Charles GrapewinFilmography

When I Grow Up

Actors: Bobby Driscoll, Robert Preston, Martha Scott, Sherry Jackson, John McGovern

Synopsis: When I Grow Up is an uncharacteristically modest film from producer Sam Spiegel (during his "S. P. Eagle" years). Bobby Driscoll plays a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, Bobby chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather (Charley Read More

Sand

Actors: Mark Stevens, Coleen Gray, Rory Calhoun, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Novelist Will James, a specialist in horse stories, wrote the yarn upon which 20th Century-Fox's Sand was based. Mark Stevens plays horse breeder Jeff Keane, who loses his prize stallion in a train accident. While the stallion roams wild and free, Keane enlists the aid of rancher Joan Hartley (Coleen Gray Read More

The Enchanted Valley

Actors: Alan Curtis, Anne Gwynne, Donn Gift, Joseph Crehan

Synopsis: The peaceful, solitary existence of a crippled lad and his grandfather living in a remote wooded valley is disturbed when two armed robbers accompanied by moll visit. On the lam from the law, the crooks are desperate and dangerous. But as time passes and they get to know the strange and gentle Read More

Gunfighters

Actors: Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, Dorothy Hart, Bruce Cabot, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Zane Grey, that bottomless bounty of inspiration for Hollywood westerns, wrote the novel upon which Gunfighters was based. Randolph Scott stars as a gunslinger who's vowed to kill no more. He goes to work for a land baron (Griff Barnett) who's been driving out neighboring ranchers by fair means Read More

The Impatient Years

Actors: Jean Arthur, Lee Bowman, Charles Coburn, Edgar Buchanan, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: In this domestic comedy, a housewife nervously awaits the return of her husband from military service. They married after a brief, passionate courtship and now she does not know if she really loves him. Sure enough, sparks fly upon his return and the couple decide to get a divorce. Fortunately Read More

Follow the Boys

Actors: George Raft, Vera Zorina, Charles Grapewin, George Macready, Charles Butterworth, Regis Toomey, Grace McDonald

Synopsis: Paramount Pictures did their patriotic duty with this World War II era musical, with a number of the studio's biggest stars making cameo appearances. Tony West (George Raft), his sister Kitty (Grace McDonald), and their father Nick (Charles Grapewin) tour together as The Three Wests, a failing act Read More

Atlantic City

Actors: Stanley Brown, Constance Moore, Brad Taylor, Charles Grapewin, Jerry Colonna

Synopsis: Definitely no relation to the 1980 Louis Malle film of the same name, 1944's Atlantic City is a tuneful Republic musical, not quite an "A" picture but certainly not a "B". Brad Taylor (who formerly acted at Columbia under the name of Stanley Brown) stars as Brad, an early-20th-century entrepreneur Read More

Crash Dive

Actors: Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, James Gleason, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: Tyrone Power made his last screen appearance before a three-year stretch in the Marines in this World War II drama. Lt. Ward Stewart (Tyrone Power) has served with distinction as the commander of a PT boat, so his uncle, Adm. Bob Stewart (Minor Watson), gives him a new and more challenging Read More

A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen

Synopsis: This entry in the detective series follows Queen as he investigates the case of a woman's missing husband, a banker. As he searches, he must cope with several murders and a burlesque queen. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen

Actors: William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, Gale Sondergaard, Gilbert Roland

Synopsis: Columbia's Ellery Queen series called it quits with the timely 1942 entry Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen. The eponymous enemy agents are on the lookout for a cache of precious diamonds, which are being smuggled from Holland to the United States by way of Egypt. The gems are hidden in a mummy case Read More

A Close Call for Ellery Queen

Actors: William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, Ralph Morgan, Kay Linaker

Synopsis: William Gargan takes over from Ralph Bellamy as the title character in Columbia's A Close Call for Ellery Queen. Unlike Bellamy, who played the role of Ellery Queen for laughs, Gargan adopts a more sober approach, much to the overall benefit of the film. The story takes place at the lavish country Read More

They Died With Their Boots On

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy, Regis Toomey, Charles Grapewin, Gene Lockhart, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Though history is distorted almost beyond recognition in Warner Bros.' They Died With Their Boots On, audiences in 1941 ate it up like cotton candy. In the gospel according to Warners, General George Armstrong Custer (Errol Flynn) is neither an arrogant fool nor a rabid Indian hater. Instead, he Read More

Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, James Burke

Synopsis: Like the first entry in Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery depicts its amateur-criminologist hero as an oafish ignoramus. This time around, Chinese ventriloquist Gordon Cobb (Noel Madison), is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues Read More

Tobacco Road

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Erskine Caldwell's once-scandalous novel Tobacco Road resulted in an equally steamy stage play by Jack Kirkland, which became one of the longest-running productions in Broadway history. This story of indigence and amorality amongst inbred "poor whites" (based on people Caldwell had known while Read More

Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, Spring Byington, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Ralph Bellamy makes the third of four appearances as "master detective" Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime. The principal villain is crooked stockbroker John Mathews (Douglass Dumbrille), whose Wall Street manipulations render Ray Jarden (H. B. Warner) penniless. Read More

Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, Mona Barrie, Paul Hurst

Synopsis: Ralph Bellamy made his fourth and final appearance as literary sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring. On this occasion, Ellery and his police-inspector father (Charley Grapewin) are summoned to a private hospital by its owner, philanthropist Mrs. Stack (Blanche Yurka). Read More

Earthbound

Actors: Warner Baxter, Andrea Leeds, Lynn Bari, Charles Grapewin, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: Future blacklistee John Howard Lawson co-wrote this remake of Samuel Goldwyn's 1920 drama Earthbound, presented here as a rather more straightforward morality tale/fantasy. Warner Baxter and Andrea Leeds star as Nick and Ellen Desbrough, a seemingly happily-married couple celebrating their fifth Read More

Johnny Apollo

Actors: Tyrone Power, Dorothy Lamour, Lloyd Nolan, Edward Arnold, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Tyrone Power plays the college-grad son of jailed-embezzler Edward Arnold. Power tries to find work, only to be turned away because of his father's reputation. When he decides to use a phony name, he is still fired, because his ex-convict boss feels that Power is being unfair to his Read More

Rhythm on the River

Actors: Bing Crosby, Mary Martin, Basil Rathbone, Oscar Levant, Oscar Shaw

Synopsis: Billy Wilder was among the screenwriters of this easy-to-take Bing Crosby musical. Basil Rathbone dominates the proceedings as Oliver Courtney, a popular composer whose most successful tunes were actually ghost-written by musician Bob Summers (Crosby) and lyricist Cherry Lane (Mary Martin). Read More

Texas Rangers Ride Again

Actors: Ellen Drew, John Howard, Akim Tamiroff, May Robson, Broderick Crawford

Synopsis: Filmed on location at Mesa, AZ, this minor Paramount western featured newcomer Ellen Drew as "Slats" Dangerfield, a young girl returning to her grandmother's ranch in Texas. Old Mrs. Dangerfield (May Robson) is experiencing a rash of cattle rustlings and, fed up with her no-good grandson Carter's Read More

Ellery Queen. Master Detective

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, James Burke, Michael Whalen

Synopsis: Ralph Bellamy made the first of four appearances as fictional sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen, Master Detective. For reasons that defy logic, the studio elected to transform the brilliant, analytical Queen into a hopeless bumbler, who seems incapable of tying his own shoes, much Read More

The Grapes of Wrath

Actors: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charles Grapewin, Doris Bowden

Synopsis: The adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of dirt-poor Dust Bowl migrants by 4-time Oscar-winning director John Ford starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who opens the movie returning to his Oklahoma home after serving jail time for manslaughter. En route, Tom Read More

Sabotage

Actors: Arleen Whelan, Gordon Oliver, Charles Grapewin, Lucien Littlefield, Paul Guilfoyle

Synopsis: In this patriotic wartime drama set during WW II, a test plane crashes killing all aboard and causes the locals to accuse the aircraft engineer of being a traitor and sabotaging the plane. To prove his son's innocence, the engineer's father looks into the crash and soon reveals the real spies. The Read More

I Am Not Afraid

Actors: Jane Bryan, Charles Grapewin, Henry O'Neill, Elizabeth Risdon, James McCallion

Synopsis: I Am Not Afraid was the preview title for the 60-minute Warner Bros. crime melodrama The Man Who Dared. A remake of 1931's Star Witness, the film concerns the efforts made by gangster to intimidate murder witness Matthew Carter (Henry O'Neill) into silence. When all else fails, the villains kindap Read More

