Eugene PalletteFilmography

Silver River

Actors: Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Thomas Mitchell, Bruce Bennett, Tom D'Andrea

Synopsis: Love leads a man to his most evil deeds and forces him to change his ways in this Western. After being handed a dishonorable discharge during the Civil War, Mike McComb (Errol Flynn) becomes a professional gambler and follows a path of ruthless action to get what he wants. After moving out West Read More

In Old Sacramento

Actors: Constance Moore, Hank Daniels, Ruth Donnelly, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Director Joseph Kane adapted his own story Diamond Carlisle for the screenplay of In Old Sacramento--the third film version of Kane's original tale. Bill Elliot stars as masked bandit Spanish Jack, who behaves as badly as he wishes with few of the usual redeeming features plaguing most cinema Read More

Suspense

Actors: Belita, Barry Sullivan, Bonita Granville, Albert Dekker, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: If Republic's skating star Vera Hruba Ralston could go "dramatic", so too could Monogram's skating star Belita. Produced by the enterprising King Brothers, Suspense takes place in an ice-skating emporium owned by Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker). No-good heel Joe Morgan (Barry Sullivan) not only Read More

The Cheaters

Actors: Joseph Schildkraut, Billie Burke, Eugene Pallette, Ona Munson, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: A snooty blue-blooded English family learns a bitter lesson about the realities of lower class living in this British comedy. It all happens because the ditzy wife makes a terrible mistake with their money and loses a fortune. Her husband, a banker is at his wit's end as he scrambles about looking Read More

Sensation Hunters

Actors: Robert Lowery, Doris Merrick, Eddie Quillan, Constance Worth, Isabel Jewell

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a naive, honest young woman falls for a louse who takes her to illicit gambling houses. When one of them is raided and she is there, her angry father throws her out of the house. After that her life takes a real dive until she is able to talk her way into joining a chorus-line Read More

Pin-Up Girl

Actors: Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye, Joe E. Brown, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Despite the film's title, Pin-Up Girl offers surprisingly few glimpses of the famed Betty Grable "gams." This lively Technicolor musical casts Gable as Lorrie Jones, secretary at a USO canteen frequented by handsome servicemen. Falling in love with war hero Tommy Dooley (John Harvey), Lorrie Read More

Lake Placid Serenade

Actors: Vera Ralston, Eugene Pallette, Vera Vague, Robert Livingston, Stephanie Bachelor

Synopsis: In this musical romance, an ice skater comes to America to represent her country at a Lake Placid carnival. Unfortunately, while she is there the war breaks out and she is unable to go home. While in America, she is cared for by her rich uncle. She soon falls in love with his handsome junior Read More

In the Meantime, Darling

Actors: Jeanne Crain, Frank Latimore, Eugene Pallette, Mary Nash, Stanley Prager

Synopsis: In this wartime comedy, a spoiled socialite attempts to endure army life after marrying a lieutenant. The constant traveling and inadequate quarters are almost more than she can bear. That she cannot get along with the other soldier's wives makes matters worse. When her husband's unit is placed on Read More

Sensations of 1945

Actors: Eleanor Powell, Dennis O'Keefe, C. Aubrey Smith, Eugene Pallette, Mimi Forsythe

Synopsis: Originally titled simply Sensations, this musical comedy was the final starring film for dancer Eleanor Powell and the final film, period, for comedian W.C. Fields. Powell is the prize client of flamboyant press agent Eugene Pallette. Dennis O'Keefe, Pallette's stiff-necked son, disapproves of his Read More

Step Lively

Actors: Frank Sinatra, George Murphy, Adolphe Menjou, Gloria de Haven, Eugene Pallette, Walter Slezak

Synopsis: Previously filmed as a so-so Marx Brothers vehicle in 1938, the John Murray-Alan Boretz Broadway hit Room Service was effectively musicalized in 1944 as Step Lively. The plot remains intact: Fly-by-night theatrical producer Gordon Miller (Groucho Marx in the 1938 film, George Murphy in the remake) Read More

Heavenly Days

Actors: Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, Eugene Pallette, Gordon Oliver, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: Heavenly Days was the last of three RKO Radio film vehicles for the popular radio duo of Fibber McGee and Molly (aka Jim and Marion Jordan). Unlike their first two films, which were cacophonous, plotless musical farces, this one actually has a coherent storyline and not a little "heart appeal." Read More

The Gang's All Here

Actors: Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda, Charlotte Greenwood, James Ellison, Eugene Pallette, Edward Everett Horton, Phil Baker

Synopsis: Sgt. Andy Mason Jr. (James Ellison) is on the eve of shipping out from New York with his unit -- he's the son of Andrew Mason Sr. (Eugene Pallette), a wealthy, blustery Wall Street financier. While paying respects to his father and the latter's business partner, dithering fuss-budget Peyton Potter Read More

It Ain't Hay

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Grace McDonald, Cecil Kellaway, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In one of their most genial comedies -- based on a Damon Runyon story -- Bud Abbott and Lou Costello have to help one friend (Cecil Kellaway) replace his beloved carriage horse, and another friend (Leightno Noble) put together a US Army camp show. Through a misunderstanding, they take what they Read More

Slightly Dangerous

Actors: Lana Turner, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: This airy bit of MGM fluff stars Lana Turner as small-town soda clerk Peggy Evans. After telling off the self-important new drugstore manager Bob Stuart (Robert Young), Peggy, convinced that there's no future for her in her hometown, fakes her suicide and heads for the big city. After a series of 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

The Kansan

Actors: Richard Dix, Jane Wyatt, Albert Dekker, Eugene Pallette, Victor Jory

Synopsis: Like several other Harry Sherman Productions of the 1942-43 season, The Kansan was originally slated for a Paramount release, then redirected to United Artists. Richard Dix and Jane Wyatt, stars of the previous Sherman effort Buckskin Frontier, are reunited herein as western lawman John Bonniwell Read More

Silver Queen

Actors: George Brent, Priscilla Lane, Bruce Cabot, Lynne Overman, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this Victorian-era adventure, a blue-blooded girl is dismayed to discover that her recently deceased father, a compulsive gambler, has left her destitute and deeply in debt. At one time, he'd had a silver mine but even that was lost at the card table. The man who won the mine learns the Read More

The Big Street

Actors: Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Agnes Moorehead, Barton MacLane, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Lucille Ball delivers the finest dramatic performance of her career in this satisfying adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Big Street. Ball is cast as Gloria, aka "Your Highness," the vain and thoroughly selfish star attraction of gangster Case Ables' (Barton MacLaine) New York nightclub. Henry Fonda Read More

Are Husbands Necessary?

