Frank FergusonFilmography

Adam-12: The Sniper, Part One

Synopsis: Officers Jim Reed (Kent McCord) and Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) head to the docks of San Pedro, there to stop a gang of thieves using stolen trucks to transport their ill-gotten gains. The two cops also try to thwart the plans of a self-styled revolutionary with an arsenal of hidden guns. Read More

Petticoat Junction: Susan B. Anthony, I Love You

Synopsis: Here's the obligatory "Women's Lib" episode, a requirement of every TV sitcom of the late 1960s. The newest female to embrace The Cause is Billie Jo (Meredith MacRae), who returns from Chicago fired up with feminist fervor. Her efforts to enlist her sisters in the movement causes nothing but Read More

Green Acres: The Confrontation

Actors: Frank Ferguson, Helen Kleeb, Johnny Whitaker, Debi Storm, Richard Steele

Synopsis: Newly appointed as president of the Hooterville school board, Oliver (Eddie Albert) must deal with a fervent campaign, spearheaded by his neighbors, to reinstate an expelled student. This isn't as easy as it seems: the "student" is Arnold the pig, who has been banished from the schoolhouse for Read More

Green Acres: The Beeping Rock

Actors: Johnny Whitaker, Frank Ferguson, Jerome Cowan, Arthur Peterson

Synopsis: This episode was filmed not long after astronaut Neil Armstrong's fabled "moon walk" in the summer of 1969. Gullible Lisa (Eva Gabor) is convinced when child inventor Dinky Watson (Johnny Whitaker) insists that he, too, has been to the moon. Purchasing a "moon rock" from Dinky, Lisa receives a Read More

Along Came a Spider

Actors: Ed Nelson, Suzanne Pleshette

Synopsis: This TV movie stars Suzanne Pleshette as the embittered widow of a research scientist. Seeking justice, she conceals her identity and goes after the professor (Ed Nelson) she holds responsible for her husband's "accidental" death. Pleshette launches an affair with the professor in order to get the Read More

Bonanza: Ride the Wind, Part One

Actors: Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Victor Jory, Noah Beery, Jr., Rod Cameron, Dorothy Green

Synopsis: Written by Paul Schneider, "Ride the Wind" was Bonanza's first two-part story. Ben Cartwright is willing to provide Charles Ludlow (Victor Jory) with money to help finance the new Pony Express service, but isn't keen on allowing his son Joe to join Ludlow's riders. Nor is the Paiute Indian tribe Read More

Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Actors: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: An unusually long pre-credits sequence establishes the roots of faded Southern belle Charlotte's (Bette Davis) insanity; she'd been witness to the dismemberment murder of her fiance (Bruce Dern) and the suicide of the murderer, her own father (Victor Buono). Years later, Charlotte remains a Read More

Petticoat Junction: For the Birds

Synopsis: The Hooterville Cannonball is forced to temporarily halt service when a bird builds its nest in the engine's smokestack. Enter the redoubtable Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane), who declares that the Cannonball will be scrapped if it does not return to its appointed rounds immediately. This is one of Read More

Petticoat Junction: The Curse of Chester W. Farnsworth

Synopsis: Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) is convinced that the Shady Rest is haunted by the ghost of Chester W. Farnsworth, who stayed at the hotel 50 years before, then vanished mysteriously. This puts Joe in a bit of a bind: Much as he'd like to exploit the ghost as a tourist attraction, he also feels he must Read More

Petticoat Junction: A Doctor in the House

Synopsis: Ever on the lookout for new sources of income, Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) invites young doctor Matthew Bailey (Alan Reed Jr.) to set up his practice at the Shady Rest. Unfortunately, Joe forget to ask permission of hotel owner Kate (Bea Benaderet)--and she's dead set against turning her place into Read More

Petticoat Junction: Bedloe's Most Fiendish Scheme

Synopsis: In the first episode of the two-part story, despicable railroad executive Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane) has managed to become president of the Pixley Bank. In this capacity, he threatens to foreclose on the Shady Rest Hotel unless the Hooterville Cannonball is scrapped. Rather than see this happen Read More

Petticoat Junction: Modern Merchandising

Synopsis: Hooterville storekeeper Sam Drucker (Frank Cady) has noticed a considerable drop in business over the past few days. The rest: a brand-new supermarket in nearby Pixley is stealing away all of Sam's steady customers. While things look bleak for a while,fans can take heart in the fact that Sam Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: The Case of the Punch In the Nose

Synopsis: Cleaning out old courthouse files, Barney comes across a never-closed assault case involving Floyd the barber and Charlie Foley (Frank Ferguson). The incident happened so long ago that both Floyd and Charlie have forgotten all about, but that's not good enough for a completist like Barney. In Read More

Those Calloways

Actors: Brian Keith, Vera Miles, Brandon de Wilde, Walter Brennan, Ed Wynn

Synopsis: Originally trade-previewed as Those Crazy Calloways, Disney's Those Calloways is a lengthy, anecdotal film about a highly individualistic New England family. Patriarch Cam Calloway (Brian Keith) is regarded as a crank by the local villagers because of his dream to build a bird sanctuary that will Read More

The Great Sioux Massacre

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Darren McGavin, Philip Carey, Julie Sommars, Nancy Kovack

Synopsis: The Great Sioux Massacre is an entertaining pack of lies about Custer's Last Stand. General Custer (Philip Carey) is herein depicted as a bastion of tolerance, whose efforts to secure fair treatment for the Indians lead to several confrontations with corrupt government officials. Custer is forced Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Golden Venom

Synopsis: Lucille Forrest (Frances Reid) is the wealthiest widow in Forrest Junction, but only as long as she obeys the condition in her husband's will which forbids her from reopening the investigation of her son's mysterious death. Not long after consulting with Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) to have this Read More

Bonanza: Ponderosa Matador

Actors: Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Marianna Hill

Synopsis: Written by Alex Sharp, the comic episode "Ponderosa Matador" finds the Cartwright boys vying for the attention of the lovely Dolores (Marianna Hill), the daughter of Ben's house guest Señor Tenino (Nestor Paiva). Discovering that Dolores is an aficionado of the bull ring, the boys decide to Read More

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Sky is Falling

Synopsis: The Seaview is ordered into the regular navy as the flagship of Admiral Tobin (Charles McGraw), who has been assigned to hunt down a UFO that was seen submerging at sea. Tobin plans to greet the invader with force, while Nelson (Richard Basehart) and Crane (David Hedison) prefer a more cautious Read More

The Twilight Zone: Queen of the Nile

Actors: Ann Blyth, Lee Philips, Celia Lovsky, Frank Ferguson

Synopsis: Clearly inspired by the then-current publicity blitz surrounding the Elizabeth Taylor film version of Cleopatra, this Twilight Zone episode was credited to scriptwriter Charles Beaumont, even though Jerry Sohl did the actual writing. Ann Blyth stars as Pamela Morris, a seemingly ageless movie Read More

Petticoat Junction: Race Against the Stork

Synopsis: Kate (Bea Benadaret) invites her pregnant friend Elsie (Olive Sturgess) to stay at the Shady Rest until the baby comes. Meanwhile, enterprising Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) works out a "foolproof" plan to make sure that the obstetrician arrives on time when he's needed. And of course, this being a Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: Bargain Day

Actors: Hope Summers

Synopsis: The entreprenurial Diamond Jim Foley (Frank Ferguson) sells Aunt Bee a side of beef at a "bargain" price. When it turns out that Bee's freezer is too small to accommodate the meat, the helpful Foley talks her into buying a new appliance. It soon becomes obvious that the more Bee spends, the less Read More

The Quick Gun

Actors: Audie Murphy, Merry Anders, James Best, Ted de Corsia, Walter Sande

Synopsis: In this western, a cowboy finally returns to his home after a long absence precipitated by his killing a wicked rancher's son in a forced duel. The cowboy wants to live peacefully on his daddy's ranch and be with the woman that he loves. While on the trail home, he encounters a ruthless outlaw Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Bluffing Blast

Synopsis: A young woman named Linda (Antoinette Bower) arrives in the town of Ladera, claiming to be the daughter of wealthy Addison Blake--who died seven years earlier, presumably a bachelor. Floyd Grant (played by Bill Williams, in real life the husband of Perry Mason costar Barbara Hale) insists that he Read More

Leave It to Beaver: Beaver's Good Deed

Actors: Frank Ferguson, Stephen Talbot

Synopsis: As the result of Beaver's uncharacteristically selfish behavior of late, Ward (Hugh Beaumont) decides to drill his son in the lessons of the Golden Rule. Duly chastened by Ward's words, Beaver (Jerry Mathers) promises to ever after "do unto others etc." He gets his first chance to perform a good Read More