The Man Who Dared

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Henry O'Neill, Dick Jones

Synopsis: In this drama, an unlucky family find themselves plagued by murderous mobsters after they inadvertently witness a crime that could send a gang leader to the chair. The police protection provided proves woefully inadequate when the crooks manage to kidnap a son. It is the brave grandfather who Read More

Hero for a Day

Actors: Anita Louise, Dick Foran, Charles Grapewin, Berton Churchill, Emma Dunn

Synopsis: The Hero for a Day is elderly night watchman Frank Higgins (Charley Grapewin), still basking in the memories of his long-age college football triumphs. To stir up publicity for a crucial post-season game, his alma mater plucks Higgins out of obscurity and once more showers him in glory. The old Read More

Dust Be My Destiny

Actors: John Garfield, Priscilla Lane, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Billy Halop

Synopsis: John Garfield once more plays a social outcast who's had nothing but lousy breaks. Released from prison for a crime he didn't commit, Garfield is promptly arrested as a vagrant and sent to a work farm. He falls in love with Priscilla Lane, stepdaughter of the farm's no-good foreman. Garfield Read More

Stand up and Fight

Actors: Wallace Beery, Robert Taylor, Florence Rice, Helen Broderick, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Directed with customary haste by Woody Van Dyke, Stand Up and Fight is an excellent dual vehicle for veteran Wallace Beery and up-and-coming Robert Taylor. Set in the American west in the mid-19th century, the story concerns the efforts of empire-building Blake Cantrell (Taylor) to construct a Read More

Sudden Money

Actors: Marjorie Rambeau, Charles Grapewin, Broderick Crawford, Billy Lee

Synopsis: Paramount's Sudden Money has all the earmarks of a Charlie Ruggles-Mary Boland vehicle, except that this time Ruggles is teamed with Marjorie Rambeau. It all begins when Sweeney Patterson (Ruggles) and his brother-in-law Doc Finney (Broderick Crawford) win $150,000 in the Irish sweepstakes. All of Read More

City in Terror

Synopsis: In this thriller, a family keeps mum after they witness a murder. It is grandpa that blows the whistle. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Burn 'em up O'Conner

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Cecilia Parker, Nat Pendleton, Harry Carey, Addison Richards

Synopsis: The zippy world of auto-racing provided the basis of this off-beat actioner that centers on an auto magnate who is relentlessly driven to break every speed record with his cars. Unfortunately, his drivers keep dying on the track. This doesn't stop the obsessed manufacturer from continuing his Read More

Three Loves Has Nancy

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone, Guy Kibbee, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: Nancy, a jilted bride-to-be, is played by Janet Gaynor in one of her last starring films. The three loves are novelist Robert Montgomery, publisher Franchot Tone, and gormless nebbish Grady Sutton (Sonny TUFTS??). In New York to find her runaway groom Sutton, Janet runs across Montgomery and Tone. Read More

Three Comrades

Actors: Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan, Franchot Tone, Robert Young, Guy Kibbee, Lionel Atwill

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades represented one of the few successful screenwriting efforts of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in Germany in the years just following World War I, the film stars Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young as three battle-weary, thoroughly Read More

Artists and Models Abroad

Actors: Jack Benny, Joan Bennett, Mary Boland, Charles Grapewin, Yacht Club Boys

Synopsis: In this musical sequel to the highly successful Artists and Models, Jack Benny plays Buck Boswell, the leader of a troupe of performers who end up broke and stranded in gay Paris. To rustle up a little cash, he decides to produce a musical fashion show. Boswell hires an American father and Read More

The Shopworn Angel

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon, Hattie McDaniel, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: The second motion picture version of a Saturday Evening Post story by Dana Burnet, this romantic melodrama was also the second pairing of actors James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Stewart plays Private Bill Pettigrew, a naïve young Texan in New York for basic training prior to being shipped Read More

The Girl of the Golden West

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Walter Pidgeon, Leo Carrillo, Buddy Ebsen

Synopsis: MGM's leading musical team of the 30's, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy are paired once again in this fourth film version of David Belasco's creaky melodrama, featuring music by Sigmund Romberg and Gus Kahn. Jeanette MacDonald is Mary Robbins, the owner of a bawdy, rough-house saloon in a Read More

