Clara BlandickFilmography

Love That Brute

Actors: Paul Douglas, Jean Peters, Cesar Romero, Keenan Wynn, Joan Davis

Synopsis: Love That Brute is a remake of the 1942 comedy Tall, Dark and Handsome. In the original, Cesar Romero starred as a soft-hearted 1920s gangster who manages to maintain a reputation as a dangerous character, even though he's never killed anyone in his life. In the remake, Romero is cast as Pretty Read More

Key to the City

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

Mr. Soft Touch

Actors: Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, Beulah Bondi, Percy Kilbride

Synopsis: Returning from WW II, gambler Joe Miracle (Glenn Ford) discovers that his partner is dead, his gaming house has been sold, and his fortune has been claimed by others. Forced to steal back money which is rightfully his, Joe takes refuge in a settlement house run by social worker Jenny Jones (Evelyn Keyes Read More

The Bride Goes Wild

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

Life With Father

Actors: William Powell, Irene Dunne, Monte Blue, ZaSu Pitts, Clara Blandick, Johnny Calkins, Emma Dunn, Edmund Gwenn, Elizabeth Taylor

Synopsis: The longest-running non-musical play in Broadway history, Life With Father was faithfully filmed by Warner Bros. in 1947. William Powell is a tower of comic strength as Clarence Day, the benevolent despot of his 1880s New York City household. Irene Dunne co-stars as Day's wife Vinnie, who Read More

Philo Vance Returns

Actors: Will Wright, Terry Austin, Leon Belasco, Clara Blandick, Ramsay Ames

Synopsis: Philo Vance, the infuriatingly brilliant amateur detective created by S. S. Van Dine, hadn't been seen on screen for seven years when PRC decided to launch a new "Philo Vance" series in 1947. William Wright plays the title role in the first entry, Philo Vance Returns, while Alan Curtis would take Read More

Claudia and David

Actors: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Mary Astor, John Sutton, Harry Davenport, Gail Patrick

Synopsis: Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young reprise their roles from the film Claudia, which followed the titular young couple as they dealt with the trials of parenthood. Claudia, a bit wiser than she was in the first film but still charmingly naive and a bit nervous, is struggling with the responsibilities Read More

So Goes My Love

Actors: Myrna Loy, Don Ameche, Rhys Williams, Bobby Driscoll, Richard Gaines

Synopsis: Don Ameche stars in this semi-screwball comedy as a handsome, eccentric 19th century inventor. Myrna Loy is his golddigging fiancee, who foolishly believes Ameche will make her financially secure. Love triumphs over greed, and Loy happily marries the inventor, who'll offer little in the way of Read More

A Stolen Life

Actors: Bette Davis, Glenn Ford, Dane Clark, Walter Brennan, Charlie Ruggles

Synopsis: In this romantic melodrama, Bette Davis plays twin sisters for the first time (she would do so again in 1964's Dead Ringer). Kate Bosworth (Davis) is a sincere, demure girl and talented artist. Her twin sister Pat (also Davis) is a flamboyant, man-hungry manipulator. Orphans, the girls' guardian Read More

People Are Funny

Actors: Jack Haley, Helen Walker, Rudy Vallee, Ozzie Nelson, Phillip Reed

Synopsis: Art Linkletter had only recently taken over the popular audience-participation radio series People are Funny from Art Baker when he appeared as "himself" in this lighthearted musical comedy. The film's plot concerns a rivalry between two radio producers, both of whom want to produce a Read More

She-Wolf of London

Actors: Don Porter, June Lockhart, Sara Haden, Jan Wiley, Dennis Hoey

Synopsis: This thriller is set in early 20th-century London where a series of nasty murders have recently occurred. An aunt then tells an innocent young girl that the blood of the werewolf flows through her veins and that she is responsible for the deaths. The distraught lass immediately breaks off her Read More

Frontier Gal

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Rod Cameron, Andy Devine, Fuzzy Knight, Andrew Tombes

Synopsis: Johnny Hart (Rod Cameron) is on the run from the law after killing one of the men who shot his partner. He passes through a town and stops at a saloon owned by singer Lorena Dumont (Yvonne de Carlo). The two seem a good, albeit tempestuous match, although Johnny has no plans to marry -- Lorena has Read More

Pillow of Death

Actors: Lon Chaney, Jr., Brenda Joyce, Clara Blandick, Rosalind Ivan, J. Edward Bromberg

Synopsis: This lesser "Inner Sanctum" entry stars Lon Chaney Jr. as unhappily married lawyer Wayne Fletcher. In love with his secretary Donna Kincaid (Brenda Joyce), Fletcher is the principal suspect when his wife is found smothered to death in her own bed. Lack of evidence allows Fletcher to walk Read More

Can't Help Singing

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Robert Paige, Akim Tamiroff, David Bruce, Leonid Kinskey

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin's first Technicolor feature is a lavish musical western, replete with a Jerome Kern-E. Y. Harburg score. Set in the mid-19th century, the story finds Caroline (Durbin), daughter of a wealthy senator, bound and determined to wed dashing cavalry officer Lawlor (Robert Paige). When the Read More

Shadow of Suspicion

Actors: Marjorie Weaver, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Pierre Watkin, Anthony Warde