Maverick: The Troubled Heir

Synopsis: While playing poker with Big Jim Watson (Alan Hale Jr., Bart (Jack Kelly) again comes face to face with his old friendly enemy, versatile con artist Pearly Gates (Mike Road). Actually, he comes face to face with Pearly's gun, as Mr. Gates robs the card players so that he and his girlfriend Marla Read More

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Night of the Owl

Synopsis: Forest ranger Jim Mallory (Brian Keith) and his wife, Linda (Patricia Breslin), have adopted a girl named Ann (Claudia Cravey), carefully shielding from her the knowledge that her real father killed her real mother just before committing suicide. A blackmailer threatens to tell the girl the truth Read More

Bonanza: The Long Night

Actors: Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, James Coburn

Synopsis: Hoping to meet the deadline for a crucial business transaction, Adam Cartwright rushes to the town of Bowline, with a bank draft in hand. En route, he is ambushed by, and forced to change clothes with, an escaped convict named Poindexter (Bing Russell, who later joined Bonanza in the semiregular Read More

Pocketful of Miracles

Actors: Glenn Ford, Bette Davis, Hope Lange, Arthur O'Connell, Peter Falk

Synopsis: Director Frank Capra's last feature film, Pocketful of Miracles is a Technicolor remake of his 1933 film Lady for a Day. A barely recognizable Bette Davis plays Apple Annie, the besotted, unkempt, rag-clad street vendor who controls the activities of all the beggars on Broadway. Apple Annie is the Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Angry Dead Man

Synopsis: Eve Nesbitt (Gloria Talbott) contacts Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) to determine the progress of the insurance settlement related to the drowning death of her husband Willard (Les Tremayne). As it happens, however, Willard is only pretending to be dead so that Eve can collect on the policy's Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: The Beauty Contest

Actors: Elinor Donahue

Synopsis: It is time for the annual Mayberry Founders Day celebration, and the committee has decided to hold a beauty contest. Sheriff Andy is all for the idea-until he is appointed to judge the contest. Making matters worse, Andy's girlfriend Ellie is one of the contestants. How is the Sheriff going to get Read More

Have Gun, Will Travel: Bearbait

Synopsis: Juvenile delinquency invades the Wild West in this episode, wherein three young punks named Sim (Richard Rust), Bunk (Martin West) and Burt (Ralph Reed) gleefully terrorize a small town. The local sheriff (Stephen Roberts) refuses to intervene, and Paladin (Richard Boone) wants to find out why. Read More

Maverick: Three Queen's Full

Synopsis: In this rollicking takeoff of the TV western series Bonanza, Jim Backus guest stars as wealthy rancher Joe Wheelwright, the owner of the vast Subrosa spread. Figuring that it is time his sons Moose (Jake Sheffield), Henry (Larry Chance) and Small Paul (Evan McCord) were married, Wheelwright hires Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: The New Housekeeper

Actors: Cheerio Meredith

Synopsis: Originally telecast October 3, 1960, the first episode of The Andy Griffith Show was titled "The New Housekeeper." The title character is of course Aunt Bee, played by Frances Bavier. Though Sheriff Andy Taylor welcomes Aunt Bee's arrival, his son Opie is not so enthusiastic: after all, previous Read More

Maverick: Destination Devil's Flat

Synopsis: Sheriff Dan Trevor (Peter Breck) of Devil's Flat concocts a plan to steal a chest of gold from the town's new "sky pilot", Deacon Curt Eaker (Frank Ferguson). Bart (Jack Kelly) decides to stop Trevor in his tracks by replacing the gold with stones--failing to take in consideration the old adage Read More

Sunrise at Campobello

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Greer Garson, Hume Cronyn, Jean Hagen, Ann Shoemaker

Synopsis: One of only two theatrical features by television director Vincent J. Donahue, Sunrise at Campobello is a biography of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that attempts to illustrate the statesman's courageous battle against infantile paralysis and his political foes. While in the prime of his life Read More

Bonanza: The Fear Merchants

Actors: Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Gene Evans

Synopsis: The ugly consequences of bigotry are examined in this episode of Bonanza. Gene Evans plays Andrew Fulmer, who runs for mayor of Virginia City on a "hate all outsiders" platform. Backed up by hired thugs, Fulmer targets the town's Chinese population for his most violent persecution. The hostility Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: Ellie for Council

Actors: Elinor Donahue

Synopsis: Sheriff Andy's male chauvinism boils over when his girlfriend Ellie Walker decides to run for town council-the first woman ever to do so. As the campaigning proceeds, Andy and Barney do everything they can to throw roadblocks in Ellie's political career. The Sheriff realizes the error of his ways Read More

Raymie

Actors: David Ladd, Julie Adams, John Agar, Charles Winninger, Richard Arlen

Synopsis: The story of a boy and his fish is chronicled in this heartwarming children's drama. The story centers around Raymie, a young boy who is determined to catch 'Old Moe,' a big barracuda who has become a local legend. Along with a variety of older fisherman, he sets up his gear on a California pier Read More

The Untouchables: The Underground Railway

Synopsis: This episode is a tour de force for future Oscar winner Cliff Robertson, here cast as hideously ugly escaped convict Frank Holloway (a character allegedly based on the equally repulsive Alvin "Creepy" Karpis). After breaking out of jail, Holloway is helped along his cross-country escape route by Read More

The Big Night

Actors: Dick Contino, Venetia Stevenson, Randy Sparks

Synopsis: For those of you who might have wondered whether accordion virtuoso Dick Contino ever made a film, we refer you to The Big Night. Fourth-billed Contino weaves in and out of a plotline involving stolen money, an innocent married couple, and not-so-innocent gangsters. Newlyweds Randy Sparks and Venetia Stevenson Read More

Maverick: Easy Mark

Synopsis: Bart (Jack Kelly) is hired to impersonate millionaire Cornelius Van Rensselaer Jr. (Wynn Pearce) at an important business conference in St. Louis. It seems that there are several powerful men who will stop at nothing to prevent Van Renssalaer from attending the meeting, so it's up to Bart to stop Read More

The Light in the Forest

Actors: Fess Parker, Wendell Corey, Joanne Dru, James MacArthur, Jessica Tandy

Synopsis: Those who learned to dislike Conrad Richter's novel The Light in the Forest when it was required reading in high school will be pleasantly surprised by this Disney adaptation. In his second film appearance, James MacArthur plays Johnny Butler, a white youth who was captured by the Delaware Indians Read More

Cole Younger, Gunfighter

Actors: Frank Lovejoy, James Best, Jan Merlin, Douglas Spencer

Synopsis: Frank Lovejoy plays the title role in Cole Younger, Gunfighter. The scene is post-Civil War Texas, when the state was under the despotic control of the "bluebellies"-corrupt law enforcement officials, answerable only to carpetbagger-governer E. J. Davis. Persecuting Texans in general and Rebel Read More

Man of the West

Actors: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell, Jack Lord

Synopsis: Anthony Mann's final foray into the western genre is a disturbing examination of man's baser instincts, rising in intensity to the level of Shakespearean tragedy. The film begins as seemingly naive Link (Gary Cooper) leaves his family to take a train to Fort Worth. Also on the train is saloon Read More

Terror in a Texas Town

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly, Eugenio Martín, Ned Young

Synopsis: This near-legendary western stars Sterling Hayden as George Hanson, the son of a Swedish seaman-turned-farmer (Ted Stanhope). When he runs afoul of town boss Ed McNeil (Sebastian Cabot), Hanson's father is gunned down by McNeil's henchman Johnny Crale (Ned Young). Knowing full well that he can Read More

Maverick: High Card Hangs

Synopsis: While working in a South Dakota gold-mining camp, Bart (Jack Kelly) and Dandy Jim Buckley (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) befriend Genessee Jones (Frank Ferguson), a grizzled old prospector with a hefty bankroll. Later on, Jones gets into a poker game with two miners (one of them a young Martin Landau) and Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Perjured Parrot

Synopsis: Once again, Perry (Raymond Burr) handles a case way outside his normal "jurisdiction" of Los Angeles, when Ellen Sabin (Jody Lawrence) is charged with murdering her husbnad (Maurice Manson). In fact, Perry proves his client's innocence during the coroner's inquest, in which the key witness is a Read More

Andy Hardy Comes Home

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Patricia Breslin, Fay Holden, Cecilia Parker, Sara Haden, Frank Ferguson

Synopsis: With Andy Hardy Comes Home, Mickey Rooney hoped to revive the character -- and the movie series -- that had brought him fame and fortune back in the 1930s and 1940s. Returning to his home town of Carvel after several years absence, lawyer Andy Hardy (Rooney) brings his wife Jane (Patricia Breslin) Read More