Actors: Ray Milland, Betty Field, Patricia Morison, Eugene Pallette, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: In providing the "synopsis" for Are Husbands Necessary?, one best-selling film source says merely "And what about this film?" There's more to the story than that, of course--but not much. The film was based on Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, a novel by Frank Davis. Ray Milland and Betty Field play a warring Read More

The Male Animal

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

Tales of Manhattan

Actors: Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton

Synopsis: Tales of Manhattan is a sumptuous multipart film centered around a formal tailcoat. The coat is specially designed for stage actor Charles Boyer, who wears it during a rendezvous with his lady friend (Rita Hayworth). The lady's husband (Thomas Mitchell) shoots Boyer, thus the tailcoat is damaged Read More

The Forest Rangers

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Paulette Goddard, Susan Hayward, Albert Dekker, Lynne Overman

Synopsis: In this drama, a dedicated forest ranger begins suspecting that a recent series of fires has been caused by arson. He investigates in a neighboring town. There he meets a beautiful rich girl, and they fall in love and get married. Unfortunately, the other rangers do not react well to the female's 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

Almost Married

Synopsis: Robert Paige pursues the hand of a singer Jane Frazee when he wants to get out of a dreaded engagement. She agrees to the marriage-of-convenience, and they find that after the ceremony they actually are starting to like each other. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

World Premiere

Actors: John Barrymore, Frances Farmer, Eugene Pallette, Virginia Dale, Ricardo Cortez

Synopsis: A producer devises an elaborate gala premiere for his latest anti-Nazi propaganda epic, The Earth in Flames. It is slated to open in Washington, D.C. and he has his press agents working overtime to produce an enormous hoopla of secrecy and publicity stunts. They come up with the plan of Read More

Swamp Water

Actors: Walter Brennan, Walter Huston, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Virginia Gilmore

Synopsis: Noted French director Jean Renoir made his American debut with this 1941 film. Walter Brennan plays Tom Keefer, a man who is falsely convicted of a murder and sentenced to death by hanging. He has escaped from prison and is hiding out in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. Keefer is dedicated to finding Read More

Appointment for Love

Actors: Charles Boyer, Margaret Sullavan, Rita Johnson, Eugene Pallette, Ruth Terry

Synopsis: What's a modern guy to do when his wife's ideas about marriage are a bit too modern for his taste? Andre Casall (Charles Boyer) is a successful, free-thinking playwright who becomes infatuated with a progressive female doctor, Jane Alexander (Margaret Sullavan). They marry impulsively, and Andre Read More

The Bride Came C.O.D.

Actors: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Stuart Erwin, Jack Carson, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Neither James Cagney nor Bette Davis were particularly pleased with the outdated screwball comedy The Bride Came C.O.D., but both performers behaved with thorough professionalism, doing a lot more for the film than the film did for them. Davis stars as flighty heiress Joan Winfield, whose Read More

Unfinished Business

Actors: Irene Dunne, Robert Montgomery, Preston S. Foster, Eugene Pallette, Dick Foran

Synopsis: The Hollywood "establishment" had been waiting a long time for maverick director Gregory La Cava to fall from grace, and when his Unfinished Business failed to live up to its expectations, La Cava's enemies swooped down like vultures. Seen today, the film is hardly one of the director's best Read More

Ride, Kelly, Ride

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Marvin Stephens, Rita Quigley, Mary Healy, Richard Lane

Synopsis: Corn Cob Kelly (Marvin Stephens) is a young jockey whose ambition is dwarfed only by his ego. All set to ride in his first big race, Kelly is replaced at the last minute by a more experienced jockey. After eating several slices of humble pie, our hero manages to requalify for the contest Read More

The Lady Eve

Actors: Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, Eric Blore

Synopsis: (Preston Sturges) wrote and directed this classic romantic comedy starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, who are involved in a scintillating battle of the sexes, as Sturges points up the terrors of sexual passion and the unattainability of the romantic ideal. Henry Fonda plays Charles Pike Read More

He Stayed for Breakfast

Actors: Loretta Young, Melvyn Douglas, Alan Marshal, Eugene Pallette, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: In this drama, set in Paris, a devout communist is slowly seduced into becoming a capitalist by a persuasively pretty young woman. The tale begins as the young man shoots at a banker and then flees the police. He runs into the woman's apartment, and for some reason, she decides to let him stay. Read More

Sandy Is a Lady

Actors: Baby Sandy, Butch and Buddy, Eugene Pallette, Nan Grey, Tom Brown

Synopsis: The mystery surrounding the gender of infant film star Baby Sandy was finally solved in her penultimate vehicle, Sandy is a Lady. The plot involves the efforts of Sandy's parents Mary and Joe Phillips (Nan Grey and Tom Brown) to improve their financial status, which are alternately aided and Read More

Young Tom Edison

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Fay Bainter, George Bancroft, Virginia Weidler, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: This film follows the teenage years of brilliant inventor Thomas Alva Edison (Mickey Rooney) as the young man troubles his family and his school teachers with his great quest for knowledge. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

The Mark of Zorro

Actors: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: This is perhaps the best of the many Zorro films as Tyrone Power gives an outstanding performance as the alternately swishing and swashbuckling son of a 19th century California aristocrat. As a champion of the oppressed, Zorro must face a wicked governor portrayed by J. Edward Bromberg, who, of Read More

It's a Date

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Kay Francis, Walter Pidgeon, Samuel S. Hinds, Eugene Pallette, S.Z. Sakall, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: In It's a Date, the teenage diva Deanna Durbin is cast as Pamela Drake, the daughter of celebrated stage actress Georgia Drake (Kay Francis). Hoping to find success as an actress herself, Pamela energetically lobbies for the role of the maid in an upcoming play based on the life of St. Bernadette Read More

A Little Bit of Heaven

Actors: Gloria Jean, Robert Stack, Hugh Herbert, C. Aubrey Smith, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: Teenaged soprano Gloria Jean plays the Little-Miss-Fixit heroine in Universal's Little Bit of Heaven. The most precocious member of an impoverished 10th Avenue family, little Midge (Gloria Jean) makes an impulsive appearance on a "man in the street" radio interview show. Catapulted to stardom Read More

First Love

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Robert Stack, Eugene Pallette, Helen Parrish, Lewis Howard

Synopsis: Best remembered as the film in which 17-year-old Deanna Durbin receives her first screen kiss, First Love is a modernized variation of the Cinderella legend (there's even "six white mice" in the form of a sextet of motorcycle policemen!). The film casts Durbin as Constance Harding, the poor Read More

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Actors: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee, Eugene Pallette, Beulah Bondi, Harry Carey

Synopsis: Frank Capra's classic comedy-drama established James Stewart as a lead actor in one of his finest (and most archetypal) roles. The film opens as a succession of reporters shout into telephones announcing the death of Senator Samuel Foley. Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the state's senior Read More

Wife, Husband and Friend

Actors: Loretta Young, Warner Baxter, Binnie Barnes, Cesar Romero, George Barbier

Synopsis: 20th Century-Fox evidently adored "triangle" comedies like Wife, Husband and Friend; apparently so did Loretta Young, who appeared in most of these films. Young plays the wife of businessman Warner Baxter, while "friend" Cesar Romero is an amorous singing teacher who convinces Young that she has a Read More

There Goes My Heart

Actors: Fredric March, Virginia Bruce, Patsy Kelly, Alan Mowbray, Nancy Carroll

Synopsis: Heiress Virginia Bruce tries to prove her worth by taking a job as a shopgirl in the store owned by her family. The pampered young lady is given a crash course in pragmatism by her worldly roommates Patsy Kelly and Nancy Carroll. Reporter Fredric March learns of Bruce's ruse and plans to tell all Read More

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Patric Knowles

Synopsis: In order to avoid the material copyrighted by Douglas Fairbanks Sr. for his 1922 Robin Hood, the scripters of this Flynn version relied on several legendary episodes that had never before been filmed, notably the battle between Robin and Little John (Alan Hale Sr., who played this part three times Read More