Synopsis: Judging by such films as Shadows of Suspicion, it's too bad that leading man Peter Cookson eventually elected to leave the movies in favor of the Broadway stage. Cookson is cast as Jimmy, an enterprising private detective who hits upon a most unusual method of solving a jewel robbery. With the Read More

Heaven Can Wait

Actors: Don Ameche, Gene Tierney, Charles Coburn, Marjorie Main, Laird Cregar

Synopsis: On the day of his death in 1943, the spirit of Henry Van Cleave (Don Ameche) obligingly heads for the place where so many people had previously told him to go. The immaculately dressed septuagenarian arrives at the outer offices of Hades, where he is greeted by His Excellency (Laird Cregar), the Read More

Dixie

Actors: Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Billy De Wolfe, Marjorie Reynolds, Raymond Walburn, Lynne Overman

Synopsis: According to this exuberant Paramount musical, famed pre-Civil War minstrel performer Daniel Decatur Emmett looked and sounded exactly like Bing Crosby! Very loosely based on the real Emmett's life and career, the film is essentially an excuse for an unending stream of Southern-fried ballads and Read More

Du Barry Was a Lady

Actors: Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Virginia O'Brien, Zero Mostel, Rags Ragland

Synopsis: The racy, ribald Cole Porter musical Du Barry Was a Lady is here given a thorough dry-cleaning by prudish MGM. Richard "Red" Skelton takes over the role of Louis Blore (played on Broadway by Bert Lahr), while Lucille Ball steps into the shoes of the original play's Ethel Merman. The story proposes Read More

Rings on Her Fingers

Actors: Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Laird Cregar, John Shepperd, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Director Rouben Mamoulian completed a three-picture 20th Century Fox deal with this airy comic romance that attempted to ape the story and style of the previous year's The Lady Eve (1941) but without that film's success. While vacationing in Southern California, accountant John Wheeler (Henry Fonda Read More

Lady in a Jam

Actors: Irene Dunne, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Irene Dunne plays a flibbetygibbet socialite who inherits a farm in Arizona. She can't seem to manage either her money or her private life, thus seeks advice from outside sources. Irene falls in love with fledgling Manhattan psychiatrist Patric Knowles, and marries him in the hope that he'll solve Read More

Gentleman Jim

Actors: Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, John Loder

Synopsis: Maybe Errol Flynn was never the war hero that he often played, but he was a capable boxer, and Gentleman Jim makes full use of this skill. Flynn stars as Jim Corbett, the 19th-century American pugilist who introduced "scientific" methods to bare-knuckle boxing. Originally an office clerk, Corbett Read More

One Foot in Heaven

Actors: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: Author Hartzell Spence's popular biography of his preacher father was the source for One Foot in Heaven. Fredric March stars as Methodist cleric William Spence, whose calling requires him to move his family from parish to parish on a near-monthly basis. The children resent the fact that they're Read More

The Nurse's Secret

Actors: Lee Patrick, Regis Toomey, Julie Bishop, Ann Edmonds, George Campeau

Synopsis: The Nurse's Secret is a low-budget remake of Miss Pinkerton (1932), which in turn was based on a play by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Nurse Ruth Adams (Lee Patrick) is on the premises when two people die of what seem to be natural causes. Ruth suspects that they've been murdered, as does her detective Read More

The Wagons Roll at Night

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, Eddie Albert, Joan Leslie, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: In the 1930s and 1940s, Warner Bros. developed a positive genius for remaking earlier films in new, disguised fashion, retaining the plotlines but altering the circumstances and character names. Wagons Roll at Night was a 1941 reworking of the prizefight drama Kid Galahad, filmed only four years Read More

The Big Store

Actors: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Tony Martin, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: In the last of the Marx Brothers' MGM films, The Big Store, Groucho Marx plays two-bit detective Wolf J. Flywheel, hired by department-store owner Martha Phelps (Margaret Dumont) to act as bodyguard for Martha's nephew and sole heir, Tommy Rogers (Tony Martin). Crooked store manager Grover (Douglas Dumbrille Read More

Private Nurse

Actors: Jane Darwell, Brenda Joyce, Sheldon Leonard, Robert Lowery, Ann E. Todd

Synopsis: Jane Darwell is the whole show in the 61-minute 20th Century-Fox programmer Private Nurse. The formidable Ms. Darwell is first scene at a birthday party, thrown in her honor by her favorite charge, little Ann Todd. The daughter of ex-gangster Sheldon Leonard, Todd has been raised to believe that Read More

It Started With Eve

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Charles Laughton, Robert Cummings, Guy Kibbee, Margaret Tallichet

Synopsis: A man trying to make his dying father happy makes his love life very complicated indeed in this musical comedy starring Deanna Durbin. Jonathan Reynolds Jr. (Robert Cummings) is the playboy son of multi-millionaire business magnate Jonathan Reynolds, Sr. (Charles Laughton). Junior has told his Read More

Northwest Mounted Police

Actors: Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Preston S. Foster, Paulette Goddard, Robert Preston

Synopsis: Cecil B. De Mille directed this lavish all-star spectacular paying tribute to America's neighbors to the North. In 1885, as Louis Riel (Francis J. McDonald) tries to organize Indians and French settlers into a fighting force that will battle against the ruling British, Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers (Gary Cooper Read More

Anne of Windy Poplars

Actors: Anne Shirley, James Ellison, Henry Travers, Patric Knowles, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: This sequel to 1934's Anne of Green Gables stars Anne Shirley as Anne Shirley, the plucky Canadian orphan girl created by novelist Lucy Maude Montgomery. Now all grown up, Anne takes on the job of vice-principal of the only school in Windy Poplars Unfortunately, she must contend with the Read More

Youth Will Be Served

Actors: Jane Withers, Jane Darwell, Roberl Conway, Elyse Knox, Joe Brown, Jr.

