches (aka Riches and Romance). Making a rare return trip to England, Cary Grant plays the heir to a huge fortune. Alas, Grant is miserable, because he's never worked for his money. Determined to prove his Read More

Under Proof

Two Hearts in Harmony

Actors: Bernice Claire, George Curzon, Enid Stamp Taylor

Synopsis: This modern Cinderella story stars Bernice Claire as Micky, a good-natured cabaret singer. Falling in love with the aristocratic Lord Sheldon (George Curzon), Micky sets her sights on marriage. She gets a job as governess to Sheldon's motherless son Bobby (Paul Hartley), quickly winning the young Read More

Fighting Youth

Actors: Charles Farrell, June Martel, Andy Devine, John Farrell MacDonald, Ann Sheridan

Synopsis: In this now-campy drama, a patriotic state college football team takes on a subversive radical group determined to undermine American Values with Communist Propaganda. The prime target of the radicals is Larry Davis, the conservative star quarterback. To get him, they utilize a sly and sensual Read More

Change of Heart

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, James Dunn, Ginger Rogers, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: Four courageous college graduates become heroes when they successfully complete a 15-hour coast-to-coast plane flight. Alas, things don't go so well for the foursome when they return to earth to seek out employment. Chris Thring (Charles Farrell) has a particularly rough time of it, but his Read More

The Big Shakedown

Actors: Charles Farrell, Bette Davis, Ricardo Cortez, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: An idealistic but naive pharmacist believes the mobsters who claim they want him to manufacture illegal medicine to help out the poor. That the deal will pad his own pockets with much-needed cash only sweetens the arrangement. This melodrama chronicles the tragic results of his actions. He wants Read More

Trouble Ahead

Actors: Charles Farrell, Gregory Ratoff, Mary Lawson, H.F. Maltby, Diana Napier

Synopsis: Hollywood favorites Charles Farrell and Gregory Ratoff head the cast of the British romantic comedy Falling In Love. The film's real star, however, is young Mary Lawson, here making her cinema debut. The plot concerns a famous film star (Farrell) who seeks shelter from his mobs of fans by hiding Read More

Girl without a Room

Actors: Charles Farrell, Charlie Ruggles, Marguerite Churchill, Gregory Ratoff

Synopsis: In this comedy, a Tennessee lad, enrolled in art school wins a scholarship to paint in Paris. He is thrilled until he arrives and discovers that his style is hopelessly passe and is considered trashy. The enterprising artist immediately changes style and begins painting highly abstract moderns. Read More

Red Wagon

Actors: Charles Bickford, Raquel Torres, Greta Nissen, Don Alvarado, Anthony Bushell

Synopsis: Hollywood's Charles Bickford and Mexican leading lady Raquel Torres top the cast of the British circus melodrama Red Wagon. Bickford plays Joe, an expert trick rider, while Torres is his fiery gypsy dancer Sheba. Though in love with tiger trainer Zara (Greta Nissen), Joe breaks up with her over a Read More

Aggie Appleby

Actors: Charles Farrell, Wynne Gibson, William Gargan, ZaSu Pitts, Betty Furness

Synopsis: When her tough boyfriend Red Branahan (William Gargan) is sent to jail, Aggie Appleby (Wynne Gibson) meets mild-mannered Adoniram Schlump (Charles Farrell), and decides to turn him into a real man. She teaches him how to talk tough, changes his name to Red Branahan, and gets him a construction job Read More

After Tomorrow

Actors: Charles Farrell, Marian Nixon, Minna Gombell, Josephine Hull

Synopsis: Peter Piper (Charles Farrell) and Sidney Taylor (Marian Nixon) are deeply in love, and saving to get married, but their mothers have other ideas. Mrs. Piper (Josephine Hull) is jealous of Sidney, refusing to allow the couple to move in with her after they marry. Elsie (Minna Gombell), Sidney's Read More

Tess of the Storm Country

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Dudley Digges, June Clyde, George Meeker

Synopsis: In this drama, an old sea captain and his feisty daughter are squatting upon the land of another. The trouble begins when their humble home burns down and the old salt is falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned. To make matters worse, the daughter is then wrongly ostracized for being pregnant. Read More

The First Year

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Minna Gombell, Leila Bennett, Dudley Digges

Synopsis: Grace Livingston (Janet Gaynor) is leading a happy life in her small town, with her mother (Maude Eburne) and father (Robert McWade), being courted by two men, the steady but predictable Tommy Tucker (Charles Farrell) and the more ambitious, flashy, and worldly Dick Loring (George Meeker), who Read More

Wild Girl

Synopsis: Bret Harte's story Salomy Jane's Kiss provided the basis for a play (by Paul Armstrong and a number of films, including 1932's Wild Girl. Set in the High Sierras at the end of the Civil War, the "wild girl" of the title is Salome Jane Clay (Joan Bennett). Rather tomboyish and determined, she isn't Read More