The Crime Nobody Saw

Actors: Lew Ayres, Ruth Coleman, Ben Baker, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this comical murder mystery, three playwrights use $500 in advance money to get an apartment in which to write a mystery. A drunken neighbor staggers in and interrupts their brainstorming before passing out on the floor. The three playwrights then pretend that he is really dead and begin trying Read More

She Had to Eat

Actors: Jack Haley, Rochelle Hudson, Arthur Treacher, Eugene Pallette, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: A naive gas station attendant's life takes a turn for the better when he is adopted by an eccentric, boozy travelling millionaire who crosses the country in his own train. Accompanied by his beloved pet bunny, the former gas station jockey boards the train. Soon afterward, he is kidnapped by Read More

Clarence

Actors: Eleanore Whitney, Eugene Pallette, Inez Courtney

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1921 with Wallace Reid, Booth Tarkington's stage comedy Clarence proved a worthwhile screen vehicle for Roscoe Karns. The title character is a resourceful young man who knows a whole little about a whole lot of things, and who concentrates by playing his saxophone. Clarence Read More

One Hundred Men and a Girl

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Adolphe Menjou, Leopold Stokowski, Mischa Auer, Eugene Pallette, Alice Brady

Synopsis: The girl is teenaged singing sensation Deanna Durbin; the one hundred men are out-of-work musicians. Still in her "little miss fix-it" stage, Durbin connives to help the musicians crack the big time. The person Durbin is most concerned with is her father (Adolphe Menjou) the 100th and most Read More

Song of the City

Actors: Margaret Lindsay, J. Carrol Naish, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: In this drama, a milque-toast socialite is drowning in San Francisco Bay. Fortunately, he is saved by a kindly Italian fisherman who takes him in and teaches him how to be manly. During his slow recovery, the wimpy fellow is cared for by the fisherman's lovely daughter who is studying to become an Read More

Topper

Actors: Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Billie Burke, Roland Young, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: By 1937, producer Hal Roach was hoping to wean himself away from the Laurel & Hardy-Our Gang slapstick on which he had built his studio's reputation by delving into the "screwball comedy" genre. Roach selected the racy Thorne Smith fantasy novel Topper for adaptation, and the result was one of the Read More

The Golden Arrow

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Eugene Pallette, Dick Foran, Carolyn Hughes

Synopsis: Bette Davis plays a facial cream heiress in this middling comedy, which Warner Bros. filmed partially in Florida. Mistaking George Brent for a fellow socialite, Bette quickly marries him only to discover that he is a penniless reporter searching for peace and quiet to finish the great American Read More

Easy to Take

Actors: Marsha Hunt, John Howard, Eugene Pallette, Richard Carle, Douglas Scott

Synopsis: In this comedy, Uncle Rodney, the host of a kiddie show, finds himself assuming guardianship of a bratty lad at the behest of his radio station, which thinks it would boost ratings. The host is also to become trustee of the boy's estate. When the host meets the boys lovely big sister, he is Read More

The Luckiest Girl in the World

Actors: Jane Wyatt, Louis Hayward, Nat Pendleton, Eugene Pallette, Catherine Doucet

Synopsis: In this comedy, an sheltered heiress bets her father that she can make it in New York city on only $150 per week. She does this to prove to her father that she will be able to live a scaled down existence with her fiancé, who is not wealthy. Her father agrees to the bet, and she goes to the Big Read More

Dishonor Bright

Actors: Tom Walls, Eugene Pallette, Betty Stockfeld, Diana Churchill, Cecil Parker

Synopsis: Dishonor Bright draws upon the talents of two master farceurs from Britain's Aldwych Theatre, Tom Walls (star-director) and Ben Travers (screenwriter). A correspondent in a bitter divorce case, Stephen Champion (Walls), ends up marrying the defendant, Ivy Lamb (Dinah Churchill), though he still Read More

Stowaway

Actors: Shirley Temple, Robert Young, Alice Faye, Eugene Pallette, Helen Westley

Synopsis: Stranded in Shanghai, orphaned Ching-Ching (Shirley Temple), the ward of Chinese missionaries, is rescued from harm by playboy Tommy Randall (Robert Young). Through a series of unbelievable but entertaining circumstances, Ching-Ching inadvertently stows away on a boat bound for San Francisco Read More

Dishonour Bright

My Man Godfrey

Actors: William Powell, Carole Lombard, Alice Brady, Gail Patrick, Jean Dixon, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: One of the landmark "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, My Man Godfrey offers the radiant Carole Lombard in her definitive performance as flighty young heiress Irene Bullock, who on a society scavenger hunt stumbles on Godfrey (William Powell), an erudite hobo residing in the city dump. Godfrey Read More

One Exciting Adventure

Actors: Binnie Barnes, Neil Hamilton, Paul Cavanagh, Grant Mitchell, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Binnie Barnes stars as Rina Sorel, a glamorous kleptomaniac who steals for the thrill of it. Specializing in uncut diamonds, Rina amasses quite a collection before detectives Lavassor (Grant Mitchell) and Kleinsibler (Eugene Pallette) catch up with her. Using the scent of Rina's perfume as their Read More

Bordertown

Actors: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Margaret Lindsay, Eugene Pallette, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: Paul Muni stars in this drama about a romantic triangle that leads to madness and murder. Overly enthusiastic Mexican attorney Johnny Ramirez (Muni) is disbarred after his first trial for his flagrant disregard of courtroom etiquette. In desperate need of work, he takes a job as a bouncer in a Read More

The Ghost Goes West

Actors: Robert Donat, Jean Parker, Eugene Pallette, Everley Gregg, Elsa Lanchester, Ralph Bunker

Synopsis: Wealthy American Joe Martin (Eugene Pallette) purchases an ancient Scottish castle and then has it dismantled and transferred to his Florida estate where he plans to reconstruct the castle brick by brick. Martin is unaware that his new acquisition comes equipped with an 18th-century ghost, played Read More

Black Sheep

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Claire Trevor, Tom Brown, Eugene Pallette, Adrienne Ames

Synopsis: The Black Sheep is professional gambler John Dugan (Edmund Lowe), who gets his kicks out of fleecing wealthy suckers during a Transatlantic ocean voyage. But when Dugan sees innocent young Fred Curtis (Tom Brown) being made the fall guy for a jewel robbery, he decides to help the poor boy out. Read More

Baby Face Harrington

Actors: Charles Butterworth, Una Merkel, Harvey Stephens, Eugene Pallette, Ruth Selwyn

Synopsis: Directed by Raoul Walsh, Baby Face Harrington features actor Charles Butterworth as Willie, a meek clerk who unintentionally gets involved with the mob when he misplaces two thousand dollars from the life insurance policy he was forced to cash after losing his job. While searching for the missing Read More

All the King's Horses

Actors: Carl Brisson, Mary Ellis, Edward Everett Horton, Katherine de Mille, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Paramount Pictures decided in 1935 to create a new romantic team, thus cast singing stars Carl Brisson and Mary Ellis in the frothy operetta All the King's Horses. Brisson does the "Prisoner of Zenda" bit as a movie star who is forced by circumstances to impersonate a look-alike king. Ms. Ellis is Read More

Steamboat Round the Bend

Actors: Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, Eugene Pallette, John McGuire

Synopsis: Two of America's most distinguished humorists, Oklahoma's Will Rogers and Kentucky's Irvin S. Cobb, costar in Steamboat Round the Bend. Cobb isn't much of an actor, so it is Rogers who carries the comic weight of this fast-paced slice of Americana. Will uncharacteristically sticks to the script Read More