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a young woman is sent to a National Youth Administration camp after her father is arrested for making moonshine. While there, a local developer endeavors to buy up the camp. To save it, the young woman stages an elaborate camp show. The developer is enchanted and changes Read More

Dreaming Out Loud

Actors: Chester Lauck, Frances Langford, Frank Craven, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Dreaming Out Loud represented the film debut of radio favorites Lum 'N' Abner, aka Chester Lauck and Norris Goff. Proprietors of the Jot-Em-Down Store in Pine Ridge, AR, our heroes are currently preoccupied by their efforts to construct a mobile hospital unit in their community. In time-honored Read More

Tomboy

Actors: Marcia Mae Jones, Jackie Moran, Grant Withers, Charlotte Wynters, George Cleveland

Synopsis: Though the peak productivity of Monogram's "rural romance" films was the mid-1930s, the studio continued to put together films like Tomboy well into the early 1940s. Marcia Mae Jones plays the title character, a rambunctious city girl named Pat. Sent to the country to temper her hoydenish Read More

Swanee River

Actors: Don Ameche, Andrea Leeds, Al Jolson, Felix Bressart, Chick Chandler

Synopsis: This musical presents a romantic and sanitized biography of distinguished American songwriter Stephen Foster. The story begins with the romance between Foster (Don Ameche) and a pretty southern belle and sets up a home in Kentucky--actually the real Foster married a girl from Pittsburgh. His Read More

I Was a Convict

Actors: Barton MacLane, Beverly Roberts, Clarence Kolb, Janet Beecher

Synopsis: In this crime drama a wealthy business tycoon serves a sentence for tax fraud. While there he becomes good friends with his cellmates and after they are all released, the magnate appoints them both as executives in his company. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Walter Connolly, William Frawley, Rex Ingram, Lynne Carver

Synopsis: Mickey Rooney may have been born to play Mark Twain's legendary hellraiser Huck Finn, but 1939's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is so MGM-ized that Rooney seems to be sedated. Otherwise, this is a slick retelling of the Twain classic, with Huck escaping both the oppressive kindliness of the Read More

Tom Sawyer, Detective

Actors: Billy Cook, Donald O'Connor, Porter Hall, Philip Warren, Janet Waldo

Synopsis: Even geniuses have to eat, and when Mark Twain was offered a substantial sum of money to slap together a quickie sequel to his classic novel Tom Sawyer, he responded with the pulpish but entertaining Tom Sawyer, Detective. Billy Cook is sublimely cast as Tom, while Donald O'Connor steals the film Read More

The Star Maker

Actors: Dorothy Babbs, Bing Crosby, Louise Campbell, Linda Ware, Ned Sparks, Laura Hope Crewes

Synopsis: The Star Maker is the story (with variations) of vaudeville enterpreneur Gus Edwards, here played by Bing Crosby. Determining that he can attain the uppermost showbiz rungs by spotlighting new, untried talents, Edwards rises to fame by hiring preteen boys and girls for his touring acts, the most Read More

Drums Along the Mohawk

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver, Arthur Shields, Eddie Collins, Ward Bond, John Carradine

Synopsis: John Ford directed this outdoor adventure set in the American Colonial period. Gilbert and Lana Martin (Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert) are a young couple trying to make a home in New York State's Mohawk Valley, but repeated attacks by Indians drive them, along with other settlers in the Read More

My Old Kentucky Home

Actors: Evelyn Venable, The Hall Johnson Choir, John Farrell MacDonald, Grant Richards, Bernadene Hayes

Synopsis: A concert singer goes blind after a rival throws acid in his face and leaves his New York girlfriend to return to his grandmother's plantation in Kentucky. The town centennial celebration his grandmother has planned is actually the method she has devised to help him get his self-confidence back. Read More

Swing, Sister, Swing

Actors: Ken Murray, Johnny Downs, Kathryn Kane, Eddie Quillan, Ernest Truex

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, two star-struck small town kids head for the Big Apple and become famous for their jitterbug act. Their fame doesn't last long, but they had fun anyway. Songs include: "Baltimore Bubble," "Gingham Gown," "Just a Bore," "Wasn't It You," "Kaneski Waltz" (Frank Skinner, Charles Henderson Read More

Crime Ring

Actors: Allan Lane, Frances Mercer, Clara Blandick, Inez Courtney, Bradley Page

Synopsis: RKO Radio's ace short-subjects director Leslie Goodwins graduated to features with the economically produced Crime Ring. Allan Lane plays a hotshot newspaperman who takes on a phony spiritualist ring. The crooked soothsayers are in league with a band of stock swindlers, coercing the gullible into Read More