Maverick: Seed of Deception

Synopsis: Riding into a small town, Bret (James Garner) and Bart (Jack Kelly) are amused when the locals mistake them for the notorious gunfighters Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. But it's a bit less amusing when gorgeous Doll Hayes (Joi Lansing) begins cozying up to the local sheriff (Frank Ferguson) as a Read More

The Lawless Eighties

Synopsis: In this western, a circuit rider endeavors to warn the cavalry after he sees masked men cruelly abusing an Indian band. En route, the brave rider is shot and left to die. Fortunately, a gunfighter comes upon him and saves his life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Gun Duel in Durango

Actors: George Montgomery, Ann Robinson, Steve Brodie, Bobby Clark, Frank Ferguson

Synopsis: Originally released as Gun Duel in Durango, this solid little western stars George Montgomery as reformed outlaw Dan. He falls in love with ranch owner Judy (Ann Robinson), but she won't accept his proposal until she's certain that he's given up his criminal activities. This proves difficult when Read More

The Iron Sheriff

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Constance Ford, John Dehner, Kent Taylor, Darryl Hickman

Synopsis: Frontier peacekeeper Sheriff Galt (Sterling Hayden) faces a crisis of conscience in The Iron Sheriff. In the aftermath of a robbery-murder, Galt follows the trail of evidence directly to his own son, Benjie (Darryl Hickman). Sworn to uphold the law at all costs, Galt is grimly determined to see Read More

The Phantom Stagecoach

Actors: William Bishop, Kathleen Crowley, Richard Webb, Hugh Sanders, John Doucette

Synopsis: Amidst a sea of late-1950s psychological westerns, The Phantom Stagecoach is almost refreshingly old-fashioned. The plot is motivated by an ongoing war between two rival stagecoach firms. Stagecoach owner Joe Patterson (Frank Ferguson) is as honest as the day is long, which is more than can be Read More

This Could Be the Night

Actors: Jean Simmons, Paul Douglas, Anthony Franciosa, Julie Wilson, Neile Adams, Joan Blondell

Synopsis: A rare comedy effort by director Robert Wise, This Could Be the Night is based on a series of short stories Cordelia Baird Gross. Jean Simmons stars as Anne Leeds, a prim, proper and very level-headed grade-school teacher who takes a night job as secretary to rough-and-tumble nightclub owner Rocco Read More

The Eternal Sea

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Alexis Smith, Dean Jagger, Ben Cooper, Virginia Grey, Morris Ankrum, John Maxwell

Synopsis: One of Republic's most elaborate productions of the 1950s, The Eternal Sea is the biography of American admiral John M. Hoskins. Sterling Hayden delivers a superbly understated performance as Hoskins, who continued to serve throughout WW2 despite the loss of a leg in the early phases of the Read More

City of Shadows

Actors: Victor McLaglen, John Baer, Kathleen Crowley, Anthony Caruso, June Vincent

Synopsis: After several years of supporting parts, Victor McLaglen once more landed a leading role in Republic's City of Shadows. McLaglen plays Big Tim Channing, an ageing but powerful gangster who raises young newsboy Dan Mason as his own son. Upon reaching adulthood, Mason (John Baer) becomes a law Read More

Moonfleet

Actors: Stewart Granger, George Sanders, Joan Greenwood, Viveca Lindfors, Jon Whiteley

Synopsis: Director Fritz Lang was attracted to the British period piece Moonfleet because of the relatively unregenerate nature of its greedy "hero" Stewart Granger. Young Jon Whitely, who is in the legal custody of Granger, learns that he is to inherit a valuable diamond. Hoping to get his own hands on the Read More

The McConnell Story

Actors: Alan Ladd, June Allyson, James Whitmore, Frank Faylen, Robert Ellis

Synopsis: Alan Ladd plays real-life air force hero Captain Joseph McConnell Jr. in this inspirational biopic, while June Allyson does her usual as McConnell's anxious, waiting-nervously-at-home wife. Assigned to the medical corps during WWII, McConnell takes private flying lessons so that he'll qualify for Read More

Battle Cry

Actors: Van Heflin, Aldo Ray, Mona Freeman, Nancy Olson, James Whitmore, Tab Hunter

Synopsis: Adapted by Leon Uris from his own novel, the film follows a group of World War II marines, from Basic Training to Battlefield. Major Van Heflin knows that his men are spoiling for a real fight, but must make do with the desultory skirmishes assigned them by the Brass. All this changes with an Read More

At Gunpoint

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, Walter Brennan, Tommy Rettig, Skip Homeier

Synopsis: One of the best of the High Noon derivations, At Gunpoint is the story of reluctant hero Fred MacMurray. When a band of gunmen invade a small frontier town, storekeeper MacMurray fires off a lucky shot and kills the leader. Hailed as a hero, MacMurray realizes deep down that he's a coward. When Read More

A Lawless Street

Actors: Randolph Scott, Angela Lansbury, Warner Anderson, Jean Parker, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: Up until its surisingly mundane finale, A Lawless Street is one of the best of the Randolph Scott westerns of the 1950s. Scott plays famed marshal Calem Ware, whose strenous activities on behalf of law and order have exacted a toll on his personal life. Keeping the peace in the town of Medicine Read More

New York Confidential

Actors: Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, Marilyn Maxwell, Anne Bancroft, J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: New York Confidential is based on the Jack Lait-Lee Mortimer bestseller of the same name. Richard Conte plays Nick Magellan, a "torpedo" for Manhattan crime boss Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford). Pleased with Magellan's work, Charlie promotes him to the topmost rungs of the Syndicate. He regrets Read More

Trial

Actors: Glenn Ford, Dorothy McGuire, Arthur Kennedy, John Hodiak, Katy Jurado

Synopsis: Adapted by Don M. Mankiewicz from his own novel, Trial is a surprisingly timely story of how justice can sometimes be compromised by "special interests". It all begins when Mexican youth Angelo Chavez (Rafael Campos) is placed on trial for the murder of a white teenaged girl. Battling the Read More

A Star is Born

Actors: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tommy Noonan

Synopsis: The 1954 musical remake of A Star is Born could have been titled A Star is Reborn, in that it represented the triumphal return to the screen of Judy Garland after a four-year absence. The remake adheres closely to the plotline of the 1937 original: An alcoholic film star, on his last Read More

The Shanghai Story

Actors: Ruth Roman, Edmond O'Brien, Richard Jaeckel, Barry Kelley, Whit Bissell

Synopsis: Produced and directed by the prestigious Frank Lloyd, The Shanghai Story was promoted as a "class" production by the bread-and-butter firm of Republic Pictures. The film takes place in the eponymous far-eastern metropolis (courtesy of the Republic backlot), where Communist police chief Colonel Read More

The Violent Men

Actors: Glenn Ford, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Dianne Foster, Brian Keith

Synopsis: Rudolphe Maté directs the western The Violent Men, based on the novel Rough Company by Donald Hamilton. Edward G. Robinson plays Lee Wilkison, the bad-guy owner of Anchor Ranch with a plan to buy out all the smaller ranches to gain control of the valley. Barbara Stanwyck plays his wife Martha, who Read More

The Adventures of Superman: Lady in Black

Synopsis: Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen (Jack Larson) is lured to a sinister-looking house, where he is confronted by all manner of paranormal phenomena, seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious Lady in Black. But when Jimmy reports his experiences to fellow reporter Clark Kent (George Reeves), he is unable to Read More

Young at Heart

Actors: Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Gig Young, Ethel Barrymore, Dorothy Malone

Synopsis: Young at Heart is a soft-pedaled, musicalized remake of 1938's Four Daughters. Robert Keith takes over the Claude Rains role as paterfamilias to a family of musical prodigies, all girls: Doris Day, Dorothy Malone, Elizabeth Fraser (the fourth daughter was written out of proceedings, no great Read More

Drum Beat

Actors: Alan Ladd, Audrey Dalton, Marisa Pavan, Robert Keith, Rodopho (Rudy) Acosta

Synopsis: Though heavily advertised as Delmar Daves' Drum Beat, this film owed its existence to producer-star Alan Ladd. The star is cast as a veteran Indian fighter Johnny MacKay, who because of his close relationship with the Medoc tribe is sent out to negotiate a peace treaty. Once he has arrived in Read More

Johnny Guitar

Actors: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Cooper, Royal Dano, Paul Fix

Synopsis: One of the strangest westerns on record, Johnny Guitar has less in common with Zane Grey than it does with Sigmund Freud and Krafft-Ebbing. The title character, played by Sterling Hayden, is a guitar-strumming drifter who was once the lover of Arizona saloon-owner Vienna (Joan Crawford). Though Read More