I've Got Your Number

Actors: Joan Blondell, Pat O'Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Completed just before the Production Code went into effect, I've Got Your Number is delightfully racy, risque entertainment. Pat O'Brien is all wisecracks and left hooks as Terry, a troubleshooter for the New York telephone company. Terry puts his talents -- and his eavesdropping skill -- to good Read More

Strictly Dynamite

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

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

Cross Country Cruise

Actors: Lew Ayres, June Knight, Alice White, Alan Dinehart, Minna Gombell

Synopsis: In this off-beat crime drama, a philandering husband murders his wife in the midst of a department store by skewering her with an arrow shot from a sporting goods department bow. He then flees to a Greyhound bus and takes off across the country. A determined cop is hot on his trail and together Read More

The Dragon Murder Case

Actors: Warren William, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot, Eugene Pallette, Robert McWade

Synopsis: Warren William delivers a curiously subdued performance as dilettante sleuth Philo Vance in The Dragon Murder Case. The plot centers around a mysterious "dragon pool" on the Stamm estate, which figures prominently in the deaths of several unsympathetic society types. As usual, Inspector Markham (Robert McWade Read More

Friends of Mr. Sweeney

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Ann Dvorak, Eugene Pallette, Dorothy Burgess, Dorothy Tree

Synopsis: In this British comedy, a mild mannered editorial writer for a right-wing newspaper becomes fed up with the constant badgering of his domineering, self-righteous editor. The writer decides that there is more to life than kow-towing to his supervisor, and so sets off looking for fun and adventure. Read More

Hell Below

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Walter Huston, Madge Evans, Jimmy Durante, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Hell Below transcends its hackneyed World War I plot to emerge as a drama of rare originality and gutsiness. Walter Huston stars as a submarine commander whose lieutenant (Robert Montgomery) falls in love with Huston's daughter (Madge Evans). All cliches (including the intrusive comedy relief of Jimmy Durante Read More

Made on Broadway

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Sally Eilers, Madge Evans, Eugene Pallette, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Heroine Mona (Sally Eilers) is "made" in more ways than one in this free-wheeling spoof of the press-agent business. A would-be suicide, Mona is rescued by public-relations whiz Jeff (Robert Montgomery), who decides to turn the girl into a celebrity -- and line his own pockets in the process. But Read More

The Kennel Murder Case

Actors: William Powell, Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette, Ralph Morgan, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Often (and accurately) described as a model of the whodunit genre, The Kennel Murder Case stars William Powell, making his fourth screen appearance as S. S. Van Dine's dilettante detective Philo Vance. This time the story involves intrigue at the Long Island kennel club. The murder victim is Robert H. Barrat Read More

Mr. Skitch

Actors: Will Rogers, ZaSu Pitts, Rochelle Hudson, Florence Desmond, Harry Green

Synopsis: Mr. Skitch was filmed under such working titles as See America First and Green Dice, which was also the name of the Anne Cameron short story on which it was based. Will Rogers plays Mr. Skitch, who after losing all his money in the stock market, packs his wife (ZaSu Pitts) and daughter Emily (Rochelle Hudson Read More

Shanghai Madness

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Fay Wray, Ralph Morgan, Eugene Pallette, Herbert Mundin

Synopsis: In this military adventure, a Navy lieutenant is stripped of his rank and booted out after he fires at communist ships in China. These circumstances make it almost impossible for him to find a job. He then ends up saving the life of a beautiful young socialite. The girl immediately likes him and Read More

Storm at Daybreak

Actors: Kay Francis, Nils Asther, Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: A conflict between the Serbs and the Hungarians provides the framework of this drama that centers on a love triangle between a Serbian mayor and his closest friend, a Hungarian officer. The story begins as the Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated at Sarajevo. The trouble between them begins when the Read More

From Headquarters

Actors: George Brent, Margaret Lindsay, Eugene Pallette, Hugh Herbert, Dorothy Burgess

Synopsis: In the tradition of Bureau of Missing Persons, Warner Bros's From Headquarters offers a methodical, semi-documentary look at modern law-enforcement methods. The story concentrates on the investigation of a single murder. The victim, seemingly respectable, was actually a vicious blackmailer, a fact Read More

Thunder Below

Actors: Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Bickford, Paul Lukas, Eugene Pallette, Ralph Forbes

Synopsis: Tallulah Bankhead's first Hollywood movie was this romantic-drama weepie, in which she plays Susan, the unhappy wife of oil rigger Walt (Charles Bickford), who labors in a Central American oil field. The bored Susan falls in love with Walt's good friend Ken (Paul Lukas) but keeps her husband in Read More

Strangers of the Evening

Actors: ZaSu Pitts, Eugene Pallette, Lucien Littlefield, Tully Marshall, Miriam Seegar

Synopsis: Also known as The Hidden Corpse, Strangers of the Evening is an effective blend of horror and humor. There's dirty work at the city morgue, where the body of Frank Daniels (Lucien Littlefield) suddenly disappears. Later on, at Daniels' funeral, the wrong man is buried. It's all the handiwork of Read More

Tom Brown of Culver

Actors: Tom Brown, H.B. Warner, George "Slim" Summerville, Richard Cromwell, Ben Alexander

Synopsis: William Wyler directed this melodramatic story about a boy who, after growing up in the shadow of his father, learns the old man wasn't all he claimed to be. Tom Brown (played, as coincidence would have it, by an actor named Tom Brown) is a boy who has been struggling to help his mother keep body Read More

The Half-Naked Truth

Actors: Lupe Velez, Lee Tracy, Eugene Pallette, Frank Morgan, Bob McKenzie

Synopsis: A broad lampoon of celebrity worship, The Half-Naked Truth stars Lee Tracy as a carnival huckster and Lupe Velez as a "kootch" dancer. Reaching for the moon, Tracy passes Lupe off as an exotic foreign princess--and manages to pull the wool over the eyes of all Manhattan. Now "famous for being Read More

Wild Girl

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

Shanghai Express

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily," purrs Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express. She certainly has her well-manicured hands full with more men than she can count in this exotic far-Eastern adventure. Among her fellow passengers on the Shanghai Express are her Read More

Dancers in the Dark

Actors: Miriam Hopkins, Jack Oakie, William Collier, Jr., Eugene Pallette, Lyda Roberti

Synopsis: In this drama, a bandleader thinks that his young friend will be corrupted by his budding relationship with a taxi dancer. To protect the tender youth, the conductor sends him out of town.The bandleader soon finds himself wooing the lovely dancer. Unfortunately, a jealous gangster is also in love Read More

The Night Mayor

Actors: Lee Tracy, Evelyn Knapp, Warren Hymer, Donald Dillaway

Synopsis: This drama, made while New York mayor Jimmy Walker was still being reviled by newspapers for similar actions, follows a big-city mayor who loves sports, the theater, the night life, and a beautiful actress. When the press gets a hold of this information and a scandal ensues, he has the actress Read More

The Hidden Corpse

Parlor, Bedroom and Bath

Actors: Buster Keaton, Charlotte Greenwood, Reginald Denny, Dorothy Christy, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: Based on the stage comedy by Charles W. Bell and Mark Swan (previously filmed in 1920), Parlor, Bedroom and Bath is a curious mixture of all that was good and everything that was bad in Buster Keaton's talkie features. Keaton plays Reginald Irving, a dimwitted bill-poster who finds himself the Read More