Professor Beware

Actors: Phyllis Welch, Raymond Walburn, Lionel Stander, William Frawley

Synopsis: Harold Lloyd plays a professor of Egyptology, frightened by the notion that he has fallen under an ancient Egyptian curse. Lloyd has the opportunity to join an archeological expedition to search for a missing tablet that will determine his fate, but he has to travel from Los Angeles to New York Read More

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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

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

Her Husband's Secretary

Actors: Jean Muir, Beverly Roberts, Warren Hull, Joseph Crehan, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: A young wife butts head with her beautiful best friend after her husband hires the latter to be his personal secretary and then begins spending too much time at the office. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

A Star Is Born

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine

Synopsis: A Star is Born came into being when producer David O. Selznick decided to tell a "true behind-the-scenes" story of Hollywood. The truth, of course, was filtered a bit for box-office purposes, although Selznick and an army of screenwriters based much of their script on actual people and events. Janet Gaynor Read More

Small Town Boy

Actors: Stuart Erwin, Joyce Compton, Jed Prouty, Clara Blandick, James "Doc" Blakely

Synopsis: Small Town Boy was the 33rd release from the burgeoning "B"-picture factory of Grand National Pictures. Stuart Erwin plays the title character, a milquetoast named Henry, who's brimming with good ideas but lacks the confidence to express them. All this changes when he finds a thousand-dollar bill Read More

The League of Frightened Men

Actors: Walter Connolly, Lionel Stander, Eduardo Ciannelli, Irene Hervey, Victor Kilian

Synopsis: League of Frightened Men was the second and last entry in Columbia's short-lived mystery series based on the "Nero Wolfe" novels by Rex Stout. Taking over from Edward Arnold as crabby, corpulent consulting detective Nero Wolfe is Walter Connolly, who despite his physical resemblance to the Stout Read More

The Road Back

Actors: Richard Cromwell, George "Slim" Summerville, Andy Devine, Barbara Read

Synopsis: A handful of German soldiers readjust to civilian life in the bitter wake of World War I in this follow-up to the classic All Quiet On The Western Front, which like the first film was based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. After the signing of the armistice, Capt. Von Hagen (John Emery) Read More

Wings over Honolulu

Actors: Wendy Barrie, Ray Milland, William Gargan, Kent Taylor

Synopsis: In this wartime drama, a young woman nearly comes unhinged when her husband, a Navy pilot, is transferred to Pearl Harbor on their wedding day. She goes with him. Once in Hawaii she is surprised to see her ex-boyfriend sailing about in an expensive yacht. Her husband becomes totally engrossed in Read More

You Can't Have Everything

Actors: Alice Faye, The Ritz Brothers [Al, Jimmy, Harry], Don Ameche, Charles Winninger, Louise Hovick

Synopsis: Alice Faye stars as aspiring playwright Judith Poe Wells. She falls in love with producer George Macrae (Don Ameche), which makes George's girlfriend Louise Hovick (Gypsy Rose Lee) see red. Judith drops from view while George loses his troublesome girlfriend and prepares to put together a Broadway Read More

The Gorgeous Hussy

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Melvyn Douglas

Synopsis: The Gorgeous Hussy purports to be based on the life of Margaret "Peggy" O'Neill, the controversial wife of early 19th-century politician John Eaton, who served as cabinet minister during the Andrew Jackson presidency. Snubbed by the Washington elite because of her questionable background as a Read More

Fury

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis

Synopsis: Fritz Lang's first American film is a vigorous and perceptive indictment of mob law, starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney. Katherine (Sidney) leaves her boyfriend, Joe Wilson (Tracy), behind in their Midwestern hometown when she takes a job in another city. Joe is a decent, hard-working soul Read More

In His Steps

Actors: Eric Linden, Cecilia Parker, Henry Kolker, Charles Richman, Olive Tell

Synopsis: Adapted by director Karl Brown from a novel by Charles M. Sheldon, In His Steps was the first release from the newly formed Grand National Pictures. Eric Linden and Cecilia Parker, a popular screen team of the era, are cast as wealthy young couple Tom Carver and Ruth Brewster. Flying in the face Read More

Make Way for a Lady

Actors: Herbert Marshall, Anne Shirley, Gertrude Michael, Margot Grahame, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: Anne Shirley is the teenaged "lady" in this filmization of Elizabeth Jordan's novel My Daddy and I. Shirley plays the daughter of widowed Herbert Marshall, who suffers in silence as his daughter tries to "match" him with every eligible woman in sight. Misinterpreting a delicate situation, Shirley Read More

Anthony Adverse

Actors: Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, Edmund Gwenn, Claude Rains, Anita Louise

Synopsis: When David O. Selznick produced the film version of the 1000-plus page novel Gone with the Wind, he declared he could not make a film running any less than 222 minutes. When Warner Bros. adapted the even longer Hervey Allen best-seller Anthony Adverse, the studio managed to pack everything--except Read More