The Outcast

Actors: John Derek, Joan Evans, Jim Davis, Catherine McLeod, Ben Cooper

Synopsis: Jet Cosgrave (John Derek) is The Outcast in this big-budget Republic western. Thanks to the chicanery of his crooked uncle Major Cosgrave (Jim Davis), Jet has been cheated out of his father's property and branded a pariah. He spends the rest of the film trying to regain his birthright and clear Read More

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Actors: Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey, Donald Woods

Synopsis: A longtime "dream" project of production designer-turned-director Eugene Lourie, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms sees the titular beast unleashed on the world via nuclear testing. Making its way from the Arctic Circle, the monster-a carnivorous "rhedosaurus"-begins advancing towards New York. It Read More

Wicked Woman

Actors: Beverly Michaels, Richard Egan, Percy Helton, Evelyn Scott, Robert Osterloh

Synopsis: Though Wicked Woman may look like one of those heavy-breathing Hugo Haas-directed melodramas, the film was in fact directed by screenwriter Russell Rouse. The title character, played by Beverly Michaels, is a trashy blonde who swivels into a small California town. Here she weaves her seductive web Read More

House of Wax

Actors: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Paul Picerni

Synopsis: This simplified (but lavish) remake of the 1933 melodrama The Mystery of the Wax Museum was the most financially successful 3-D production of the 1950s. In his first full-fledged "horror" role, Vincent Price plays Prof. Henry Jarrod, the owner of a wax museum, whose partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts Read More

Outlaw Territory

Actors: MacDonald Carey, Joanne Dru, John Ireland, Don Haggerty, Peter Ireland

Synopsis: Another entry in the 3D sweepstakes, Hannah Lee is all but forgotten today. That's too bad, because the film at least has historical interest, representing one of the few forays into directing by actor John Ireland, who co-stars in the film with his then-wife Joanne Dru. MacDonald Carey heads the Read More

The Woman They Almost Lynched

Actors: John Lund, Brian Donlevy, Audrey Totter, Joan Leslie, Ben Cooper

Synopsis: All suspense in The Woman They Almost Lynched would seem to be dissipated by title, but director Allan Dwan holds the viewers spellbound throughout. Part of the tension arises from fact that there are two leading female characters: Kate Quantrill (Audrey Totter), wife of infamous Confederate Read More

The Lone Hand

Actors: Joel McCrea, Barbara Hale, Alex Nicol, Charles Drake, Jimmy Hunt

Synopsis: Lone Hand benefits immensely from the genuine Colorado locations seen throughout. Zachary Hallock (Joel McCrea) and his son Joshua (Jimmy Hunt) set up farming in a frontier community plagued by outlaws. Vigilantes want to form a united front against the villains, but Hallock refuses to join, even Read More

The Big Leaguer

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Vera-Ellen, Jeff Richards, Richard Jaeckel, William Campbell

Synopsis: Big Leaguer was the inauspicious feature-film debut for director Robert Aldrich. Edward G. Robinson stars as the real-life Hans Lobert, the baseball scout in charge of the New York Giants' Florida training camp. Each year, a new crop of would-be ballplayers are given a two-week tryout under Read More

The Marksman

Synopsis: Considered by many the weakest of Wayne Morris' latter-day B-Westerns, The Marksman features the no longer svelte star as a U. S. Marshall chasing down the gang of rustlers that killed his colleague (I. Stanford Jolley). Masquerading as a harmless prospector, Morris uses a rifle complete with Read More

Trouble Along the Way

Actors: John Wayne, Donna Reed, Charles Coburn, Tom Tully, Sherry Jackson

Synopsis: "Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing." These words were spoken not by Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi but by Steve Williams, the fictional college athletics instructor played by John Wayne in Trouble Along the Way. Recently divorced, Williams has trouble finding a job due to his Read More

So Big

Actors: Jane Wyman, Sterling Hayden, Nancy Olson, Steve Forrest, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: This 1953 tear-jerker is the third film version of the Edna Ferber novel So Big. Stepping into the role previously essayed by Colleen Moore and Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman plays Selina, a girl of wealth who comes to a Dutch community outside Chicago as a schoolteacher. Here Selina falls in love Read More

Main Street to Broadway

Actors: Mary Murphy, Agnes Moorehead, Herb Shriner, Rosemary de Camp

Synopsis: A genuine novelty, MGM's Main Street to Broadway offers the modern viewer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the 1953 theatrical scene. The main plot concerns aspiring playwright Tony Monaco (Tom Burton), who pins his future on the possibility that Tallulah Bankhead will star in his first Read More

Star of Texas

Actors: Wayne Morris, Paul Fix, Frank Ferguson, Rick Vallin, Jack Larson

Synopsis: Wayne Morris plays a Texas ranger who goes undercover to trap a criminal gang. Posing as a wanted killer, Morris is able to move freely amongst the town riffraff, unencumbered by the innocent ingenue (mainly because there is no innocent ingenue). The marshal learns that the brains behind the gang Read More

Texas Bad Man

Actors: Wayne Morris, Frank Ferguson, Elaine Riley, Sheb Wooley, Denver Pyle

Synopsis: Wayne Morris' B-western series was the last of its kind to be produced in Hollywood. Texas Bad Man casts Morris as a sheriff who happens to be the son of inveterate thief Frank Ferguson. Knowing full well that Ferguson's gang intends to steal a shipment of gold, Morris must stay up nights trying Read More

The Blue Gardenia

Actors: Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr, Jeff Donnell

Synopsis: After learning that her boyfriend, a GI in Korea, has found someone else, Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) impulsively agrees to meet womanizer Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) for dinner. Norah allows herself to get drunk and accept Prebble's invitation to his apartment. When he tries to force himself on Read More

Powder River

Actors: Rory Calhoun, Corinne Calvet, Cameron Mitchell, Penny Edwards, Carl Betz

Synopsis: A climactic donnybrook between hero Allan Lane and ace Republic villain Roy Barcroft is the highlight of this otherwise routine B-Western effort directed by John Ford's nephew Philip Ford. The railroad is coming to El Dorado on the Powder River and a phony agent, Devereaux (Douglas Evans) Read More

Wagons West

Actors: Rod Cameron, Noah Beery, Jr., Peggie Castle, Michael Chapin, Henry Brandon

Synopsis: Rod Cameron's western vehicles for Monogram were always worth watching, even when Cameron was better than the scripts. In Wagons West, the star plays wagonmaster Jeff Curtis, who guides a group of Easterners to California in the 1870s. Trouble looms in the form of a Cheyenne tribe who is being Read More

Models, Inc.

Actors: Howard Duff, Coleen Gray, John Howard, Marjorie Reynolds, Louis Jean Heydt

Synopsis: The direction of Reginald LeBorg and the cinematography of Stanley Cortez go a long way to dissipate the essential tawdriness of Models, Inc. Colleen Gray stars as seductive Rusty Farraday, who maneuvers model-agency owner John Stafford (John Howard) into marriage. Once the matrimonial knot has Read More

Rodeo

Actors: Jane Nigh, John Archer, Wallace Ford, Gary Gray, Frances Rafferty

Synopsis: Hard-working leading lady Jane Nigh attains top billing in 1952's Rodeo. It's all about rough-and-ready gal Nancy Cartwright (Nigh) who takes over a travelling rodeo after the manager skips town with the payroll. Under her guidance, the show becomes a money-making proposition. Unfortunately, in Read More

The Marrying Kind

Actors: Judy Holliday, Aldo Ray, Madge Kennedy, Sheila Bond, John Alexander, Mickey Shaughnessy, Griff Barnett

Synopsis: A master blend of comedy, domestic drama and sudden tragedy, The Marrying Kind remains one of the best collaborations between star Judy Holliday, screenwriters Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, and director George Cukor. The film begins at the end, with married couple Florence and Chet Keefer (Judy Holliday Read More

Room for One More

Actors: Cary Grant, Betsy Drake, George Winslow, Iris Mann, Randy Stuart, Clifford Tatum, Jr., John Ridgely, Lurene Tuttle

Synopsis: Based on the autobiography by George and Anna Rose, Room for One More is a warm-hearted vehicle for husband-and-wife actors Cary Grant and Betsy Drake. Though she already has three children of her own, New Jersey housewife Anna Rose (Drake) adopts several kids born into less fortunate Read More

Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair

Actors: Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, James Best, Lori Nelson, Esther Dale

Synopsis: Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair was Number Four in Universal's immensely successful "B"-picture series. It is giving away nothing to reveal that Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride once more assume the title roles. The plot is motivated by Ma's desire to send daughter Rosie (Lori Nelson) to college. To Read More

Million Dollar Mermaid

Actors: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Donna Corcoran

Synopsis: Who else but Esther Williams could star in a romantic drama (with musical numbers) bearing a title like this? In Million Dollar Mermaid, Williams plays Annette Kellerman, a real-life Australian swimming star who took up the sport as a child to strengthen her legs, which were severely weakened by a Read More

Has Anybody Seen My Gal?