Listen, Darling

Actors: Judy Garland, Freddie Bartholomew, Mary Astor, Walter Pidgeon, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Two of MGM's top juvenile stars, Judy Garland and Freddie Bartholomew, team up for the otherwise unremarkable Listen, Darling. The story gets rolling when widowed Dotty Wingate (Mary Astor) decides to remarry for the sake of her children Pinkie (Garland) and Billie (Scotty Beckett). To prevent her Read More

The Bad Man of Brimstone

Actors: Wallace Beery, Virginia Bruce, Dennis O'Keefe, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: Wallace Beery plays one of his patented good bad guys in this MGM Western. "Trigger" Bill (Beery) is an outlaw with a heart of gold who discovers that his estranged son Jeffrey Burton (Dennis O'Keefe) has become a prizefighter. In his attempts to get Jeffrey out of the ring and into law school Read More

Of Human Hearts

Actors: Walter Huston, James Stewart, Beulah Bondi, Guy Kibbee, Charles Coburn

Synopsis: Clarence Brown directed this heart-tugging piece of Americana, set during the Civil War era. Walter Huston plays a stern family patriarch, a preacher who thrusts his family into poverty in order to set an example for his parishioners. As a result, his son (James Stewart) grows up to resent him. He Read More

Between Two Women

Actors: Franchot Tone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Virginia Bruce, Leonard Penn, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: The tempestuous love affair between a young surgeon and a pretty but married nurse provides the basis for this melodrama. The nurse would much rather be with the good doctor as she is married to a wretched alcoholic but she cannot bear to leave her husband in his hour of need. Later the surgeon Read More

The Good Earth

Actors: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly, Tilly Losch, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Based on Donald Davis and Owen Davis' stage-adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's sprawling novel, Sidney Franklin's The Good Earth is the story of a Chinese farming couple whose lives are torn apart by poverty, greed, and nature. Paul Muni stars as Wang Lung a hardworking, but poor, farmer who weds Read More

The Big City

Actors: Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy, Charles Grapewin, Janet Beecher, Eddie Quillan

Synopsis: The Big City is an improbable urban melodrama which takes place during a "taxi war" between honest independent cabdrivers and graft-ridden taxi monopolies. Looking for a scapegoat for a recent gangland bombing, crooked city officials deport the foreign wife (Luise Rainer) of rabble-rousing cabbie Spencer Tracy Read More

Captains Courageous

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Freddie Bartholomew, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: A boy learns life-changing lessons about the importance of friendship and the dignity of labor in this adventure saga based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. Young Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is the working definition of a spoiled brat; the only child of a wealthy widowed businessman, Harvey Read More

Bad Guy

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Virginia Grey, Edward Norris, Jean Chatburn, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: This drama chronicles the fate of two disparate brothers, both of whom work at the same power plant. One of them is incarcerated after killing a gambler. He tries to convince his brother to help him use electricity to blow up the iron bars of his cell so he can escape. The electrifying results of Read More

Broadway Melody of 1938

Actors: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Binnie Barnes, Judy Garland, Buddy Ebsen

Synopsis: This third entry in MGM's "Broadway Melody" series may not have been the biggest or best, but thanks to a masterpiece of casting it is one of the most memorable of the batch. Signed by MGM in 1935, 15-year-old Judy Garland made her first feature-film appearance under the aegis of Leo the Lion Read More

A Family Affair

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Cecilia Parker, Eric Linden, Mickey Rooney, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Based on Aurania Rouveyrol's Broadway play Skidding, A Family Affair is a gentle comedy/drama centering around the Hardy family of Carvel (a small, idealized American town). Judge Hardy (Lionel Barrymore) hopes to be re-elected, but his campaign is put in jeopardy by his opposition of a wasteful Read More

Without Orders

Actors: Sally Eilers, Robert Armstrong, Frances Sage, Charles Grapewin, Vinton Haworth

Synopsis: In this drama, a flamboyant womanizing airline pilot competes with another, rather dull, pilot for the love of a fetching flight attendant. At first she ignores her sister's advice and has a fling with the charming cad, who gets back at the meddlesome sister by hitting her on the head. The two Read More