Fighting Caravans

Actors: Gary Cooper, Lili Damita, Ernest Torrence, Fred Kohler, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: Directly after his successful screen teaming with Marlene Dietrich in Morocco, Gary Cooper returned to Paramount's "Zane Grey" western series with Fighting Caravans. Cooper is cast as Clint Belmet, a hell-raisin' frontiersman facing a misdemeanor jail term. To avoid arrest, Clint talks French-born Read More

Dude Ranch

Actors: Jack Oakie, Stuart Erwin, Eugene Pallette, Mitzi Green, June Collyer

Synopsis: Two of Paramount's best contract comedians made a rare joint appearance in Dude Ranch. Jack Oakie heads the cast as Jennifer (sic!), the head of a travelling troupe of repertory actors. Finding themselves on the premises of a dude ranch, Jennifer and his actors strike up a deal with ranch Read More

Girls About Town

Actors: Kay Francis, Joel McCrea, Lilyan Tashman, Eugene Pallette, Alan Dinehart

Synopsis: Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman portray what used to be euphemistically labelled "good time girls". They work the convention circuit, providing companionship and other favors for tired business men--who of course lavish the girls with expensive gifts. Francis spoils this little set-up by falling Read More

Arizona

Actors: John Wayne, Laura La Plante

Synopsis: When Lt. Bob Denton (John Wayne) tells his girlfriend Evelyn (Laura La Plante) that he has no intention of marrying her, she takes her revenge by romancing Denton's protege and father figure Colonel Bonham (Forrest Stanley). Unbeknownst to Evelyn (La Plante), Denton (Wayne) begins to court 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 Pays to Advertise

Actors: Norman Foster, Carole Lombard, Eugene Pallette, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: A remake of a 1919 silent film based on the stage farce by Roi Cooper Megrue and Walter C. Hackett, the light romantic comedy It Pays to Advertise stars comedienne Carol Lombard in one of her early Paramount talkies. Rodney Martin (Norman Foster) is the son of wealthy soap manufacturer Cyrus Read More

Gun Smoke

Actors: Richard Arlen, Mary Brian, William "Stage" Boyd, Eugene Pallette, Charles Winninger

Synopsis: William Boyd is one of the stars of the Paramount western Gun Smoke -- only it's not the same William Boyd who later essayed the role of Hopalong Cassidy, but another actor who billed himself as William "Stage" Boyd. The plot was a familiar one to western devotees of the early 1930s: a bunch of Read More

Playboy of Paris

Actors: Maurice Chevalier, Frances Dee, O.P. Heggie, Stuart Erwin, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this sparkling musical comedy, a bungling waiter (Maurice Chevalier) loses his job at a tony restaurant. His employment prospects look grim until the opportunistic restaurateur learns that his ex-employee is slated to receive a vast inheritance. Hastily, he hires the youth back and then tries Read More

The Santa Fe Trail

Actors: Richard Arlen, Rosita Moreno, Mitzi Green, Junior Durkin

Synopsis: Paramount star Richard Arlen heads a strong cast in this early talkie western about a sheepherder falsely accused of killing an Indian. Luckily for the hero, two little children (Mitzi Green and Junior Durkin) witnessed the murder and can point the sheriff in the direction of the true culprit. The Read More

Pointed Heels

Actors: William Powell, Fay Wray, Helen Kane, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Phillips Holmes

Synopsis: William Powell was still in his tux-and-top-hat period when he starred in Pointed Heels. The scene is Broadway, where millionaire Robert Courtland (Powell) promises to back a new musical production on the proviso that bit player Lora Nixon (Fay Wray) be given a major role. Lora is appreciative but Read More

The Sea God

Actors: Richard Arlen, Fay Wray, Eugene Pallette, Robert Gleckler, Ivan Simpson

Synopsis: The search for sunken treasure provides the basis for this adventure that begins when a treasure hunter's dive is sabotaged. He is diving off the shore of a remote tropical island that is the scene of an inter island war between rival native bands. While he is underwater, enemy natives cut his air Read More

The Benson Murder Case

Actors: William Powell, Natalie Moorhead, Eugene Pallette, Paul Lukas

Synopsis: After briefly relinquishing the role to Basil Rathbone, William Powell was back as S. S. Van Dine's amateur detective Philo Vance in The Benson Murder Case. Keeping abreast of the times, the film uses the 1929 Stock Market Crash as a plot motivator. Crooked stockbroker Anthony Benson (Richard Tucker Read More

Paramount on Parade

Actors: Maurice Chevalier, Richard Arlen, Jean Arthur, Gary Cooper, Clara Bow, William Austin, Jack Oakie, George Bancroft

Synopsis: Considered the best of the all-star "studio" musicals of 1929 and 1930, Paramount on Parade utilized the talents of practically everyone on the Paramount Pictures payroll. Under the supervision of British musical-comedy favorite Elsie Janis, 11 top directors contributed to the project: Dorothy Arzner Read More

Follow Thru

Actors: Nancy Carroll, Zelma O'Neal, Jack Haley, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: This musical, based on a Broadway show, was filmed in two-color technicolor. Set upon a golf course, it chronicles the attempts of a handsome golfer to teach a young woman how to play the game. This causes her gossipy rival to start a string of vicious rumors about the two. It seems that her rival Read More

The Border Legion

Actors: Richard Arlen, Jack Holt, Fay Wray, Eugene Pallette, Stanley Fields

Synopsis: The Border Legion (1930) is one of several cinemadaptations of the Zane Grey story of the same name. Jack Holt plays Jack Kells, a ruthless but essentially decent outlaw. Kells befriends straight-arrow border patrolman Jim Cleve (Richard Arlen), who is in love with heroine Joan Randall (Fay Wray). Read More

Sea Legs

Actors: Jack Oakie, Harry Green, Lillian Roth, Eugene Pallette, Albert Conti

Synopsis: Here we go again. Sailor "Searchlight" Hogan (Jack Oakie) has a yen for every pretty girl who crosses his path. Imagine his delight, then, when Hogan is assigned to the European vessel captained by a man (Albert Conti) with a host of gorgeous daughters. The most gorgeous of the bunch is Adrienne (Lilian Roth 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

Slightly Scarlet

Actors: Evelyn Brent, Clive Brook, Paul Lukas, Helen Ware

Synopsis: Passing herself off as a countess, glamorous Lucy Stavrin (Evelyn Brent) hobnobs with the rich and famous along the French Riviera. Aware that Lucy is a phony, jewel-thief Malatroff (Paul Lukas) blackmails Lucy into helping him steal the valuable necklace owned by the young wife (Helen Ware) of Read More

Let's Go Native

Actors: Jack Oakie, Jeanette MacDonald, James Hall, William Austin

Synopsis: Few films outside of Let's Go Native could boast a cast as diverse as Jack Oakie, Jeanette MacDonald and Kay Francis -- all under the direction of Leo McCarey. A variation of the "Admirable Crichton" theme, the story concerns a group of highly incompatible people, all stranded on a tropical Read More

The Studio Murder Mystery

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Chester Conklin, Warner Oland, Florence Eldridge, Guy Oliver

Synopsis: The newly constructed Paramount sound stages were used as a backdrop for the Pirandellian thriller The Studio Murder Mystery. Fredric March stars as Richard Hardell, a silent-screen idol whose transition to talkies is threatened by his inability to remember his lines. Driven to distraction Read More