Actors: Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Charles Coburn, Lynn Bari

Synopsis: Douglas Sirk directed this frothy musical comedy set in the 1920s starring Charles Coburn as Samuel Fulton, an elderly man with a multi-million dollar fortune. With no family of his own to whom he can leave his money, Fulton is pondering what to do with his estate. Years ago, he was in love with a Read More

Rancho Notorious

Actors: Arthur Kennedy, Marlene Dietrich, Mel Ferrer, Lloyd Gough, Gloria Henry, William Frawley

Synopsis: The original title for Rancho Notorious was Chuck-a-Luck, which is also the title of the soundtrack ballad (written by Ken Darby) which unifies the plotline, à la High Noon. Frontiersman Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) wanders throughout the West in search of the man who robbed and murdered his Read More

The Winning Team

Actors: Doris Day, Ronald Reagan, Frank Lovejoy, Eve Miller, James Millican

Synopsis: Ronald Reagan delivers one of his best screen performances as baseball great Grover Cleveland Alexander in The Winning Team. The title refers to the mutually supportive relationship between Alexander and his loving wife Aimee (top-billed Doris Day); with this in mind, is it any surprise that the Read More

Stars and Stripes Forever

Actors: Clifton Webb, Debra Paget, Robert Wagner, Ruth Hussey, Finlay Currie

Synopsis: Stars and Stripes Forever is the highly fanciful filmed biography of "march king" John Philip Sousa. Clifton Webb does a fine job as Sousa, while Ruth Hussey is equally good in the less-demanding role of Sousa's wife. The problem faced by screenwriter Lamar Trotti (who adapted the film from Read More

It Grows on Trees

Actors: Irene Dunne, Dean Jagger, Richard Crenna, Joan Evans, Edith Meiser

Synopsis: Irene Dunne made her final film appearance in the frothy fantasy It Grows on Trees. Looking at least two decades younger than her 52 years, Dunne plays Polly Baxter, the ebullient wife of Phil Baxter (Dean Jagger). Miracle of miracles, two of the trees in Polly's backyard garden begin sprouting Read More

Bend of the River

Actors: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julie Adams, Rock Hudson, Lori Nelson

Synopsis: Another of the collaborations between actor James Stewart and director Anthony Mann, Bend of the River casts Stewart as a former outlaw, now working as trail guide for a group of Oregon-bound farmers. He is aided in this endeavor by Arthur Kennedy, a far-from-reformed horse thief. Upon arriving in Read More

Warpath

Actors: Edmond O'Brien, Charles Stevens, Dean Jagger, Forrest Tucker, Polly Bergen, Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: In this western, a cowboy rides out to avenge the death of his fiancee. Three outlaws are responsible for the murder. He finds the first and kills him. The second he finds has become a sergeant in the Seventh Cavalry. The third has become a storekeeper. Unfortunately, before he can kill them, they Read More

Santa Fe

Actors: Randolph Scott, Janis Carter, Jerome Courtland, Peter Thompson, John Archer

Synopsis: The creative team of producer Harry Joe Brown and star Randolph Scott turned out some of the best westerns of the 1950s, and Santa Fe is no exception. Set in the years following the Civil War, the film casts Scott as Britt Canfield, one of four ex-Confederate brothers who head West to carve out a Read More

Oklahoma Annie

Actors: Judy Canova, John Russell, Grant Withers, Roy Barcroft, Emmett Lynn

Synopsis: Judy Canova continues to bring home the box-office bacon for Republic Pictures in Oklahoma Annie. Judy plays Judy, Queen of the Cowgirls, a backwoods shopkeeper who falls in love with new sheriff Dan Fraser (John Russell). In order to stay in close proximity with the handsome lawkeeper, Judy Read More

The Barefoot Mailman

Actors: Robert Cummings, Terry Moore, Jerome Courtland, John Russell

Synopsis: To call The Barefoot Mailman episodic would be understating the issue: the film's story stops and starts so often that it appears to be three half-hour TV episodes strung together. No matter, since the premise is workable and the characters appealing. Though Robert Cummings is top-billed as Read More

Elopement

Actors: Clifton Webb, Anne Francis, Charles Bickford, William Lundigan, Reginald Gardiner

Synopsis: In this romance, an industrial designer is bitterly disappointed when he discovers that upon graduation his daughter decides to elope with her psychology professor rather than pursue a career. The professor's family is also not pleased by the union. Both families, who despise each other, try to Read More

The People Against O'Hara

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien, Diana Lynn, John Hodiak, Eduardo Ciannelli

Synopsis: Fish-market worker Johnny O'Hara (James Arness) is named as a suspect when his boss -- with whom he had a dispute the previous day -- is shot to death in an apparent robbery. When he's arrested, his family appeals to their old friend James Curtayne (Spencer Tracy), who was once a renowned criminal Read More

Thunder in God's Country

Actors: Rex Allen, Mary Ellen Kay, Buddy Ebsen, Ian MacDonald, Paul Harvey

Synopsis: Republic singing cowboy Rex Allen is once again teamed with bucolic Buddy Ebsen in Thunder in God's Country. This contemporary western casts Ebsen and Harry Lauter as WW II pals who meet for a reunion in a corruption-ridden community. When a murder occurs, the former servicemen immediately fall Read More

Boots Malone

Actors: William Holden, John Stewart, Stanley Clements, Basil Ruysdael, Carl Benton Reid

Synopsis: William Holden plays Boots Malone, a dishonest--and impoverished--jockey's agent. Malone sees a chance to crack the big time through the talents of young jockey John Stewart. Stewart's wealthy mother wants to remove the boy from the rarefied world of the race track, but it is Malone himself who Read More

The Model and the Marriage Broker

Actors: Jeanne Crain, Scott Brady, Thelma Ritter, Zero Mostel, Michael O'Shea

Synopsis: The model (Jeanne Crain) is stuck in an unhappy relationship with a married man. The marriage broker (Thelma Ritter) doesn't like this and tries to match the model with a lonely x-ray technician (Scott Brady). The model is so grateful that she tries to find an eligible bachelor for the broker. The Read More

On Dangerous Ground

Actors: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross

Synopsis: Robert Ryan plays Jim Wilson, a tough police detective embittered by years of dealing with low-life urban scum, in Nicholas Ray's moving film noir. After severely beating several suspects, Jim is assigned to a case far from the city to find the killer of a young girl. Joining the manhunt, in Read More

The West Point Story

Actors: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson

Synopsis: James Cagney delivers a vibrant performance as a down-on-his-luck Broadway musical director in The West Point Story, featuring songs by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. Cagney plays out-of-work director Elwin "Bix" Bixby, who reluctantly accepts a job from producer Harry Eberhart (Roland Winters) to Read More

Right Cross

Actors: June Allyson, Dick Powell, Ricardo Montalban, Lionel Barrymore, Teresa Celli

Synopsis: Right Cross stars Dick Powell as cynical sportswriter Rick Gavery and Powell's wife June Allyson as boxing manager Pat O'Malley. Subbing for her incapacitated father (Lionel Barrymore), Pat grooms prizefighter Johnny Monterez (Ricardo Montalban) for the championship. Johnny holds a grudge against Read More

Under Mexicali Stars

Actors: Rex Allen, Dorothy Patrick, Roy Barcroft, Buddy Ebsen, Percy Helton

Synopsis: Under Mexicali Stars spotlights Republic's newest singing cowboy, Rex Allen. Our hero plays a U.S. treasury agent, hot on the trail of gold smugglers. It's a plot as old as the movies itself, but Allen was a fresh new personality in 1950, thus the film takes on some of his freshness. Besides, the 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

Frenchie

Actors: Joel McCrea, Shelley Winters, Paul Kelly, Elsa Lanchester, Marie Windsor

Synopsis: Though the title role of Frenchie goes to Shelley Winters, top billing in this period actioner is bestowed upon Joel McCrea as sheriff Tom Banning. Hoping to find her father's murderers, New Orleans gambling-house proprietress Frenchie Fontaine (Shelley Winters) sets up shop in the Wild West. With Read More

The Good Humor Man

Actors: Jack Carson, Lola Albright, Jean Wallace, George Reeves, Gerald Perreau-Saissine