The Petrified Forest

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Genevieve Tobin

Synopsis: Burned-out British intellectual Alan Squier (Leslie Howard) wanders into the desert service station/restaurant owned by Jason Maple (Porter Hall). Alan finds himself an object of fascination for Jason's starry-eyed daughter, Gabrielle Bette Davis, who dreams of moving to France and establishing Read More

Small Town Girl

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Robert Taylor, Binnie Barnes, Andy Devine, James Stewart

Synopsis: One Horse Town is the TV title for MGM's 1936 version Small Town Girl (the new title was bestowed to avoid confusion with the 1953 remake). Robert Taylor plays an irresponsible playboy who is arrested in a backwater town for drunken driving. While intoxicated, Taylor proposes to local girl Janet Gaynor Read More

Libeled Lady

Actors: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy, and William Powell star in this crackling screwball comedy about a cut-throat newspaper editor's scheme to prevent a libel suit that ends up exploding in everybody's face. Tracy plays Warren Haggerty, the managing editor of a newspaper that mistakenly prints a story Read More

Sinner Take All

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Margaret Lindsay, Joseph Calleia, Stanley Ridges, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: Sinner Takes All shines with the production gloss only MGM could create; the prettiness of the images helps to hide the plot holes in this modest murder mystery. The members of an aristocratic family are murdered one by one, in retribution for the misdeeds of the family's black sheep. Margaret Lindsay Read More

The Voice of Bugle Ann

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Eric Linden, Dudley Digges, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Based on the novel by MacKinlay Kantor, this 1936 drama from director Richard Thorpe stars Lionel Barrymore as Springfield Davis, an avid fox hunter in the Ozarks who relies on his loyal dog, Bugle Ann, to aid in his hunt. When curmudgeonly shepherd Jacob Terry (Dudley Digges) puts up a fence Read More

Superspeed

Actors: Norman Foster, Florence Rice, Mary Carlisle, Charles Grapewin, Arthur Hohl

Synopsis: The exciting worlds of motorboat and auto racing provide the backdrops for this exciting drama. The story begins as an ingenious young inventor designs a special "superspeed" formula for the superspeed car. He is opposed by a wicked plant manager who tries to ruin the formula. Meanwhile the young Read More

Party Wire

Actors: Jean Arthur, Victor Jory, Helen Lowell, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: In one of his few movie leading roles, Victor Jory plays an unmarried small-town creamery owner. Jory falls in love with Jean Arthur, daughter of the town's favorite citizen (Charley Grapewin). Jean's former boy friend disconsolately leaves town, leaving behind an unbalanced church budget which Read More

Shanghai

Actors: Loretta Young, Charles Boyer, Warner Oland, Fred Keating, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: The stigma of miscegenation (horrors!) is at the base of this very dated romantic melodrama. Charles Boyer stars as Dmitri Koslov, an enterprising Eurasian who rises from rickshaw driver to powerful industrialist, all the while concealing his mixed parentage. Koslov falls in love with beautiful Read More

Rendezvous

Actors: William Powell, Rosalind Russell, Binnie Barnes, Lionel Atwill, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: This espionage thriller with romantic comedy touches was loosely based on the book American Black Chamber by the real-life head of the U.S. Secret Service during World War I, Herbert O. Yardley. Bill Gordon (William Powell) is a newspaper puzzle editor who becomes a lieutenant in 1917 when he Read More

One Frightened Night

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Mary Carlisle, Arthur Hohl, Evelyn Knapp, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: Hoping to avoid the new inheritance tax, eccentric millionaire Jasper Whyte (Charles Grapewin) gathers together his greedy relatives and associates and announces that he intends to give away his fortune to his long-lost granddaughter Doris -- but if she doesn't show up for the reading of the will Read More

Ah, Wilderness!

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Eric Linden, Aline MacMahon, Cecilia Parker, Mickey Rooney

Synopsis: Playwright Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness! was filmed by MGM in 1935. Impressionable turn-of-the-century lad Eric Linden, whose knowledge of the ways of the world has come from French novels, is anxious to taste life to the fullest. Linden's father Lionel Barrymore sternly advises Read More

King Solomon of Broadway

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Dorothy Page, Pinky Tomlin, Louise Henry, Edward Pawley

Synopsis: Edmund Lowe stars as big-time gambler King Solomon, so named because of his fairness and sagacity. Naturally, our hero has several enemies to whom fair play is anathema. One of these is gangster boss Ice Larson (Edward Pawley), who demands Solomon's cooperation as payment for a gambling debt. But Read More