The Case of the Velvet Claws

Actors: Warren William, Claire Dodd, Winifred Shaw, Gordon Elliott, Joseph King

Synopsis: Perry Mason (Warren William) actually marries his secretary, the redoubtable Della Street (Claire Dodd) in this, the fourth installment of Warner Bros.' popular series based on the novels by Erle Stanley Garner. The honeymoon, alas, is rudely interrupted when Perry is kidnapped by Eve Belter Read More

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Nigel Bruce

Synopsis: Paramount's first outdoor Technicolor feature, Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the third film version of John Fox Jr.'s novel. Inspired by the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the story is set in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Outsider Fred MacMurray arrives to clear the path for a new railroad. Read More

Hearts Divided

Actors: Dick Powell, Marion Davies, Charlie Ruggles, Arthur Treacher, Claude Rains, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: A remake of 1928's Glorious Betsy (itself based on a stage play by Rida Johnson Young), Hearts Divided is based, believe it or not, on a true story. Marion Davies stars as 19th-century Baltimore belle Betsy Patterson, who falls in love with Jerome Bonaparte (Dick Powell) -- the younger brother of 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

Transient Lady

Actors: Gene Raymond, Henry Hull, Frances Drake, June Clayworth, Clark Williams

Synopsis: In this drama, a traveling ice show comes to a small southern town run by an amiable mayor. His mischievous younger brother, knowing his brother's protection gives him carte-blanche, gets into all kinds of trouble with the other town punks. The thugs cause real trouble at the local ice rink and Read More

Princess O'Hara

Actors: Jean Parker, Chester Morris, Leon Errol, Vince Barnett, Henry Armetta

Synopsis: This obscure Damon Runyon adaptation stars Jean Parker as Princess O'Hara, the spirited granddaughter of Central Park horse-carriage driver King O'Hara (Ralph M. Remley). When King's beloved horse dies, Princess tries to purchase a new nag, and that's how she inadvertently gets her hands on a Read More

Straight from the Heart

Actors: Mary Astor, Roger Pryor, Carol Coombe, Andy Devine

Synopsis: In this romance, a slightly crooked and highly ambitious mayoral candidate convinces a woman to help him blackmail the incumbent by using a little baby as evidence in a paternity suit. The girl goes along with it until she learns that the mayor is innocent. Suddenly she begins working for him. In Read More

The Girl from Missouri

Actors: Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Patsy Kelly

Synopsis: Originally titled Eadie was a Lady, this Jean Harlow vehicle was slated for release under the title Born to be Kissed, but the new Production Code vetoed this "suggestive" cognomen. After a brief and uncomfortable period as One Hundred Percent Pure, the film was finally shipped to theaters as The Read More

The Show-Off

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Madge Evans, Henry Wadsworth, Lois Wilson, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: In this comedy, based on a popular play by George Kelly, an office clerk masquerades as a railroad magnate to impress a young woman. Though the enamored girl believes his every word, her mother is not so easily fooled. Still she says nothing and the emboldened fellow begins making even more Read More

Sisters under the Skin

Actors: Elissa Landi, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Doris Lloyd, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: The Sisters Under the Skin in this Columbia "continental" romantic seriocomedy are middle-aged Elinor Yates (Doris Lloyd) and vixenish actress Blossom Bailey (Elissa Landi). Fancying himself to be in his second childhood, Elinor's husband John Hunter Yates (Frank Morgan) seeks out a younger Read More

Beloved

Actors: John Boles, Gloria Stuart, Albert Conti, Dorothy Peterson, Morgan Farley

Synopsis: Apparently inspired by Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet, Beloved is a lush, lachrymose musical romance set in Vienna, South Carolina and New York City. John Boles stars as Austrian composer Carl Hausmann, whose musical career is very nearly cut short during the 1848 revolution. Carl is whisked off by Read More

Harold Teen

Actors: Hal Le Roy, Rochelle Hudson, Patricia Ellis, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: First adapted for the screen in 1928, Carl Ed's popular comic strip Harold Teen was cinematized a second time in 1934. This time it's musical-comedy star Hal LeRoy as the titular high-schooler, with Rochelle Hudson as his sweetheart Lillums Lovell and Hobart Cavanaugh as sweet-shop owner Pop Read More

Fugitive Lady

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Florence Rice, Donald Cook, Clara Blandick, Nella Walker

Synopsis: In this thriller, a young woman marries a dashing young man who, unbeknownst to her, is a jewel thief. After his latest job, he takes off and leaves her to take the rap. In court she is found guilty. She is riding a train en route to prison when the train crashes. Her identity is confused with 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

As the Earth Turns

Actors: Jean Muir, Donald Woods, William Janney, David Landau

Synopsis: Based on the best-selling Gladys Hasty Carroll novel of the same name, As the Earth Turns covers four seasons in the life of a Maine farming family. Jean Muir stars as Jen Shaw, daughter of dirt-poor farmers Mark and Min Shaw (David Landau, Dorothy Appleby). Jen's parents have an abiding distrust Read More

Jealousy

Actors: Nancy Carroll, George Murphy, Donald Cook, Raymond Walburn, Arthur Hohl

Synopsis: In this drama, a fighter's fiancee refuses to marry him until he can overcome his insane jealousy. He does and they marry. The jealousy resurfaces when he finds his wife and her boss in a hotel room. He goes mad with rage and kills her boss. His wife is blamed for the killing. Just before the Read More