Synopsis: In the tradition of Red Skelton's The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man comes The Good Humor Man, with Jack Carson subbing for Skelton this time out. Carson plays Biff Jones, who when not peddling Good Humor ice cream carries on a romance with perky Margie Bellew (Lola Albright). Through a Read More

He's a Cockeyed Wonder

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Terry Moore, William Demarest, Charles Arnt, Ross Ford

Synopsis: He's a Cockeyed Wonder stars Mickey Rooney as the title character. Try as he might, Freddy Frisby (Rooney) can't succeed at anything. Things take an upward turn when Freddy inherits the estate of his uncle, a famed magician. Armed with all sorts of legerdemain, Freddy begins giving shows at local Read More

Louisa

Actors: Spring Byington, Ronald Reagan, Charles Coburn, Edmund Gwenn, Ruth Hussey

Synopsis: Never mind the top-billed Ronald W. Reagan; the real stars of Louisa are sprightly seniors Charles Coburn, Spring Byington and Edmund Gwenn. Spring plays Reagan's widowed mother, who is outwardly satisfied with her lot but inwardly lonely. Enter Coburn and Gwenn, who vie for Spring's attentions. Read More

The Furies

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland

Synopsis: Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston give standout performances in this dark, psychological western, which Martin Scorsese has compared to the work of Dostoevsky. T.C. Jeffords (Huston) is a cunning and highly successful ranch owner who has announced his engagement to a wealthy socialite, Flo Read More

The Lawless

Actors: MacDonald Carey, Gail Russell, Lalo Rios, John Hoyt, Johnny Sands, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: The Lawless was director Joseph Losey's second feature-length film. The story concerns a group of Mexican-American migrant workers who are subjected to all sorts of abuse and intolerance by their California bosses. A violent clash between whites and Latinos at a dance results in a torrent of Read More

Dynamite

Actors: William Gargan, Virginia Welles, Richard Crane, Irving Bacon, Mary Newton

Synopsis: Dynamite is a 1949 effort from the Pine-Thomas production mill. William Gargan and Richard Crane star as Gunner and Johnny, troubleshooters for dynamite contractor Hard Rock Mason Frank Ferguson. Though forced to work as a team on the job, Gunner and Johnny fall out when romance enters the picture Read More

The Barkleys of Broadway

Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Oscar Levant, Billie Burke, Gale Robbins

Synopsis: The Barkleys of Broadway became Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "reunion" picture purely by accident. Originally conceived as a follow-up to the successful Astaire-Judy Garland vehicle Easter Parade, Barkleys was to have starred Fred and Judy as a successful musical comedy team that breaks up when Read More

State Department File 649

Actors: Virginia Bruce, William Lundigan, Jonathan Hale, Frank Ferguson, Richard Loo

Synopsis: Those scurrilous Chinese communists are up to their old tricks in the 1949 flagwaver State Department - File 649. William Lundigan plays Ken, an operative of the U.S. Foreign Service stationed in North China. Ken is one of several people trapped in a remote village by evil warlord Yun Usu (Richard Loo Read More

Caught

Actors: James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan, Ruth Brady, Curt Bois

Synopsis: It doesn't take a nuclear scientist to figure out that Smith Ohrig, the character played by Robert Ryan in Caught, is a thinly disguised takeoff of Howard Hughes. But whereas Howard Hughes was merely paranoid and eccentric, Smith Ohrig is an all-out psycho. Impulsively marrying ambitious model Read More

They Live by Night

Actors: Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig

Synopsis: "This boy...and this girl...were never properly introduced to the world we live in." With this superimposed opening title, director Nicholas Ray inaugurates his first feature, They Live by Night. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play a "Bonnie and Clyde"-type fugitive couple, who in trying to Read More

Follow Me Quietly

Actors: William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, Charles D. Brown

Synopsis: Lieutenant Harry Grant (William Lundigan) and Sgt. Art Collins (Jeff Corey) have been handed the unenviable assignment of tracking down "The Judge," a mysterious serial murderer responsible for seven deaths over the past few months. The police have plenty of clues and forensic evidence, but no Read More

Roseanna McCoy

Actors: Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Charles Bickford, Raymond Massey, Richard Basehart

Synopsis: The saga of the Hatfield-and-McCoy feud is romanticized in Samuel Goldwyn's Roseanna McCoy. Newcomer Joan Evans stars as the title character, whose elopement with Johnse Hatfield (Farley Granger) serves to further fuel the flames of the deadly mountain feud. The opposing patriarches, Devil Anse Read More

Free for All

Actors: Robert Cummings, Percy Kilbride, Ann Blyth, Ray Collins, Donald Woods

Synopsis: A pleasant comedy with serious undertones, Free for All stars Robert Cummings as erstwhile inventor Christopher Parker. Hoping to secure a patent on his latest invention--a formula that turns water into gasoline--Parker is flummoxed by yards and yards of governmental and bureaucratic red tape. He Read More

Slightly French

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Don Ameche, Janis Carter, Willard Parker, Adele Jergens

Synopsis: Director Douglas Sirk's love of cinematic esoterica was kept in check in the musical comedy Slightly French. Dorothy Lamour stars as Mary O'Leary, a carnival entertainer who's discovered by enterprising director John Gayle (Don Ameche). The plot dictates that Gayle must pass off Mary as an elegant Read More

Dancing in the Dark

Actors: William Powell, Mark Stevens, Betsy Drake, Adolphe Menjou, Randy Stuart

Synopsis: This musical comedy stars William Powell as Emery Slade, who was once a major film star but lately isn't getting much work. Arrogantly determined to climb back to the top, Slade convinces studio chief Melville Crossman (Adolphe Menjou) to give him the male lead in the film version of a Broadway Read More

Walk a Crooked Mile

Actors: Louis Hayward, Dennis O'Keefe, Louise Allbritton, Raymond Burr, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Filmed almost entirely on location, Walk a Crooked Mile was Columbia Pictures' "answer" to 20th Century-Fox's late-1940s cycle of documentary-style crime dramas. FBI agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Scotland Yard operative Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) team up to investigate a security leak Read More

The Walls of Jericho

Actors: Art Baker, Griff Barnett, Anne Baxter, Helen Brown, Linda Darnell

Synopsis: The year is 1908 and the setting Jericho, Kansas, a veritable cesspool of sin and vice. Dave Connors is a politically ambitious lawyer married to Belle, the town lush, and is in love with beautiful colleague Julia Norman. Matters are worsened when Algeria Wedge, his best friend's wife, makes a Read More

Fighting Father Dunne

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Griff Barnett, Gene Collins, Billy Cummings, Myrna Dell, Ruth Donnelly, Darryl Hickman

Synopsis: "Boys Town" goes to turn-of-the-century St. Louis in this moving drama that chronicles the love of a determined priest struggling to turn around the lives of a street-wise gang of newsboys living at his homeless shelter. The good father has little money and must use his wits and ability to Read More

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange

Synopsis: It seems that Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), in league with a beautiful but diabolical lady scientist (Lenore Aubert), needs a "simple, pliable" brain with which to reactivate Frankenstein's creature (Glenn Strange). The "ideal" brain belongs to the hapless Lou Costello, whom the lady doctor woos to Read More

Fort Apache

Actors: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, Shirley Temple, John Agar, Pedro Armendáriz, Dick Foran

Synopsis: The first of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", Fort Apache stars John Wayne as captain Kirby York and Henry Fonda as Custer clone Lt. Col. Owen Thursday. Resentful of his loss in rank and transfer to the West after serving gallantly in the Civil War, the vainglorious Thursday insists upon imposing Read More

Rachel and the Stranger

Actors: Loretta Young, William Holden, Robert Mitchum, Gary Gray, Tom Tully

Synopsis: This late-40s western features Robert Mitchum as an Indian scout who happens upon an unlikely family cabined up in the Great Northwest. They're unlikely because the widower settler (William Holden) has "purchased" a wife (Loretta Young as wife Rachel) to help raise his son and do the female chores Read More

The Miracle of the Bells

Actors: Philip Ahn, Lee J. Cobb, Fred MacMurray, Charles Meredith, Veronika Pataky

Synopsis: Casting Frank Sinatra as a Pennsylvania priest is but one of the many miscalculations made by the producers of Miracle of the Bells. Adapted by Ben Hecht and Quentin Reynolds from the best-selling novel by Russell Janney, the story revolves around an aspiring actress named Olga Treskovna (Alida Valli Read More

The Circle

Actors: David Alexander, Sam Bernard, Peter Brocco, Rudolph Cameron, Robert Cherry

Synopsis: The positive public response to such productions as Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement led to a mini-cycle of postwar anti-prejudice films. One of these was The Vicious Circle, based on a true incident which had previously been dramatized in G. W. Pabst's The Trial. In the late-19th century, an Read More