Eight Bells

Actors: Ann Sothern, Ralph Bellamy, John Buckler, Catherine Doucet, Arthur Hohl

Synopsis: Steamship captain Steve Andrews (Ralph Bellamy) is demoted to second officer when Marge Walker (Ann Sothern), daughter of Steve's boss, insists that her boyfriend Roy Dale (John Buckler) be put in charge of the ship. Dale's first assignment is to deliver a valuable cargo to Shanghai within a Read More

Alice Adams

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: Katharine Hepburn stars as Booth Tarkington's would-be society belle Alice Adams. The product of a family of modest means, Alice nonetheless dreams of being accepted by the "better people." Luck of luck, she meets well-to-do young Fred MacMurray at a social gathering; he is charmed by her pathetic Read More

Return of the Terror

Actors: Mary Astor, Lyle Talbot, John Halliday, Frank McHugh, J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: An Edgar Wallace yarn was the basis for the uncharacteristic Warner Bros. melodrama Return of the Terror. Hoping to escape prosecution for a series of poison murders, Dr. Redmayne (John Halliday) feigns insanity at his trial. The audience knows that Redmayne is innocent, so when he escapes from Read More

Two Alone

Actors: Jean Parker, Tom Brown, ZaSu Pitts, Beulah Bondi

Synopsis: In this drama, an impoverished orphan girl finds herself acting as a slave to a cruel old farmer. She is soon joined by a reform-school runaway whom the farmer also captures and enslaves. The two youngsters soon fall in love. In the end they are saved by the orphan's long lost father who Read More

Caravan

Actors: Annabella, Conchita Montenegro, Loretta Young, Jean Parker, Charles Boyer, Pierre Brasseur, Phillips Holmes, Louise Fazenda

Synopsis: Charles Boyer played his first major Hollywood role (and gets to sing in the bargain!) in the oddball musical romance Caravan. A miscast Loretta Young stars as young Countess Wilms, who is forced to wed by midnight or lose her inheritance. She impulsively chooses gypsy vagabond Latzi (Boyer) Read More

She Made Her Bed

Actors: Richard Arlen, Sally Eilers, Robert Armstrong, Grace Bradley, Roscoe Ates

Synopsis: This drama is set within a carnival and centers on a young woman who falls in love but is unable to act upon her feelings because she is married. Her husband, the owner of the carnival, is a real louse. The whole mess comes to a head one day when a tiger escapes and gets into the house of the Read More

The Loudspeaker

Actors: Ray Walker, Jacqueline Wells, Noel Francis, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Perhaps the best of Monogram's breezy Ray Walker vehicles, The Loudspeaker casts Walker as Joe Miller, a cocky would-be radio star. Armed with a minimum of talent and a maximum of chutzpah, our hero lands a job as emcee of a network radio program sponsored by "pancake king" Burroughs (Spencer Charters Read More

Anne of Green Gables

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

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

The President Vanishes

Actors: Janet Beecher, Paul Kelly, Peggy Conklin, Rosalind Russell

Synopsis: Based upon a novel anonymously written by Rex Stout, The President Vanishes has as its title character a peace-loving man with distinct anti-interventionist views. As the picture opens, President Stanley Craig (A.S. Byron) finds himself in a bit of a bind: he fervently believes that the United Read More

Judge Priest

Actors: Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise, Henry B. Walthall, Rochelle Hudson, David Landau

Synopsis: Will Rogers stars as Judge William "Billy" Priest, the common-sense Kentucky jurist created by humorist Irvin S. Cobb. The Judge's easygoing manner bothers many of the self-righteous good citizens of his small 19th-century hometown, imperiling his chances for re-election. The anecdotal plot boils Read More

The Quitters

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Emma Dunn, William Bakewell, Glen Boles, Barbara Weeks

Synopsis: The Quitters was typical of the curiously uninviting titles frequently bestowed upon the Chesterfield-Invincible productions of the mid-1930s (other examples include Cross Streets, Stolen Sweets and Fugitive Road). The grand old trouper Charles Grapewin heads the cast as vagabond journalist Ed Read More