The Man Who Came Back

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Kenneth MacKenna, William Holden, Mary Forbes

Synopsis: The popular screen romantic team of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell shocked and surprised their fans in the ultra-melodramatic The Man Who Came Back. Based on a 1916 stage success, the film atypically casts Gaynor as Angie, a San Francisco nightclub chanteuse who degenerates into drug addiction. Read More

Heartbreak

Actors: Charles Farrell, Madge Evans, Hardie Albright, Paul Cavanagh, John Arledge

Synopsis: This drama, set in Vienna during WW I, a soldier endures ostracism from his commanding officers after he travels over enemy lines to see his girl and tell her that he is deeply sorry to have killed her brother during an aerial dogfight. At first she kicks him out, but then invites him back in. Read More

Merely Mary Ann

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Beryl Mercer, J.M. Kerrigan, Arnold Lucy

Synopsis: In this drama a pianist-composer falls in love with the charwoman who cleans his boardinghouse room. Eventually, she too, falls in love with him. Trouble comes when he finds that he can no longer pay his rent for although he is talented, he refuses to write popular songs and is therefore, always Read More

Body and Soul

Actors: Elissa Landi, Charles Farrell, Humphrey Bogart, Myrna Loy, Donald Dillaway

Synopsis: This melodrama tells the tale of young American pilots who felt strongly about WWI before the US intervened. These men decided to do their part by working with the Royal Air Force. The German forces are using observation balloons to gather information about allied activities. Several American Read More

Delicious

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, El Brendel, Raul Roulien, Lawrence O'Sullivan

Synopsis: Delicious represents the first time that George and Ira Gershwin ever wrote a musical score exclusively for the screen. Unfortunately, the film fails to come up to the standards set by the music, though it's not from lack of trying. Janet Gaynor stars as Heather Gordon, a poor Scotch immigrant who Read More

The Princess and the Plumber

Actors: Charles Farrell, Maureen O'Sullivan

Synopsis: In this comedy, a plumbing magnate's son, who has started on the bottom rung of his father's business, is hired to fix the pipes in an old European castle. The castle is being let by a destitute prince and his daughter. In order to restore his fortune and prestige, the prince wants her daughter to Read More

Song of Soho

High Society Blues

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, William Collier, Sr., Hedda Hopper, Louise Fazenda

Synopsis: This version of Shakespeare's most famous love story is set in Scarsdale, New York. This time, the heroine comes from an old monied aristocratic family. Trouble ensues when the hero's newly wealthy, and terribly unsophisticated family from Iowa moves in next door. The young woman becomes Read More

Happy Days

Synopsis: Filmed in "Fox Grandeur," an early widescreen process, Happy Days was the immediate follow-up to Fox Studios' Movietone Follies of 1929. Most of the film takes place on the showboat of Mississippi entrepreneur Colonel Billy Batcher (Charles E. Evans). When the Colonel faces foreclosure after Read More

Sunny

Actors: Marilyn Miller, Lawrence Gray, Joe Donahue, Mackenzie Ward, O.P. Heggie

Synopsis: Broadway star Marilyn Miller's second starring film was an adaptation of her 1925 stage hit Sunny. Flashing her celebrated dazzling smile at every possible occasion, Miller is cast as a circus bareback rider, in love with wealthy Tom Warren (Lawrence Gray). Naturally, Tom's aristocratic family are Read More

City Girl

Actors: Charles Farrell, David Torrence

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

Liliom

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

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

Lucky Star

Actors: Charles Farrell, Janet Gaynor, Hedwiga Reicher, Paul Fix

Synopsis: In this drama, a lonely woman leads an isolated life on a ramshackle with her widowed mother who firmly believes her daughter should marry a recently returned WW I veteran. Although the mother's intentions are good, the daughter already loves another veteran. Prior to the war, both men had been Read More

Sunny Side Up

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, El Brendel, Marjorie White, Frank Richardson

Synopsis: The popular silent romantic team of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor made a successful all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing debut in Sunny Side Up. The story is old bromide about a poor girl who falls in love with a rich man, then tries to pass herself off as a woman of wealth. This being a 1929 Read More

Street Angel

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Natalie Kingston, Henry Armetta, Guido Trento

Synopsis: Fox's follow-up to Seventh Heaven, The Street Angel reunited stars Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor with director Frank Borzage. The action begins in Naples, as poverty-stricken Maria (Gaynor) steals medicine for her ailing mother. Now a fugitive from justice, Maria escapes by joining a travelling Read More

The River

Actors: Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan, Ivan Linow, Alfredo Sabato, Margaret Mann

Synopsis: This Fox part-talkie reunited Charlie Farrell and Frank Borzage, respectively the star and director of the enormously successful Seventh Heaven. Farrell is cast as virile outdoorsman Allen John Pender, while Mary Duncan co-stars as Pender's haughty society sweetheart Rosalee. At first, Rosalee is Read More