His Private Life

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Kathryn Carver, Eugene Pallette, Margaret Livingston

Synopsis: Look up "suave and sophisticated" in the dictionary, and one might very well find a picture of Adolphe Menjou. In His Private Life, Menjou is cast as Georges St. Germain, whose sexual peccadilloes are so frequent and plentiful that he is forced to bribe practically every civil servant in Paris to Read More

The Kibitzer

Actors: Harry Green, Mary Brian, Neil Hamilton, David Newell, Lee Kohlmar

Synopsis: In this comedy, a Yiddish fellow cannot keep from kibitzing into other people's lives. Trouble ensues when he is mistakenly given a huge fortune in stocks that he can spend any way he pleases. At the same time, his daughter has fallen in love with an impoverished, but good hearted boy. When the Read More

The Love Parade

Actors: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Lupino Lane, Lillian Roth, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Director Ernst Lubitsch's first talking picture, The Love Parade was a witty souffle about a royal "marriage of state." Jeanette MacDonald, the queen of Sylvania, is required to take a husband. Maurice Chevalier is a highborn Sylvanian diplomat called back to his country due to his amorous Read More

The Greene Murder Case

Actors: William Powell, Florence Eldridge, Ullrich Haupt, Sr., Jean Arthur, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this early "talkie," William Powell stars as sophisticated detective Philo Vance, who is brought in to investigate the killing of multi-millionaire Tobias Greene. Vance brings together a handful of likely suspects, but it soon becomes apparent he hasn't found the guilty party when all nine of Read More

The Canary Murder Case

Actors: William Powell, James Hall, Louise Brooks, Jean Arthur, Gustav von Seyffertitz

Synopsis: This early talkie is the film that destroyed the career of popular silent leading lady Louise Brooks. A detective story, it centers upon a conniving "canary" (a nightclub singer) who takes on wealthy lovers and then blackmails them into giving her money. If they don't cooperate, she will tell Read More

The Dummy

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, John Cromwell, Fred Kohler, Mickey Bennett

Synopsis: The early Paramount talkie The Dummy represented a collaboration of sorts between screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who adapted the play on which the film was based, and Mankiewicz' brother Joseph, who wrote the subtitles for the film's silent version. The title character is office-boy Barney Read More

The Virginian

Actors: Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Richard Arlen, Mary Brian, Chester Conklin, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Gary Cooper, as a lanky Wyoming ranch and foreman, places his gun on a poker table after being insulted by one of the gamblers and intones, "If you want to call me that . . . smile." That much quoted line's origin is in this early sound version of the Owen Wister novel, The Virginian, directed by Victor Fleming Read More

The Good-Bye Kiss

Actors: John Burke, Sally Eilers, Matty Kemp, Wheeler Oakman, Carmelita Geraghty

Synopsis: At 9 reels, The Good-Bye Kiss was comedy producer Mack Sennett's most ambitious feature to date. Eschewing the usual Sennett slapstick, the film is a romantic seriocomedy with a WW I background. Sally Eilers plays a young girl who follows her soldier boyfriend (Johnny Burke) to the front. He is Read More

The Red Mark

Actors: Gaston Glass, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Rose Dione

Synopsis: Gaston Glass stars in this fast-moving melodrama as dashing Parisian pickpocket Bibi-Ri. Filching one purse too many, our hero ends up in a brutal penal colony. Sadistic overseer De Nou (Gustav von Seyfertitz) swears that some day, somehow, he'll send Bibi-Ri to the guillotine. But when this day Read More

Out of the Ruins

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Robert W. Frazer, Marian Nixon, Emile Chautard

Lights of New York

Actors: Helene Costello, Cullen Landis, Gladys Brockwell, Mary Carr, Wheeler Oakman

Synopsis: Contrary to popular belief, no one speaks into microphones hidden in vases in this, the first 100% "all-talking" feature film, although an oversized telephone prop is rather conveniently placed near the actors in one long sequence. Although not nearly as crude as its tattered reputation, Lights Read More

Barnum & Ringling, Inc.

Actors: Joe Cobb, Farina Hoskins, Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, Jay R. Smith, Jackie Condon

Synopsis: Originally released on April 7, 1928, "Barnum & Ringling, Inc." was the first "Our Gang" silent comedy to be released with a synchronized musical and sound-effects track. All of the action takes place at the fashionable Ritz-Biltmore hotel, where the Our Gang kids have elected to stage a circus. Read More

The Second Hundred Years

Actors: Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel

Synopsis: Laurel and Hardy are stripe-suited convicts in a cramped penitentiary cell. Seemingly model prisoners, they actually spend every available moment in digging a secret tunnel to freedom. Unfortunately, this only brings them up in the warden's office and lands them back in their cell. Breaking rocks Read More

The Battle of the Century

Synopsis: Laurel is Canvasback Clump, an underfed and thoroughly clueless prize-fighter, and Hardy his rather overly optimistic manager. In confronting his ape-like opponent, Thunder-clap Callahan (Noah Young), Canvasback is quickly out for the count and the boys are left with the five-dollar loser's end of Read More

Chicago

Actors: Phyllis Haver, Victor Varconi, Eugene Pallette, Virginia Bradford, T. Roy Barnes

Synopsis: Based on a real-life incident, Maurine Watkins' semi-satirical novel and play Chicago was first brought to the screen in 1927. Phyllis Haver was ideally cast as gum-chewing dance-hall girl Roxie Hart, who shoots her lover full of holes and then is forgiven by her faithful -- if not entirely honest Read More

Sugar Daddies

Synopsis: Although they had appeared together in several films before this two-reeler was made, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were still a ways off from adopting the comic personas that made them famous. Here, the boys form a trio with James Finlayson, who lent them great support in later films. The picture Read More

Desert Valley

Actors: Buck Jones, Virginia Brown Faire, J.W. Johnston, Charles Brinley

Synopsis: Based on a 1921 story by Jackson Gregory, this silent Western starred Buck Jones as Montgomery Wilson Fitzsmith, a roaming cowboy who comes to the aid of a beleaguered group of Desert Valley ranchers who are fighting an unscrupulous capitalist, Jefferson Hoades (Malcolm Waite). Hoades has cornered Read More

Fighting Edge

Synopsis: Stalwart movie hero Kenneth Harlan has the situation well in hand during most of The Fighting Edge. Disguised as half-breed, government agent Juan de Dios O'Rourke, Harlan sneaks across the Mexican border to rescue fellow agent Joyce (W.A. Carroll), who's in the clutches of smugglers. Together Read More

The Yankee Senor

Actors: Tom Mix, Olive Borden, Tom Kennedy, Francis McDonald, Margaret Livingston

Synopsis: Yellowstone National Park was the setting for this delightful Tom Mix western that also featured a two-color Technicolor fiesta scene starring leading lady Olive Borden. Of mixed parentage (from Mexico and New England a title explains). Mix's Paul Wharton is paymaster of a railroad construction Read More

Mantrap

Actors: Ernest Torrence, Clara Bow, Percy Marmont, Eugene Pallette, Tom Kennedy

Synopsis: Clara Bow plays an inveterate flirt who impulsively marries much-older mountain man Ernest Torrence. When city lawyer Percy Marmont shows up on a camping trip, Bow can't help but lead the poor fellow on. He resists her advances, but finally succumbs, leading to disaster. Very typical of the silent Read More