Heroes for Sale

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Gordon Westcott, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: What isn't Heroes for Sale about? Within its 71-minute time frame, this film (co-written by "professional cynic" Wilson Mizner) tackles such issues as disenfranchised war veterans, misguided hero worship, drug addiction, the Depression, capitalism, labor relations and communism. Richard Barthelmess Read More

Beauty for Sale

Actors: Madge Evans, Otto Kruger, Alice Brady, Una Merkel, May Robson

Synopsis: The beauty-parlor craze of the early 1930s was given a good going-over in MGM's Beauty for Sale. Madge Evans, Florine McKinney and Una Merkel star as Letty, Jane and Carol, three employees of a swank Manhattan beauty salon. While Carol wisecracks her way through life, Letty takes things more Read More

Torch Singer

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ricardo Cortez, David Manners, Lyda Roberti, Baby Le Roy

Synopsis: In this musical drama from directors Alexander Hall and George Somnes, Claudette Colbert stars as Sally Trent, a children's radio show host by day and a nightclub singer by night. After giving her only child (a daughter) up for adoption amid hard times, Sally uses the listeners of her show as Read More

Wild Boys of the Road

Actors: Frankie Darro, Dorothy Coonan, Rochelle Hudson, Anne Hovey

Synopsis: This earnest, socially-conscious road drama centers on two California teenagers who find their comfortable lives thrown into turmoil during the Great Depression. To find work for themselves, the adventurous lads sneak aboard a Chicago-bound train. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

Don't Bet on Love

Actors: Lew Ayres, Ginger Rogers, Charles Grapewin, Shirley Grey, Merna Kennedy

Synopsis: A man's addiction to betting on the horses severely disrupts his love life in this comedy. He, a plumber, and his fiancee, a manicurist, are getting ready for their nuptials when she learns that he is planning a honeymoon at the racetrack. She immediately calls off the wedding. The man is a Read More

Pilgrimage

Actors: Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel, Norman Foster, Marian Nixon, Maurice Murphy

Synopsis: John Ford directed this emotional drama, which was a considerable change of pace from the westerns and war pictures for which he was best known. Hannah Jessop (Henrietta Crosman) fears being abandoned by her son Jim (Norman Foster), and she doesn't approve of his romance with Mary Saunders (Marian Nixon Read More

Hell and High Water

Actors: Richard Arlen, Judith Allen, Charles Grapewin, Guy Standing

Synopsis: No relation to the 1955 Cold War melodrama of the same title, the confusing 1933 melange Hell and High Water takes place in a tawdry waterfront community. Misogynistic garbage-scow skipper Captain Jericho (Richard Arlen) is none too happy when would-be suicide Sally Driggs (Judith Allen) ends up Read More

Hello, Everybody!

Actors: Kate Smith, Randolph Scott, Sally Blane, Julia Swayne Gordon, Jerry Tucker

Synopsis: Reported to have cost a whopping $2 million, this musical was actually made for far less -- and looks it. But unlike She Done Him Wrong (1932), filmed simultaneously next door, Hello, Everybody! made nary a nickel. Both films starred newcomers, but unlike the irrepressible Mae West, hefty Kate Read More

The Kiss Before the Mirror

Actors: Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Paul Lukas, Gloria Stuart, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: Horror film icon James Whale directed this well-detailed thriller about a man questioning his wife's honesty after a friend begins to doubt his own. Dr. Paul Held (Frank Morgan) is an attorney who has been asked to come to the aid of his old friend Walter Bernsdorf (Paul Lukas); Bernsdorf has been Read More

Midnight Mary

Actors: Loretta Young, Ricardo Cortez, Franchot Tone, Andy Devine, Una Merkel

Synopsis: Loaned to MGM by her home studio of Warner Bros., Loretta Young suffers her way through the title role in Midnight Mary. A good girl led astray, Mary (Young) endeavors to save the life of her boyfriend Tom (Franchot Tone) by killing the aptly named Leo the Rat (Ricardo Cortez). As her case is Read More

Hell's House

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Junior Coughlan, Junior Durkin, Pat O'Brien

Synopsis: Bette Davis was on loan from Universal when she appeared in this little juvenile delinquent melodrama from independent producer B.F. Zeidman. Although Davis earned above-title billing (along with Pat O'Brien), Junior Durkin is the real star, a teenager who is sent to juvenile prison after being Read More

Lady and Gent

Actors: George Bancroft, Wynne Gibson, Charles Starrett, John Wayne, Morgan Wallace