The Hunted

Actors: Preston S. Foster, Belita, Pierre Watkin, Edna Holland, Russell Hicks

Synopsis: In this detective story, a private eye must send his fiancee to prison as he truly believes that she was involved in a bank robbery. Unfortunately, she is innocent. Still she serves her time. Upon her release someone frames her for murder. The detective is in quite a quandary until the real Read More

The Inside Story

Actors: Florence Bates, Hobart Cavanaugh, Tom Fadden, Frank Ferguson, William Haade

Synopsis: Few major directors made "small" films with such frequency and expertise than the ubiquitous Allan Dwan. Set in 1933, Dwan's The Inside Story tells the tale of a small Vermont town forced to tighten its belt during the Depression. When a wealthy visitor from New York places $1000 in the town's Read More

That Wonderful Urge

Actors: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, Reginald Gardiner, Gene Lockhart, Arleen Whelan, Lucile Watson

Synopsis: That Wonderful Urge is the second remake of Love is News (37), and is much closer to the original than the first remake (the Betty Grable musical Sweet Rosie O'Grady). Tyrone Power repeats his role from the 1937 film as a handsome reporter who targets a flighty heiress (Gene Tierney, taking over Read More

The Farmer's Daughter

Actors: Loretta Young, Keith Andes, James Arness, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore, Art Baker, Charles Bickford, Harry Davenport, Lex Barker

Synopsis: When Loretta Young stepped up to accept her Academy Award for The Farmer's Daughter, the ever-youthful leading lady, who'd been in films since 1928, sighed "At long last!" Young is cast as Katie Holstrum, an independently-minded Swedish girl who leaves her family's Minnesota farm to take a Read More

The Perils of Pauline

Actors: Betty Hutton, John Lund, Constance Collier, William Demarest, Billy De Wolfe

Synopsis: The third of four films bearing the title of The Perils of Pauline, this musical biopic purports to tell the life story of famed silent serial queen Pearl White. Right at the beginning, however, an introductory title informs the audience that what follows is merely "suggested" by incidents in White Read More

T-Men

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Mary Meade, Charles McGraw, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, June Lockhart

Synopsis: The moodily evocative docudrama T-Men stars Dennis O'Keefe as Dennis O'Brien, a treasury agent determined to bring a counterfeiting ring to justice. O'Brien and his partner Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder) go undercover to gain the confidence of the ruthless Detroit mob responsible for the phony money. Read More

They Won't Believe Me

Actors: Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Rita Johnson, Tom Powers, George Tyne

Synopsis: Irving Pichel's They Won't Believe Me is the flashback unfolding of Larry Ballentine's (Robert Young) witness-stand testimony in his trial for the murder of girlfriend Verna Carlson (Susan Hayward). Larry is the first to admit he's a parasitic heel, cheating on his rich wife Gretta (Rita Johnson) Read More

The Trouble with Women

Actors: Ray Milland, Teresa Wright, Rose Hobart, Charles Smith

Synopsis: In this comedy, a scatter-brained professor nearly starts a riot when he writes a book claiming that women like to be treated roughly. A paper publishes snippets from the book and later the professor, feeling he was misquoted, begins suing for libel. The paper then sends out a female reporter to Read More

Welcome Stranger

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

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

Blaze of Noon

Actors: Anne Baxter, William Holden, Sonny Tufts, William Bendix, Sterling Hayden

Synopsis: In this aerial melodrama, four brothers working as stunt pilots for a flying circus leave their jobs to become mail pilots. Because their job requires that they constantly travel, they are advised to not settle down with wives and kids. Still, one pilot falls in love and marries. Unfortunately Read More

Killer at Large

Actors: Robert Lowery, Anabel Shaw, Charles Evans, Frank Ferguson, George Lynn

Synopsis: Robert Lowery stars as Paul Kimberly, a former newspaperman who takes on a particularly noxious form of corruption. The villains are crooked housing administrators who prey upon returning GIs and their families. Just when it appears that one of the administrators is going to tell all to Kimberly Read More

Variety Girl

Actors: Eric Alden, Mary Hatcher, William Bendix, Olga San Juan, MacDonald Carey, DeForest Kelley, William Demarest, Joan Caulfield, Stanley Clements, Frank Faylen

Synopsis: This story of two young hopefuls who come to Hollywood is merely a thin device to feature almost every star working for Paramount Studios in 1947. Mary Hatcher plays Catherine Brown, a woman of humble origins who arrives in Hollywood, where she meets another wanna-be movie star, Amber La Vonne Read More

The Beginning or the End

Actors: Warner Anderson, Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Art Baker, Trevor Bardette, Tom Drake, Audrey Totter, James Bush, Joseph Calleia, Hume Cronyn

Synopsis: Filmed not long after the actual events, The Beginning or the End is a sober, intelligent account of the development and deployment of the Atom Bomb. Step by step, the film details the progress of The Manhattan Project, from its inception in the early stages of the war through the dawn of the Read More

The Perfect Marriage

Actors: Loretta Young, David Niven, Eddie Albert, Charlie Ruggles, Virginia Field

Synopsis: If the Perfect Marriage in this romantic comedy were truly perfect, there wouldn't be any story, would there? Outwardly an ideal couple, Maggie and Dale Williams (Loretta Young, David Niven) have grown tired of one another after 10 years. Petty squabbles lead to major battles, exacerbated by the Read More

Secrets of a Sorority Girl

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a sorority girl is photographed hanging around with known criminals in illicit gambling dens. The resulting pictures are then used to blackmail her father, a district attorney. Later, the crooks try to make the girl believe that she ran over and killed someone with her car. Read More

Cross My Heart

Actors: Betty Hutton, Sonny Tufts, Ruth Donnelly, Al Bridge, Iris Adrian

Synopsis: True Confession was one of the unfunniest of the "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, and its musical remake, Cross My Heart, isn't much of an improvement. Betty Hutton steps into the old Carole Lombard role as Peggy, a compulsive liar who'll do anything to help her attorney fiance Oliver Clarke (Sonny Tufts Read More

O.S.S.

Actors: Alan Ladd, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Patric Knowles, Richard Benedict, Richard Webb

Synopsis: Set during WWII, this taut and suspenseful espionage outing chronicles the courage of a brand-new cadre of specially trained American O.S.S. agents who parachute into France to destroy the vital Corbett Mallon tunnel to stop the German invaders from shipping supplies to their troops. One of the Read More

The Man I Love

Actors: Ida Lupino, Robert Alda, Andrea King, Martha Vickers, Bruce Bennett

Synopsis: Ida "Don't mess with me" Lupino takes a job as a singer in Robert Alda's seedy Santa Monica nitery. Lupino ignores Alda's advances to cultivate a romance with pianist Bruce Bennett. Alda uses his connections with the Mob to break up the relationship--and also, hopefully, to break up Bennett into Read More

The Searching Wind

Actors: Robert Young, Sylvia Sidney, Ann Richards, Dudley Digges, Douglas Dick, Albert Basserman

Synopsis: The troublesome years "between the wars" provide the backdrop for the romantic drama The Searching Wind. Adapted by Lillian Hellman from her own stage play, the film stars Robert Young as Alex Hazen, an idealistic but incredibly naïve US ambassador who fails to heed the warning signals when Read More

Night and Day

Actors: John Alvin, Cary Grant, Alexis Smith, Eve Arden, Herman Bing, Monty Woolley, Jane Wyman, Paul Cavanagh, Tom D'Andrea, Dorothy Malone

Synopsis: Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the Porter biopic Night and Day was Read More

Swell Guy

Actors: Sonny Tufts, Ann Blyth, Ruth Warrick, William Gargan, Thomas Gomez, John Litel, Millard Mitchell

Synopsis: One of many films of the late 1940s examining the impact of WWII on post-war domestic life in the U.S., The Swell Guy is the story of an unprincipled war correspondent, Jim Duncan (Sonny Tufts). Jim has returned to his hometown following the war and tries to milk his wartime status and pose as a Read More

Blonde for a Day

Actors: Hugh Beaumont, Kathryn Adams, Richard Fraser

Synopsis: Number Three in PRC's "Michael Shayne" B-series was the fair-to-middling Blonde for a Day. Hugh Beaumont stars as Shayne, while his real-life wife Kathryn Adams (no, he wasn't married to Barbara Billingsley) costars as his secretary Phyllis. This time, Shayne gets involved with police reporter Read More

California

Actors: Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Fitzgerald, George Coulouris, Albert Dekker

