Elliott Nugent Filmography

She's Working Her Way Through College

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Virginia Mayo, Ronald Reagan, Gene Nelson, Don DeFore, Phyllis Thaxter

Synopsis: She's Working Her Way Through College is a completely depoliticized remake of the liberal-minded comedy The Male Animal (1942). Virginia Mayo plays an exotic dancer, Angela Gardner, who decides to improve her mind; she enrolls in a college where Professor John Palmer (Ronald Reagan) teaches Read More

My Outlaw Brother

Crew: Director

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Wanda Hendrix, Robert Preston, Carlos Muzquiz

Synopsis: This medium-budget western is also known as My Brother, the Outlaw and Outlaw Brother. Mickey Rooney plays an Eastern dude who heads westward to visit his brother Robert Stack. When ranger Robert Preston informs Rooney that Stack is a wanted outlaw, the Mick refuses to believe it. But when Read More

The Skipper Surprised His Wife

Crew: Director

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

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

Mr. Belvedere Goes to College

Crew: Director

Actors: Clifton Webb, Shirley Temple, Tom Drake, Alan Young

Synopsis: Clifton Webb recreates his Sitting Pretty role as Mr. Lynn Belvedere, the World's Greatest Genius. Belvedere discovers that he is ineligible for an honorary award because he never attended college. So he enrolls as a freshman in a major university, becoming the target for "hazing" from obnoxious Read More

The Great Gatsby

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Ladd, Betty Field, MacDonald Carey, Ruth Hussey, Barry Sullivan

Synopsis: This second film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's definitive jazz-age novel The Great Gatsby stars Alan Ladd in the title role. Jay Gatsby, formerly Jake Gatz, is a successful bootlegger with aspirations of being accepted in the highest social circles of Long Island. Once he's done this, Gatsby Read More

My Girl Tisa

Crew: Director

Actors: Lilli Palmer, Sam Wanamaker, Akim Tamiroff, Hugo Haas

Synopsis: Adapted by Allen Boretz from Lucille S. Plumbs and Sara B. Smith's stage play Ever the Beginning, My Girl Tisa is set in New York at the turn of the century. Tisa Kepes (Lilli Palmer) is a newly arrived immigrant girl who hopes to bring her father to America. She is fleeced by travel-agent Hugo Haas Read More

Welcome Stranger

Crew: Director

Actors: Don Beddoe, Bing Crosby, Lillian Bronson, Joan Caulfield, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank Faylen, Elizabeth Patterson, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: A curmudgeonly small-town doctor resents the presence of a new younger physician and his newfangled ways. He is especially dismayed by the new doctor's tendency to sing, a behavior the older fellow deems inappropriate. When the new doc meets a pretty young school teacher, romantic sparks fly. Read More

My Favorite Brunette

Crew: Director

Actors: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Hoyt

Synopsis: Just as Bob Hope's My Favorite Blonde (1942) was a takeoff on Alfred Hitchcock, Hope's My Favorite Brunette was a lampoon of the noirish "hard-boiled detective" school popularized by Raymond Chandler. Awaiting execution on death row, Hope tells the gathered reporters how he got into his present Read More

Up in Arms

Crew: Director

Actors: Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews, Constance Dowling, Louis Calhern

Synopsis: It is said that producer Sam Goldwyn had a habit of addressing his new star of the 1940s, Danny Kaye, as "Eddie", confusing Kaye with Eddie Cantor. If true, it may be because Kaye's first starring film for Goldwyn, Up in Arms, was a remake of Cantor's Whoopee--which in turn was a musical version Read More

The Crystal Ball

Crew: Director

Actors: Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, Virginia Field, William Bendix, Gladys George

Synopsis: Overloaded with unreleased films in 1942 and 1943, Paramount Pictures cleaned house by diverting several pictures to United Artists. One such effort was The Crystal Ball, wherein beauty contest loser Toni Gerard (Paulette Goddard) takes a job as a sideshow fortune teller. Subbing for the ailing Read More