Synopsis: One of four films directed by Stephen Roberts in 1932, just four years before the filmmaker passed away prematurely, Lady and Gent stars George Bancroft as aging prizefighter Stag Bailey. After Stag loses his last match to hotshot up-and-comer Buzz Kinney (a 25-year-old John Wayne in an early Read More

The Night of June 13

Actors: Clive Brook, Lila Lee, Charlie Ruggles, Gene Raymond, Frances Dee

Synopsis: A multi-character drama set in a suburban neighborhood, The Night of June 13th takes place in four households. One of these is inhabited by unhappy husband Clive Brook, who is accused of murdering his wife. Actually, she has committed suicide, but those neighbors who could provide Brook with an Read More

Wild Horse Mesa

Actors: Randolph Scott, Sally Blane, Fred Kohler, Lucille La Verne, James Bush

Synopsis: In this western, a lawman restores law and order in town. He also stops a greedy horseman from trapping wild stallions with barbed wire traps. In the end the villain gets his just desserts when he is trampled by the king of the wild horses during a stampede. The hero saves the herd from the deadly Read More

The Woman in Room 13

Actors: Elissa Landi, Ralph Bellamy, Neil Hamilton, Myrna Loy, Gilbert Roland

Synopsis: Beautiful composer Laura Ramsey (Elissa Landi) is the principal suspect when her lover, philandering singer Victor Legrand (Gilbert Roland), is found murdered in his apartment. Having "bugged" Legrand's room with Dictaphone equipment, detective John Bruce (Ralph Bellamy), who happens to be Laura's Read More

Big Timer

Synopsis: Ben Lyon plays an aspiring boxer in this pre-code drama. Cookie Bradford (Lyon) toils at a diner and works out at the gym while waiting for his big break. His one supporter is the gym owner's daughter, Honey (Constance Cummings). When her father dies suddenly, she decides to take over his Read More

No Man of Her Own

Actors: Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Dorothy Mackaill, Grant Mitchell, George Barbier

Synopsis: No Man of Her Own represented the only time that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard co-starred in the same picture (at the time the film was made, both were married to other people; their romance and subsequent marriage was several years in the offing). Gable plays a crooked cardsharp who takes it on Read More

Disorderly Conduct

Actors: Sally Eilers, Spencer Tracy, El Brendel, Ralph Bellamy, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: The troubled career of a luckless motorcycle cop provides the basis for this police drama. His difficulties begin when he arrests the woman his captain has been dating for speeding. Unfortunately, her father is one of the most powerful (and villainous) men in town. The cop's eagerness gets him Read More

The Millionaire

Actors: George Arliss, Evelyn Knapp, David Manners, Florence Arliss, Noah Beery, Sr., James Cagney

Synopsis: George Arliss is the millionaire of the title, a retired auto tycoon who's been ordered by his doctor to rest and avoid exercise. Arliss is shaken out of his sedentary existence by an insurance salesman who advises him to pick himself up and enjoy life. The old man heads to California, where he Read More

Gold Dust Gertie

Actors: Winnie Lightner, Chic Johnson

Synopsis: Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson's final film for Warner Bros. is as much a vehicle for comedienne Winnie Lightner as it is for the venerable vaudeville team. The premise: Gertie (Lightner) marries Harlan (Johnson), then divorces him to marry Guthrie (Olsen), Harlan's partner in a bathing-suit Read More

Only Saps Work

Actors: Leon Errol, Richard Arlen, Mary Brian, Stuart Erwin, Anderson Lawler

Synopsis: Rubber-legged comedian Leon Errol made his talkie starring bow in Paramount's Only Saps Work. Based on a play by Owen Davis Sr., the film casts Errol as James Wilson, a kleptomaniac who starts with picking pockets and ends up robbing a bank. Wilson's friend Lawrence Payne (Richard Arlen) Read More

The Shannons of Broadway

Actors: James Gleason, Lucille Gleason, Charles Grapewin, Mary Philbin, John Breeden

Synopsis: Although The Shannons of Broadway was not James Gleason's first film appearance as advertised, it might as well as been: Based on Gleason's own stage play, the film co-starred Gleason with his wife Lucille Webster. Mr. and Mrs. G. are cast as Mickey and Emma Shannon, a vaudeville duo who meet with Read More