Broadway Bill

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Walter Connolly, Helen Vinson, Douglas Dumbrille

Synopsis: Just after completing It Happened One Night, director Frank Capra churned out a bread-and-butter picture titled Broadway Bill. Warner Baxter plays the carefree scion of a wealthy, highly-respected family. Baxter's cold but socially correct wife Helen Vinson forces her husband into the family Read More

Turn Back the Clock

Actors: Lee Tracy, Mae Clarke, Otto Kruger, George Barbier, Peggy Shannon

Synopsis: Lee Tracy is a middle-aged, middle-class man dissatisfied with his life. If he'd only married the girl he wanted to and had been a smarter businessman (he believes), things would have been better. One morning, Tracy wakes up and discovers he's been transported twenty years in the past. Armed with Read More

The Mind Reader

Actors: Warren William, Constance Cummings, Allen Jenkins, Donald Dillaway, Mayo Methot

Synopsis: In this romance, an con-artist leaves an unsuccessful carnival gig to become a successful phony psychic. He is assisted by two others. He then marries a woman who believes he really does have 'second sight.' When the truth is at last revealed, he decides to become an honest door-to-door salesman. Read More

One Sunday Afternoon

Actors: Gary Cooper, Fay Wray, Neil Hamilton, Frances Fuller, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: Gary Cooper is a small town dentist dissatisfied with his lot. Though married to the lovely and affectionate Frances Fuller, Cooper still carries a torch for his former sweetheart, Fay Wray. Years earlier, Cooper had lost Wray to his old friend Neil Hamilton, and is consumed with the desire to get Read More

Ever in My Heart

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Otto Kruger, Ralph Bellamy, Ruth Donnelly, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: An espionage drama set in the early 20th century, Ever in My Heart stars Barbara Stanwyck as a New England naif who marries a German citizen (Otto Kruger). In 1915, Stanwyck and her husband suffer a brace of blows: The death of their son, and the sinking of the Lusitania, the latter Read More

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Gavin Gordon, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly

Synopsis: The Bitter Tea of General Yen is the oddest, least characteristic talkie effort of director Frank Capra. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the intended of an American missionary (Gavin Gordon) who is sent to spread the good word in China. During a military revolution, Stanwyck and her fiance inadvertently Read More

Three-Cornered Moon

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Richard Arlen, Mary Boland, Wallace Ford, Tom Brown

Synopsis: Three-Cornered Moon is regarded by many film buffs as the first of the genuine "screwball comedies." Claudette Colbert stars as the only level-headed member of a wacky Brooklyn family. Her mother (Mary Boland) loses the family fortune in the stock market, forcing Colbert's knuckleheaded brothers Read More

Charlie Chan's Greatest Case

Actors: Warner Oland, Heather Angel, Roger Imhof, John Warburton, Walter Byron

Synopsis: Warner Oland returns as wily, philosophical oriental detective Charlie Chan in this expensive-looking series entry. This time, Chan follows the trail of clues when a "respectable" Honolulu businessman sidelining in blackmail and other unsavory activities is murdered. Like the earlier Black Camel Read More

Going Hollywood

Actors: Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'Orsay, Stuart Erwin, Ned Sparks

Synopsis: Reportedly at the request of Marion Davies herself, Bing Crosby was borrowed from Paramount for the MGM Davies vehicle Going Hollywood. Der Bingle plays a struggling crooner who falls in love with Davies, a French teacher in a girl's school. He rises to fame and fortune in Hollywood, leaving Read More

Child of Manhattan

Actors: Buck Jones, Nancy Carroll, John Boles, Warburton Gamble, Clara Blandick, Jane Darwell

Synopsis: On the outs at Paramount, musical comedy star Nancy Carroll was "punished" by being sent to Columbia for the lachrymose Child of Manhattan. Carroll plays a dance-hall girl who falls hard for wealthy John Boles. Marriage is out of the question until she becomes pregnant. After losing her baby, Carroll Read More

The Expert

Actors: Charles "Chic" Sale, Dickie Moore, Lois Wilson, Earl Foxe, Ralf Harolde

Synopsis: An elderly gentleman finds himself in a difficult situation when he finds himself faced with becoming a burden on his children or going into an old folks home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Rockabye

Actors: Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, Paul Lukas, Walter Pidgeon, Jobyna Howland

Synopsis: Despite a troubled production that witnessed the exits of both leading man (Phillips Holmes) and director (George Fitzmaurice), this tearjerker was a winner at the box office in November of 1932. Constance Bennett plays Broadway diva Judy Carroll who loses custody of a wee orphan after testifying Read More

Case of Clara Deane

Actors: Wynne Gibson, Pat O'Brien, Frances Dee, Dudley Digges, George Barbier

Synopsis: Based on a play by Arthur M. Brilant, The Case of Clara Deane stars Wynne Gibson, repeating her original Broadway role. Accused of a crime she didn't commit, young mother Clara Deane is forcibly separated from her baby daughter then coerced into surrendering all claims to the child. Fifteen years Read More

Three on a Match

Actors: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis, Buster Phelps

Synopsis: Three on a Match covers approximately 13 years in the lives of girlhood chums Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), Ruth Wescott (Bette Davis) and Vivian Deverse (Ann Dvorak). Having graduated from grammar school together in 1919, the girls stage a reunion ten years later. Hard-boiled Mary is now a chorus Read More