The Red Dance

Actors: Dolores Del Rio, Charles Farrell, Ivan Linow, Boris Charsky, Dorothy Revier

Synopsis: Based upon The Red Dancer of Moscow by Henry Leyford Gates, The Red Dance is a silent film (released with a synchronized score, to take advantage of the commercial allure that "sound" added to films in 1928) that paints a picture of Russia before, during and after the Soviet Revolution. Tasia Read More

Fazil

Actors: Charles Farrell, Greta Nissen, Mae Busch, Vadim Uraneff, Tyler Brooke

Synopsis: Director Howard Hawks never attempted another Valentinoesque melodrama like Fazil. Beautiful Fabienne (Greta Nissen) is wooed and won by Arab sheik Fazil (Charles Farrell, who is a bit on the thin side for this role). He takes her off to his fabulous palace, where he holds her a virtual prisoner Read More

The Ring

Actors: Carl Brisson, Lilian Hall Davis, Ian Hunter, Forrester Harvey, Gordon Harker, Harry Terry

Synopsis: Alfred Hitchcock's silent The Ring is a traditional prizefighting melodrama, elevated by the richness of the characterizations and the stylish, Germanic use of the camera. Carl Brisson plays "Round One," a cocky young boxer who matriculates from sideshow bouts to the big time. Round One's marriage Read More

The Rough Riders

Actors: Frank Hopper, Charles Farrell, Charles Emmett Mack, Mary Astor, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: Designed as a western "special" in the tradition of Covered Wagon and The Pony Express, The Rough Riders unfortunately proved a box office disappointment, causing Paramount Pictures to rethink its policy regarding epic films. Storywise, the film is a respectable if highly romanticized account of Read More

Seventh Heaven

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Ben Bard, David Butler, Marie Mosquini, Albert Gran

Synopsis: In 1927, Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress with her performance in this film, among the most celebrated romances of the late silent era. Chico (Charles Farrell) is a poor sewer worker who has only two dreams in life: to be promoted to sweeping streets and to find a woman Read More

Trip to Chinatown

Synopsis: Vampy Margaret Livingston and stalwart Earl Foxe seem miscast in this farce comedy. Foxe plays a young hypochondriac who believes that he has only a week to live. His name, by the way, is Welland Strong (get it?). He decides to visit his uncle (J. Farrell MacDonald) in the short amount of time he Read More

Sandy

Actors: Madge Bellamy, Joan Standing, Leslie Fenton, Harrison Ford, Gloria Hope

Synopsis: Pert and pretty Sandy McNeill (Madge Bellamy) is strong-armed by her parents into marrying wealthy Ben Murillo (Bardson Bard). Ben turns out to be a sadistic wife-beater whose cruel excesses lead to the death of Sandy's baby. Fleeing this abusive environment, Sandy falls in love with handsome Read More

Old Ironsides

Actors: Esther Ralston, Charles Farrell, Wallace Beery, George Bancroft, George Godfrey

Synopsis: Long derided by film historians as a talented but visually unimaginative director, James Cruze made up for any and all past artistic sins with his rousing Old Ironsides. Per its title, this 11-reel silent film is set at the time of Stephen Decatur's defeat of the Barbary pirates in Tripoli. Read More

The Freshman

Actors: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict, James Anderson, Hazel Keener

Synopsis: One of Harold Lloyd's best feature-length comedies, The Freshman, features the bespectacled regular guy as Harold Lamb, a naïve young man who heads off to college believing campus life will be just as it is in the movies; he even learns a little dance he saw one of his favorite actors do in a Read More

Wings of Youth

Synopsis: This Fox production was only one of a seemingly endless stream of flapper pictures that came out during the 1920s. In this one, the mother out-flappers her daughters. Katherine Manners (Ethel Clayton) has three daughters who are away at boarding school. She doesn't quite believe that they are the Read More

Clash of the Wolves

Synopsis: Filmed on locations at Joshua Tree National Monument and Chatsworth, CA, this surviving Rin Tin Tin melodrama features the famous canine as Lobo, the "half-breed" leader of a pack of wolves. When forest fires ruin their habitat, the starving animals trek down into the desert, where they in Read More

Love Hour

Actors: Huntly Gordon, Louise Fazenda, Willard Louis, Ruth Clifford, John Roche

Synopsis: One of the final films bearing the Vitagraph stamp before that company was completely absorbed by Warner Bros., this silent melodrama starred debonair Canadian actor Huntley Gordon as a newlywed almost losing his wife to a bounder. Desiring both Rex Westmore's money, and his new wife Betty (Ruth Read More

Rosita

Actors: Mary Pickford, Holbrook Blinn, Irene Rich, George Walsh, Charles Belcher

Synopsis: This historical comedy-drama resulted from the unlikely collaboration of girlish silent star Mary Pickford and sophisticated German director Ernst Lubitsch (it was also Lubitsch's first American-made film). But at least the story, adapted from the novel Don Cesar de Bazon, came closer to Read More