The Whispering Canyon

Whispering Smith

Actors: H.B. Warner, Lillian Rich, John Bowers, Lilyan Tashman, Will R. Walling

Synopsis: Gaunt, aristocratic-looking character-actor H.B. Warner was slightly miscast as author Frank Hamilton Spearman's popular railroad detective Whispering Smith. The detective had earlier been played by J.P. McGowan in a 1916 serial version starring McGowan's wife Helen Holmes which was itself remade Read More

Rocking Moon

Synopsis: This drama was filmed on location in Alaska, including the largest fox farm in the Northwest (fur was very much in demand in this less-enlightened era). Sasha Larianoff (Lilyan Tashman) lives on Rocking Moon Island where she runs a blue fox farm with the help of Gary Tynan (John Bowers). Nash, a Read More

Ranger of the Big Pines

Actors: Kenneth Harlan, Helene Costello, Eulalie Jensen, Will R. Walling, Lew Harvey

Synopsis: Based on a 1910 novel by Hamlin Garland, Cavanagh, Forest Ranger; a Romance of the Mountain West, this silent Western from Vitagraph starred former child actress Helene Costello as Virginia Weatherford, a college graduate returning after ten years in the East to her home in Sulfur Springs. Read More

Without Mercy

Actors: Rockliffe Fellowes, Robert Ames, Dorothy Phillips, Vera Reynolds

Synopsis: This melodrama of the English upper class was independently made. Sir Melmoth Craven (Rockliffe Fellows) is running against John Orme (Robert Ames) for a seat in Parliament. Orme is an honest man, but Craven is on the shady side. For campaign money, he borrows money from an equally shady Read More

The Light of Western Stars

Actors: Jack Holt, Billie Dove, Noah Beery, Sr., Alma Bennett, William Scott

Synopsis: Veteran Western director William K. Howard does a solid job with this routine Zane Grey story. Jack Holt, Billie Dove, and Noah Beery Sr., who starred together in Wanderers of the Wasteland, appear together again. Madeline Hammond (Dove), the sister of ranchman Al Hammond (William Scott), arrives Read More

Galloping Fish

Actors: Louise Fazenda, Sidney Chaplin, Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, John Steppling

Synopsis: A trained seal stole the limelight in this silent farce produced by Thomas H. Ince. Sydney Chaplin, brother of Charlie, starred as newlywed Freddy Wetherill, whose child-bride, Hyla (Lucille Ricksen), sends him packing after a quarrel. Freddy takes up with Undine (Louise Fazenda), "The Diving Read More

Wandering Husbands

Actors: Lila Lee, James Kirkwood, Margaret Livingston

Synopsis: There was nothing actors Lila Lee and James Kirkwood or writer C. Gardner Sullivan could do to bring new life to the tired old triangle theme of this comedy-drama. Lee plays Diana Moreland, whose husband, George (Kirkwood), has acquired a wandering eye. He is in the middle of an affair with Read More

Wolf Man

Actors: John Gilbert, Edgar Norton

Synopsis: This is melodrama, not a horror film, and it's booze, not a full moon, that changes John Gilbert's character from man to beast. Gerald Stanley (Gilbert) is an English gentleman who is engaged to Beatrice Joyce (Alma Frances). But Stanley's personality changes whenever he drinks, and his Read More

Cyclone Rider

Synopsis: Richard Armstrong (Reed Howe) has invented a carburetor that will enable his car to win a road race. Until that happens, however, he's working on a skyscraper being built by Robert Steele (Frank Beal). Armstrong falls for Steele's daughter, Doris (Alma Bennett), but her father won't hear of the Read More

A Man's Man

North of Hudson Bay

Actors: Tom Mix, Frank Campeau, Frank Leigh, Fred Kohler

Synopsis: Cowboy star Tom Mix takes a break from the far West to play a rancher headed for the far North in this action-adventure. Michael Dane (Mix) is headed for gold country to join his brother Peter (Eugene Pallette) and his partner, where they have struck it rich. On the boat he meets fetching Estelle Read More

To the Last Man

Actors: Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Sr., Robert Edeson, Frank Campeau

Synopsis: Leading lady Lois Wilson considered this fine western her favorite of six films she starred in opposite virile leading man Richard Dix. (The others were The Call of the Canyon, 1923, Icebound, 1924, The Vanishing American, 1925, Let's Get Married, 1926, and the talkie Lovin' the Ladies, 1930.) Read More

Hell's Hole

Actors: Charles "Buck" Jones, Maurice B. Flynn, George Siegmann, Ruth Clifford

Synopsis: Even though this Western used the convenient "dream" premise, it still managed to please audiences. Cowboy Tod Musgrave (Charles Jones, who hadn't yet added "Buck" to his stage name) and his pal Del Hawkins (Maurice Flynn) steal a ride on a train after being kicked out of a saloon. The conductor Read More

Without Compromise

Synopsis: This contrived and complicated tale of crooked politics would have been a poor vehicle for William Farnum if not for his stellar supporting cast. Although Sheriff Dick Leighton (Farnum) loves Jean Ainsworth (Lois Wilson), he is at odds with her father David Ainsworth (Robert McKim), a senator more Read More

Two Kinds of Women

Synopsis: The plot here, based on the novel, Judith of Blue Lake Ranch, by Jackson Gregory is typical Western fare -- an Easterner comes out West to manage a ranch and the old superintendent stirs up trouble. What makes it different is that the Easterner is a woman -- and the woman happens to be dramatic Read More

The Three Musketeers

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Leon Bary, George Siegmann, Eugene Pallette, Marguerite de la Motte, Boyd Irwin

Synopsis: Douglas Fairbanks' longest and most elaborate production up to 1921, The Three Musketeers was Fairbanks' first full-blown costume adventure (his modestly produced 1920 The Mark of Zorro was regarded as an extension of his breezy contemporary comedies). Fairbanks assumes the leading role of Read More

Fine Feathers

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Claire Whitney, Thomas W. Ross, Warburton Gamble, June Elvidge

Synopsis: This drama, based on the play by Eugene Walter, begins in a rather novel way -- the two leads are shown watching a play, Paid in Full, which was also written by Walter! The play's storyline promotes wealth at any cost, and the couple, Bob and Jane Reynolds (Eugene Pallette, surprisingly young and Read More

Alias Jimmy Valentine

Synopsis: The saga of Alias Jimmy Valentine began with the O. Henry story "A Retrieved Reformation". This surprise-ending tale was adapted into a stage play by Paul Armstrong, which subsequently was adapted to film several times, first in 1915 with Robert Warwick in the leading role. The 1920 version of Alias Jimmy Valentine Read More

Parlor, Bedroom and Bath

Synopsis: Angelica (Kathleen Kirkham) elopes with Reggie Irving (Eugene Pallette) under the false assumption that he's a worldly type of guy. But in reality, Reggie is completely unsophisticated. So as not to disappoint his new wife, he engages society writer Polly Hathaway (Ruth Stonehouse) to help him Read More

Twin Beds

Synopsis: For their screen debut, stage stars Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven played Signor Monti and Blanche Hawkins in the bedroom farce that spawned all others, Twin Beds. The 1914 Margaret Mayo/Salisbury Field-penned play adapted well to motion pictures, even without the dialogue. Monti, a famed but Read More