Shopworn

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, ZaSu Pitts, Lucien Littlefield, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: Barbara Stanwyck overcomes a veritable ocean of clichés and manages to make her "shopworn" heroine come to life in this old-fashioned but rather poignant melodrama. A waitress in her aunt and uncle's café, orphaned Kitty Lane falls in love with society scion Dave Livingston (Regis Toomey). Much to Read More

Two Against the World

Actors: Constance Bennett, Neil Hamilton, Helen Vinson, Allen Vincent, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: Constance Bennett suffers nobly in this outdated but fairly engrossing melodrama in which a seemingly hardened debutante takes the blame for the mistakes of her siblings. When her sister Corinne (Helen Vinson) gets in trouble with a married man (Gavin Gordon), Ardell Hamilton (Bennett) accepts Read More

The Strange Case of Clara Deane

Life Begins

Actors: Loretta Young, Eric Linden, Aline MacMahon, Glenda Farrell, Dorothy Peterson

Synopsis: Life Begins is an episodic Warner Bros. programmer about one unusually busy night in a maternity ward. Loretta Young is the central character, a convicted murderess who has been impregnated by her gangster boyfriend. She is moved to the hospital to give birth, sharing ward space with hard-boiled Glenda Farrell Read More

The Wet Parade

Actors: Dorothy Jordan, Neil Hamilton, Emma Dunn, Robert Young

Synopsis: Directed by Victor Fleming, Wet Parade chronicles the effects of alcoholism and the Prohibition on the lives of two families from very different backgrounds. The Tarletons reside in New York City, where the family patriarch (Walter Huston) repeatedly drowns himself in liquor and local bars. The Read More

Daybreak

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Helen Chandler, Jean Hersholt, C. Aubrey Smith, William Bakewell

Synopsis: A man who unthinkingly sullied the honor of a virtuous girl now must deal with his own ethical downfall in this drama. Willi Kasder (Ramon Novarro) is a lieutenant in the Austrian Army who one night picks up an innocent young woman named Laura Taub (Helen Chandler). Willi shares several drinks Read More

Inspiration

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Montgomery, Marjorie Rambeau, Judith Vosselli

Synopsis: Not every Greta Garbo film is an imperishable classic; this was seldom truer than in the case of her repetitious 1931 vehicle Inspiration. A modernized adaptation of Alphonse Daudet's Sappho, the film casts Garbo as Yvonne, a Parisian belle with "a history." When her past returns to haunt her, she Read More

The Drums of Jeopardy

Actors: Warner Oland, June Collyer, Lloyd Hughes, George Fawcett

Synopsis: Most existing prints of the 1931 melodrama Drums of Jeopardy are in pretty bad shape, but it's worth enduring the tinny soundtracks and messy splices just to watch Warner Oland in his full villainous glory. Oland plays a mad scientist who seeks revenge on the aristocratic family responsible for Read More

The Easiest Way

Actors: Constance Bennett, Adolphe Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Anita Page, Marjorie Rambeau

Synopsis: In this melodrama that was considered utterly scandalous in its day, an impoverished, beautiful young ghetto girl quickly learns that she can get to Easy Street on her back. Her indecent journey begins when a scout discovers her working in a department store. He gets her signed up to a modeling Read More

Laughing Sinners

Actors: Joan Crawford, Neil Hamilton, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: The Kenyon Nicholson play Torch Song was the source for the Joan Crawford vehicle Laughing Sinners. Crawford plays nightclub entertainer Ivy Stevens, who loses her zest for living when she's thrown over by her salesman sweetheart Howard Palmer (Neil Hamilton). At her lowest ebb, Ivy is befriended Read More

Murder at Midnight

Actors: Aileen Pringle, Alice White, Hale Hamilton, Robert Elliott, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: A sophisticated, expensively-dressed group of people gather in a spooky old mansion to watch the first performance of a play. The highlight of the production is a realistic on-stage murder, wherein the victim is shot point-blank, right through the heart, as the clock strikes 12. The audience Read More

Bought

Actors: Constance Bennett, Ben Lyon, Richard Bennett, Dorothy Peterson, Ray Milland

Synopsis: Constance Bennett, Hollywood's favorite "wronged" heroine, is the star of the misleadingly titled Bought. Thing of it is, Bennett can't be bought by wealthy playboy Ray Milland. Despite dangling all sorts of expensive temptations in front of her, Milland never gets any farther than a one-night Read More

The Possessed

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Wallace Ford, Frank Conroy

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is her usual upwardly mobile self in this melodrama co-starring Clark Gable. She plays Marian Martin, a cynical small-town girl determining to give up the idea of marriage. Kept by wealthy attorney Mark Whitney (Gable), Marian assumes a new identity as a divorced woman of the world Read More

Dance Fools Dance

Actors: Joan Crawford, Cliff Edwards, William Bakewell, William Holden

Synopsis: Joan Crawford and William Bakewell play the spoiled-rotten grown children of stockbroker William Holden. When Wall Street lays its famous egg in 1929, Crawford and Bakewell find that they can no longer pursue their flamboyant lifestyle (for example, they'll have to put a moratorium on the sort of Read More