Stage Door Canteen

Actors: Cheryl Walker, William Terry, Marjorie Riordan, Lon McCallister, Margaret Early

Synopsis: This star-studded musical drama was largely financed by Theatre Guild, with all proceeds going to various wartime fundraising concerns. Most of the story takes place at the Stage Door Canteen, a Manhattan-based home away from home for soldiers, sailors and marines (the real-life Canteen on 44th Read More

The Male Animal

Crew: Director, Play Author

Actors: Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this screen version of the James Thurber-Elliot Nugent Broadway play of the same name, Henry Fonda stars as bespectacled, bookish college professor Tommy Turner, who puts his career on the line by insisting upon standing up for his right to free speech. Determining to read a letter written by Read More

Nothing But the Truth

Crew: Director

Actors: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Edward Arnold, Glenn Anders

Synopsis: In this version of the oft-filmed stage play by James Montgomery, Nothing But the Truth stars Bob Hope as an up and coming young stockbroker working in Florida. He makes a bet with his coworkers that he can tell nothing but the absolute truth for 24 hours, and the other bettors are determined to Read More

The Cat and the Canary

Crew: Director

Actors: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, John Beal, Douglass Montgomery, Gale Sondergaard

Synopsis: The classic "old dark house" motif is given sterling treatment in this second filmed version of the hit play. Bob Hope's status as a star was assured with his role as Wallie Campbell, the cowardly protector of Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard), who must spend one night in the eerie mansion of her Read More

Never Say Die

Crew: Director

Actors: Martha Raye, Bob Hope, Andy Devine, Alan Mowbray, Gale Sondergaard

Synopsis: Bob Hope and an all-star cast have great fun in this frothy romantic comedy about a wealthy tycoon who learns that he only has one month left to live. Not realizing that the tests were wrong, he decides to make hay while the sun still shines. He dumps his fiancee and then heads for the lovely Bad Read More

Professor Beware

Crew: Director

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

Give Me a Sailor

Crew: Director

Actors: Martha Raye, Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Jack Whiting, J.C. Nugent

Synopsis: Bob Hope and Jack Whiting are amorous sailors. Martha Raye is the "ugly duckling" sister of beautiful Betty Grable. The complication? Everyone's in love with the wrong person: Martha pines for Jack who pines for Betty who pines for Bob, and so it goes. The casting seems to be mixed up as well. Read More

Thunder in the City

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Luli Deste, Nigel Bruce, Constance Collier, Ralph Richardson

Synopsis: In this satire of British-American relations, Edward G. Robinson stars as Dan Armstrong, a hard-sell American saleman whose company sends him to England to learn how to tone down his act. There he meets some distant relatives, the aristocrats Sir Peter and Lady Challoner (Arthur Wontner and Annie Esmond Read More

It's All Yours

Crew: Director

Actors: Madeleine Carroll, Francis Lederer, Mischa Auer, Grace Bradley

Synopsis: In this romance, a secretary is awarded a legacy. Later she meets a male secretary who begins protecting her from an avaricious baron endeavoring to steal her money. The two rivals engage in fisticuffs, and the secretary loses. Fortunately, he wins the love of the girl. He then reveals that his Read More

Wives Never Know

Crew: Director

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Adolphe Menjou, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: In this bedroom farce, a writer rails against marriage and touts the benefits of staying single. He then convinces his friend that only relationships based on struggle and strife are worth having. His friend is married so the writer suggests he start trouble by trying to make her jealous. The Read More

And So They Were Married

Crew: Director

Actors: Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Edith Fellows, Jackie Moran, Donald Meek

Synopsis: When widower Stephen Blake (Melvyn Douglas) and divorcee Edith Farnham (Mary Astor) are the only guests at a snowed-in mountain resort, sports director Snirley (Romaine Callender) and hostess Alma Peabody (Dorothy Stickney) try to promote a romance between Stephen and Edith. However, Stephen's son Read More