Fair and Warmer

Synopsis: Blanny Wheeler (May Allison) has a husband, Jack (Pell Trenton), who frequently neglects her to go play cards, while Laura Bartlett (Christine Mayo) makes it no secret that she finds her husband Billy (Eugene Pallette) terminally dull. One night, while Jack is at poker and Laura is off to the Read More

The Amateur Adventuress

Synopsis: Expert farceur Emmy Wehlen plays the title character in The Amateur Adventuress. A plain girl of modest means, Wehlen decides to pose as a notorious vamp. This gets her into society-and in a lot of hot water. All misunderstandings are forgotten in reel five, when she melts into the arms of leading Read More

Be a Little Sport

Synopsis: Gerald Faulkner (Albert Ray) has a rich uncle (George Hernandez) who promises him a 100,000 dollars if he will marry within 48 hours. As he is engaged to chorus girl Carlotta LaMere (Leota Lorraine), that should be an easy task. But it turns out that she is involved with the uncle and would rather Read More

Tarzan of the Apes

Actors: Elmo Lincoln, Gordon Griffith, True Boardman, Sr., Colin Kenny, Enid Markey

Synopsis: Elmo Lincoln became the first actor to play Edgar Rice Burrough's "Lord of the Jungle" on the screen when he replaced the now-forgotten Winslow Wilson in the 1918 8-reeler Tarzan of the Apes. During the first portion of the film, Tarzan -- aka Lord Greystoke -- is portrayed by juvenile actor Gordon Griffith Read More

Viviette

Actors: Harrison Ford

Synopsis: Vivian Martin stars as Viviette, a British beauty whose affections are sought after by Dick (Eugene Pallette), a handsome but bull-headed young man. When Viviette befriends Dick's aristocratic brother Austin (played by the "first" Harrison Ford), Dick misunderstands the relationship and becomes Read More

The Turn of a Card

Synopsis: Jimmie Farrell (J. Warren Kerrigan) is a newly-rich Oklahoma oilman. He plays cards with gambler "Ace High" Burdette and Burdette loses everything, including his Long Island estate. As he's wandering through the woods Burdette is injured and held captive by a half-wit, Curio Johnson (Clifford Read More

Breakers Ahead

Synopsis: Viola Dana stars in this Metro five-reeler. While Captain Jabez Scudd (Russell Simpson) is away on a ship, his sweetheart, Agnes Bowman (Helen Jerome Eddy), gives birth to a little girl. When the girl is ten, Agnes dies, and since her family refuses to have anything to do with a nameless child Read More

His Robe of Honor

Synopsis: Although Henry Walthall's career went downhill after he stopped working with D.W. Griffith, occasionally he would appear in a film that was worthy of his talents. This drama was one of them; perhaps because it was made by another great director, Rex Ingram. Julian Randolph (Walthall) is a Read More

Victim

World Apart

Synopsis: This drama starring Wallace Reid offers a lot of action and little else. Bob Fulton (Reid) is the superintendent of a mine in the West. He wins the enmity of dancehall owner Jack King (Henry Barrows) when he saves one of the girls, Rose De Braisy (Florence Carpenter), from his unwanted advances. Read More

Marcellini Millions

Synopsis: Actor George Beban took his lighthearted Italian characters in and out of many different situations; here he brings Guido Bartelli from rags to riches and back to rags again. Guido and his wife Antoinetta (Helen Jerome Eddy) wind up with the estate of Leo Marcellini (Pietro Sosso), a wealthy oil Read More

Each to His Kind

Synopsis: Japanese film star Sessue Hayakawa carries the dramatic weight of this "Never the Twain Shall Meet" melodrama. Rhandah (Hayakawa), a British-educated Hindu, finds that his education means nothing when he falls in love with bigoted white girl Amy Dawe (Viola Vale). Seething with hatred, Rhandah Read More

Man's Man

Synopsis: Inasmuch as J. Warren Kerrigan was (in the eyes of his female fans at least) the embodiment of virility, the actor was ideally cast as the title character in A Man's Man. Based on a story by Peter B. Kyne, the story concerns a young adventurer named John Stuart Webster (Kerrigan), who heads to Read More

Gretchen, the Greenhorn

Actors: Dorothy Gish, Ralph Lewis, Frank Bennett, Eugene Pallette, Kate Bruce

Synopsis: Dorothy Gish stars as Gretchen, the daughter of Dutch immigrant Ralph Lewis. Doing her best to adjust to her strange new homeland of the USA, Gretchen falls in love with Italian-American Frank Bennett. The plot thickens when she is kidnapped by gangsters so that her father, an engraver, will be Read More

Hell-To-Pay Austin

Synopsis: Veteran Biograph leading man/director Wilfred Lucas essays the title role in Hell-to-Pay Austin. A rough-and-tumble lumberman, Austin nonetheless has a sentimental side. When the minister father of winsome Briar Rose (Bessie Love) dies of excessive drinking, the girl is unofficially adopted by Read More

Going Straight

Synopsis: After they become parents, crooks Grace and John Remington (Norma Talmadge and Ralph Lewis) go straight, and John becomes a very successful businessman. Their past catches up with them when a former associate, Jimmy Briggs (Eugene Pallette), comes around and begins blackmailing John. John gets fed Read More

Intolerance

Actors: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Miriam Cooper, Walter Long, Tully Marshall, Alfred Paget

Synopsis: Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives Read More

Children in the House

Actors: Norma Talmadge, Eugene Pallette, William Hinckley, William E. Lawrence, Alice Rae

Synopsis: Instead of marrying her childhood sweetheart, Charles Brown (William Hinckley), Cora (Norma Talmadge) has married the more well-heeled Arthur Vincent (Eugene Pallette). But Vincent, the son of a bank president, neglects Cora and their two children in favor of dancer Jane Courtenay (Jewel Carmen). Read More

Sunshine Dad

Synopsis: The late film historian William K. Everson has cited the 1916 De Wolf Hopper vehicle Sunshine Dad as one of the earliest examples of "screwball comedy." Despite a recent serious illness, Hopper was quite virile and athletic in the role of fiftyish man-about-town Alonzo Evergreen. Forced by the Read More

After Twenty Years

The Spell of the Poppy

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Lucile Young, Joseph Henaberry

Synopsis: This cautionary tale of drug addiction from director Tod Browning depicts the pianist Manfredi (Eugene Pallette), who performs in a Chinese café and has become addicted to opium. Manfredi swears to marry his common-law wife Zuletta (Lucille Young) after he returns from five years of study abroad. Read More

The Story of a Story

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Miriam Cooper

Synopsis: Symbolic special effects highlight this early one-reel morality tale directed by Tod Browning. Writer John Penhallow (Eugene Pallette) abandons his idealism and pens a lurid and exploitative gangster story. When he sleeps, he dreams of the nasty people in his fiction materializing out of the book Read More

The Highbinders

Actors: Signe Auen, Eugene Pallette, Walter Long, Tom Wilson, Billy West

Synopsis: San Francisco's Chinatown is the scene for this two-reel melodrama of crime and miscegenation. The cruel saloonkeeper Pat Gallagher (Walter Long) wants to marry off his daughter Maggie (Billie West) to a gangster, but she runs away and hides in a neighborhood shop. There she is persuaded to marry Read More

His Guardian Angel

How Hazel Got Even

The Birth of a Nation

Actors: Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Ralph Lewis

Synopsis: The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the Read More

The Stolen Radium

Gunman

The Tattooed Arm

When Jim Returned