Synopsis: California began life as a remake of Paramount's silent western epic The Covered Wagon, but by the time it emerged on-screen in 1946, the project had metamorphosed into a standard Technicolor frontier "spectacular", concentrating more on star power than anything else. Set during the 1848 mass Read More

Little Miss Big

Actors: Beverly Simmons, Fay Holden, Frank McHugh, Dorothy Morris

Synopsis: In this comedy, a spoiled, temperamental and filthy rich aunt is committed to an asylum by her nephew after he learns that she has willed her fortune to her dog. Fortunately, the aunt escapes and is sheltered by the family of a poor barber. It is the barber's daughter that soothes the savage Read More

If I'm Lucky

Actors: Perry Como, Harry James, Carmen Miranda, Phil Silvers

Synopsis: The second of Perry Como's two starring vehicles for 20th Century-Fox, If I'm Lucky is an easygoing remake of 1937's Thanks a Million. Como plays the old Dick Powell role as Allan Clark, an entertainer who is maneuvered into politics by conniving manager Wally (Phil Silvers, in the role originated Read More

Lady Chaser

Synopsis: In this humorous murder mystery, a woman is wrongfully accused of poisoning her uncle when he died after she gave the ailing fellow a pill that she believed was aspirin. To prove her innocence, the woman must find the strange lady that gave her the pill. A crazy chase ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Read More

The Dolly Sisters

Actors: Betty Grable, John Payne, June Haver, S.Z. Sakall, Reginald Gardiner

Synopsis: The Dolly Sisters is the heavily Hollywoodized biopic of Jennie and Rosie Dolly, Hungarian-born entertainers who took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s. Betty Grable plays Jennie and June Haver plays Rosie; their uncle is the inevitable "funny foreigner" S.Z. Sakall, who manages their career Read More

Thrill of a Romance

Actors: Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Frances Gifford, Henry Travers, Spring Byington

Synopsis: This aquatic musical is set at a mountain resort in the beautiful Sierra Nevadas where a heroic Army Air Corpsman has come for a vacation. There he falls in love with the lovely swimming instructor, who is unfortunately newly married to a rather stodgy businessman. The mayhem begins when her new Read More

Truck Busters

Actors: Richard Travis, Virginia Christine, Ruth Ford, Richard Fraser

Synopsis: Action specialist B. Reeves Eason socked Truck Busters through its breathless 58 minutes. Richard Travis plays independent trucker Casey Dorgan, who organizes his fellow drivers against the crooked machinations of crooked trucking executive Bonelli (Don Costello). Things get personal when Casey's Read More

Pilot No. 5

Actors: Franchot Tone, Marsha Hunt, Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Alan Baxter

Synopsis: Pilot No. 5 is an oddly liberal-minded film to come from conservative old MGM. Franchot Tone plays an army pilot stationed in Java who volunteers for a suicide mission. He is chosen from five possible Allied candidates, hence the title. We learn via flashback just why Tone holds his life at so low Read More

Boss of Big Town

Actors: John Litel, Florence Rice, H.B. Warner, Jean Brooks, John Miljan

Synopsis: Quality was seldom a consideration in the low-budget films of PRC Studios; still, the company was a welcome harbor for character actors who aspired to occasional leading roles. In Boss of Big Town, veteran supporting player John Litel is top-billed as crusading city market official Michael Lynn. Read More

Mission to Moscow

Actors: Walter Huston, Ann Harding, Oscar Homolka, Gene Lockhart, George Tobias, Eleanor Parker

Synopsis: More so than most wartime films, Mission to Moscow must be viewed within the context of its times. Requested by President Roosevelt to make a film supportive of America's Russian allies, Warner Bros. turned to the memoirs of Ambassador Joseph H. Davies, who spent several years prior to WWII in the Read More

My Gal Sal

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, John Sutton, Phil Silvers, James Gleason

Synopsis: A pregnant Alice Faye was forced to bow out of this colorful Fox musical, which instead went to Rita Hayworth, whom the studio borrowed from Columbia. Hayworth plays the highly fictitious Sally Elliott of the title, a musical star teaming up with Indiana boy Paul Dresser (Victor Mature), a runaway Read More

Ten Gentlemen from West Point

Actors: George Montgomery, Maureen O'Hara, John Sutton, Laird Cregar, Victor Francen

Synopsis: This historical drama tells the story of the first class to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In the early 19th Century, Congress appropriated the money to build the school, but opponents who believed it to be an illegitimate expansion of the powers of the federal government Read More

Spy Ship

Actors: Craig Stevens, Irene Manning, Maris Wrixon, Peter Whitney

Synopsis: It takes a while for the viewer to catch on, but the 1942 quickie Spy Ship is a remake of the 1934 crime melodrama Fog Over Frisco. The main difference is that the film's principal murder victim, the sister of the heroine, is transformed from a dizzy socialite to an out-and-out villainess. The Read More

This Gun for Hire

Actors: Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Alan Ladd, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: Though billed fourth in This Gun For Hire, Alan Ladd was catapulted to stardom in the role of Phillip Raven, a ruthless professional killer with a long-suppressed streak of decency. After successfully pulling off his latest murder, Raven reports to his boss, effeminate fifth columnist Willard Read More

City of Silent Men

Actors: Frank Albertson, June Lang, Jan Wiley, Richard Clarke, William Gould

Synopsis: City of Silent Men comes so close to being a "model" "B" picture that it's a downright shame it just misses the mark. The plot revolves around a group of ex-convicts who try to start life anew by relocating in a small town under assumed names. The mayor of the town welcomes the former cons with Read More

The Spirit of Stanford

Actors: Frankie Albert, Marguerite Chapman, Matt Willis, Shirley Patterson, Kay Harris

Synopsis: Like Harmon of Michigan and Smith of Minnesota, Columbia's Spirit of Stanford is built around the talents of a real-life college football star, in this instance all-American quarterback Frankie Albert. The story is cut from a familiar cloth, with Albert's arrogance getting him into all sorts of Read More

Broadway

Actors: George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Broderick Crawford, Janet Blair, Anne Gwynne, Marjorie Rambeau

Synopsis: In this musical, which manages to look back with nostalgia upon prohibition and the depression (no small accomplishment), George Raft plays George, a hoofer looking back on his glory days. His memories are triggered when The Paradise Club, a nightspot where he used to work, is about to be turned Read More

Reap the Wild Wind

Actors: Ray Milland, John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Raymond Massey, Robert Preston

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolor historical spectacle Reap the Wild Wind was to have starred Gary Cooper, but Cooper's prior commitment to Goldwyn's Pride of the Yankees compelled DeMille to recast the leading role with John Wayne. The film, set in the mid-19th century, centers around Key West Read More

The Body Disappears

Actors: Jeffrey Lynn, Jane Wyman, Edward Everett Horton, Sidney Bracey

Synopsis: Possibly inspired by Universal's The Invisible Woman, Warner Bros.' The Body Disappears is an agreeably daffy comedy with science-fiction undertones. Passing out from overindulgence during his engagement party, young millionaire Peter De Haven is placed on a slab in a college dissecting room by Read More

You'll Never Get Rich

Actors: Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Robert Benchley, John Hubbard, Osa Massen

Synopsis: You'll Never Get Rich was the first of two films made by Fred Astaire at Columbia, and also the first in which he was paired with his favorite female dancing partner--not Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, but Rita Hayworth. Fred and Rita play a team of Broadway dancers whose partnership is abruptly Read More

Life Begins for Andy Hardy

Actors: Lewis Stone, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Fay Holden, Ann Rutherford

Synopsis: Number ten in MGM's heart-warming (and immensely profitable) "Andy Hardy" series was the 1941 entry Life Begins for Andy Hardy. Upon his graduation from high school, Andy (Mickey Rooney) decides to seek his fortune in New York City without benefit of a college education, much to the consternation Read More

They Died With Their Boots On

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

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

Father Is a Prince

Actors: Nana Bryant, Grant Mitchell, John Litel, George Reeves, Jan Clayton

Synopsis: Father is a Prince is a scaled-down remake of the 1934 comedy-drama Big Hearted Herbert, itself based on a play by Sophie Kerr Underwood. Grant Mitchell plays tyrannical paterfamilias Mr. Bower, who runs his home like he runs his carpet-sweeper factory: pinching pennies, turning off lights, and Read More

Gambling on the High Seas

Actors: Wayne Morris, Jane Wyman, Gilbert Roland, John Litel, Roger Pryor

Synopsis: This 55-minute remake of the 75-minute Warner Bros. crime drama Special Agent retains a surprising amount of the original's plotline. Wayne Morris plays crusading journalist Jim Carter, who hopes to get the goods on crime boss Greg Morella (Gilbert Roland), the owner of a posh gambling ship Read More