Splendor

Crew: Director

Actors: Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Paul Cavanagh, Helen Westley, Billie Burke

Synopsis: This romantic comedy-drama is set -- typical for producer Samuel Goldwyn at the time -- among the upper class. Joel McCrea plays Brighton Lorrimore, son of a well-to-do American family who returns from a trip abroad with a new wife, Phyllis Manning (Miriam Hopkins). Brighton's parents are dismayed Read More

College Scandal

Crew: Director

Actors: Arline Judge, Kent Taylor, Wendy Barrie, William Frawley, Ben Baker

Synopsis: Never mind the title and the musical content: College Scandal is at heart a murder mystery, and a pretty suspenseful one at that. Several mysterious killings have taken place at a co-ed college, and it looks as though there won't be anyone left alive to appear in the annual campus musical. The Read More

Enter Madame

Crew: Director

Actors: Elissa Landi, Cary Grant, Lynne Overman, Sharon Lynne, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: Elissa Landi plays an opera star (she's dubbed by Nina Koshetz) who marries arrogant millionaire Cary Grant (dubbed by himself). Grant's dreams of connubial bliss are shattered when he's forced to trail along while Landi tours the world with a huge entourage; he's also not happy with his wife's Read More

Love in Bloom

Crew: Director

Actors: George Burns, Gracie Allen, Dixie Lee, Joe Morrison, J.C. Nugent

Synopsis: Love in Bloom ostensibly stars George Burns and Gracie Allen,but the team is actually comedy relief for the romantic leads, Joe Morrison and Dixie Lee. Burns and Allen are travelling carnival performers working in a rundown tent show for Lee's father. Lee tires of her nomad life and heads to New Read More

She Loves Me Not

Crew: Director

Actors: Bing Crosby, Miriam Hopkins, Kitty Carlisle, Eddie Nugent, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: Miriam Hopkins plays a showgirl who witnesses a gangland slaying. Bing Crosby and Elliot Nugent are somewhat over-aged Princeton University students who agree to hide Miriam. They disguise her as a boy (a remarkable achievement) and manage to pull the wool over the eyes of the dean (Henry Stephenson Read More

Two Alone

Crew: Director

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

Strictly Dynamite

Crew: Director

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Norman Foster, William Gargan, Marian Nixon

Synopsis: Six writers were involved in the RKO Radio musical comedy Strictly Dynamite; ironically, the plot concerns a radio comedian who's running out of material. Jimmy Durante stars as Maxie Slaight, an airwaves mirthmaker who hires young Nick Montgomery (Norman Foster) as his new gag man. Before he Read More

If I Were Free

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Nils Asther, Clive Brook, Henry Stephenson, Vivian Tobin

Synopsis: The melodrama If I Were Free was adapted from the play Behold, We Live by John Van Druten. War veteran lawyer Gordon Evers (Clive Brook) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Catherine (Lorraine MacLean). Sarah Cazenove (Irene Dunne) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Tono (Nils Asther). The Read More

Three-Cornered Moon

Crew: Director

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

Whistling in the Dark

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ernest Truex, Una Merkel, Edward Arnold, John Miljan

Synopsis: In this crime-comedy, an aspiring pulp writer elopes with a young woman and ends up in a boot-legger's lair. There he decides to impress his bride and the crooks with a story about the perfect murder. The crime boss likes the idea and uses it to plot the demise of his arch rival. When the would-be Read More

Life Begins

Crew: Director

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 Mouthpiece

Crew: Director

Actors: Warren William, Aline MacMahon, William Janney, John Wray

Synopsis: In this crime drama, an assistant DA must scramble to save the life of an innocent man he mistakenly sent to the chair. Unfortunately, he is too late and turns to alcoholism to soothe his throbbing conscience. It is only down from there and soon the attorney begins working for the mob until he Read More