Wallingford

Actors: William Haines, Jimmy Durante, Ernest Torrence, Leila Hyams, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: Officially released as The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, this William Haines vehicle was snappily adapted by Charles MacArthur from the "Wallingford" short stories by George Randolph Chester. Haines of course plays the title character, a breezy con artist in league with personable Read More

Once a Sinner

Actors: Dorothy Mackaill, Joel McCrea, John Halliday, C. Henry Gordon, Ilka Chase

Synopsis: In this marital drama, a wife fears that her checkered past will be revealed when she and her husband move to the city to further his career. Soon after their arrival, the husband overhears a conversation about her. Apparently she had been a "kept" woman before she met him, and this causes him to Read More

I Take This Woman

Actors: Gary Cooper, Carole Lombard, Helen Ware, Lester Vail, Charles Trowbridge

Synopsis: Based on a Mary Roberts Rinehart novel, I Take This Woman stars Carole Lombard as the spoiled daughter of a wealthy rancher. Lombard impulsively marries cowhand Gary Cooper, a poverty-stricken employee of her father. Cooper insists that they live on his income in a tiny shack; Lombard gives this Read More

Huckleberry Finn

Actors: Jackie Coogan, Mitzi Green, Junior Durkin, Jackie Searl, Clarence Muse, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn stars Junior Durkin in the title role, Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer, Mitzi Green as Becky Thatcher and Clarence Muse as Jim the slave. The film hopscotches around the book, ignoring such highlights as the Grangeford-Shepherdson feud and devoting Read More

It's a Wise Child

Actors: Marion Davies, Sidney Blackmer, James Gleason, Polly Moran, Lester Vail

Synopsis: In this comedy, a conservative family becomes alarmed when they begin believing their daughter is pregnant. They frantically begin searching for the father. The search is narrowed down to three possibilities: her ex-fiancee, her current one, or her legal guardian. Meanwhile, a drunken son marries Read More

Wise Girls

Synopsis: In this comedy, a plumber does a job for a fellow and ends up conned into marrying his daughter. The daughter only agrees to the absurd union to make her real lover jealous. When the plumber learns of her motives, he has the marriage annulled and ends up marrying her honest younger sister. The Read More

Men Are Like That

Actors: Hal Skelly, Charles Sellon, Clara Blandick, Morgan Farley

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1926, the George Kelly stage comedy The Show-Off was remade in 1930 as Men Are Like That. Broadway star Hal Skelly steps into the role of chronic braggart Aubrey Piper, incapable of either telling the truth or shutting up. Insinuating himself into the home of his wife Amy's (Doris Hill Read More

The Girl Said No

Actors: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler

Synopsis: Screenland magazine summed up the William Haines vehicle The Girl Said No thusly: "The star plays another of his cut-up roles that make the critics gnash their teeth and the audience chortle." Had this review been printed in the 1990s, the character played by Haines might have been labelled a Read More

Last of the Duanes

Actors: George O'Brien, Myrna Loy, Walter McGrail, James Bradbury, Jr.

Synopsis: In this western based on a novel by Zane Grey, Buck Duane (George O'Brien) is a cowboy who is forced to kill a man in an act of self-defense; the same man also took the life of Buck's father. However, the law isn't so sure Buck's motivations were pure, and Buck is forced to leave town one step Read More

Sins of the Children

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Elliott Nugent, Leila Hyams, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: This touching drama follows the exploits of a big-hearted businessman. The financier is just about to close a major deal when he is forced to move to the desert to help his tubercular son recover. It takes two years, and during that time, the businessman's partner has written him off as a business Read More

Romance

Actors: Greta Garbo, Gavin Gordon, Elliott Nugent, Florence Lake

Synopsis: Greta Garbo appears here (in her second talking film) as an Italian singer who seduces a young priest into falling for her. She admits that she had been the kept woman of an older man, and when she returns to her former lover (to tell of her new love), her visit is misinterpreted by the priest as Read More

Tom Sawyer

Actors: Jackie Coogan, Junior Durkin, Mitzi Green, Lucien Littlefield, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: Tom Sawyer, Paramount's 1930 Christmas release, was the first talkie version of Mark Twain's beloved novel. A rapidly maturing Jackie Coogan is well cast as Tom, while Junior Durkin is even better as Tom's freewheeling pal Huck Finn. Juvenile impressionist Mitzi Green comes on a bit too strong in Read More

Burning Up

Actors: Mary Brian, Francis McDonald, Sam Hardy, Charles Sellon

Synopsis: The popular silent-film screen team of Richard Arlen and Mary Brian was carried over into talkies with such films as Burning Up. In emulation of the late movie idol Wally Reid, Arlen is cast as daredevil race-car driver Lou Larrigan. Much to the dismay of his sweetheart Ruth Morgan (Brian) Read More

Mrs. Black is Back

Actors: Elmer Booth, May Irwin

Synopsis: It can be said that matronly stage comedienne May Irwin was the first female film star, by virtue of her appearance in the "scandalous" Edison subject of 1896, The Kiss. Thereafter, however, Irwin largely confined her activities to the stage, where she enjoyed an enormous fan following, making Read More