Local Boy Makes Good

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Dorothy Lee, Ruth Hall, Edward Woods, Eddie Nugent

Synopsis: Local Boy Makes Good was based on the J.C. and Elliot Nugent stage farce The Poor Nut, which had starred Elliot Nugent on Broadway and Jack Mulhall in the 1928 film version. This time Joe E. Brown stars as John Miller, a meek-and-mild college botany student who worships beauty-contest winner Julia Read More

The Last Flight

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, Johnny Mack Brown, Helen Chandler, Elliott Nugent

Synopsis: Curiously reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's Sun Also Rises, The Last Flight dramatizes the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. Four Yankee army buddies (Richard Barthelmess, Johnny Mack Brown, David Manners and Elliot Nugent) are invalided out of service during World War One, victims of profound Read More

The Virtuous Husband

Actors: Elliott Nugent, Jean Arthur, Betty Compson, Alison Skipworth, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: Virtuous Husband was adapted from Apron Strings, a play by Dorrance Davis. Though his mother has been dead several years, wealthy young Daniel Curtis (Elliot Nugent) has never been able to cut himself loose from her smothering influence. Even when he marries the lovely Barbara Otwell (Jean Read More

The Unholy Three

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Lila Lee, Elliott Nugent, Harry Earles, John Miljan

Synopsis: A remake of the 1925 Lon Chaney melodrama of the same name, 1930's The Unholy Three makes several concessions to the newly strengthened Hollywood censors, but is still quite entertaining in a macabre sort of way. Chaney reprises his role as Professor Echo, a sideshow ventriloquist who moonlights 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

Wise Girls

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

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

Not So Dumb

Actors: Marion Davies, Elliott Nugent, Raymond Hackett, Franklin Pangborn, George Davis

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1923, the George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly stage comedy Dulcy was remade as a talkie in 1929 under the new title Dulcy. Marion Davies stars as Dulcinea, the illogical, cliché-spouting young housewife created by newspaper humorist Franklin P. Adams. Hoping to help her fiance Read More

Navy Blues

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: William Haines, Anita Page, Karl Dane, J.C. Nugent, Wade Boteler

Synopsis: MGM house director Clarence Brown's first all-talkie, this pleasantly innocuous comedy drama stars William Haines as Jack Kelly, a carefree sailor picking up innocent Alice Brown (Anita Page) at a Ladies' Uplift Society Dance. Their whirlwind romance, however, ends abruptly when the girl's mother (Edythe Chapman Read More

For the Love O'Lil

Actors: Jack Mulhall, Elliott Nugent, Sally Starr, Margaret Livingston, Charles Sellon

Synopsis: Lawyer Wyn Huntley (Jack Mulhall) is a lion in the courtroom, but a lamb when it comes to women. In love with the beautiful but financially irresponsible Lil (Sally Starr), Wyn is advised that the way to Lil's heart is to indulge her every extravagance. Unfortunately, the man offering this advice Read More

Sins of the Children

Crew: Book Author, Screenwriter

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

So This Is College

Actors: Elliott Nugent, Cliff Edwards, Sally Starr, Polly Moran

Synopsis: In this campus musical, the 1928 big game between USC and Stanford provides the impetus for music and mayhem. The story centers upon two USC teammates, Eddie and Biff, who share just about everything, even their girl friend, Babs. The trouble is, they don't know they are both dating Babs until Read More

Poor Nut

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Jack Mulhall, Charlie Murray, Jean Arthur, Jane Winton, Glenn Tryon

Synopsis: The Poor Nut was based on a stage comedy by the father-and-son team of J. C. and Elliot Nugent. Jack Mulhall assumes the role played by Elliot Nugent on Broadway, that of wimpish college student John Miller. Suffering from an inferiority complex, Miller worships beauty-contest winner Julia (Jane Winton Read More