Franklin PangbornFilmography

The Story of Mankind

Actors: Ronald Colman, Hedy Lamarr, Vincent Price, Groucho Marx, Agnes Moorehead, Harpo Marx, Peter Lorre, Dennis Hopper, Chico Marx

Synopsis: Future "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen produced this curious but inarguably fascinating adaptation of Henrik Willem Van Loon's best- selling historical volume. A Celestial Tribunal has been convened to decide the fate of the Earth after the invention of nuclear weapons, with The Devil (Vincent Price Read More

Oh, Men! Oh, Women!

Actors: Franklin Pangborn, Dan Dailey, Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Barbara Rush, Tony Randall

Synopsis: Edward Chodorov's stage farce Oh, Men! Oh, Women! is somewhat unnecessarily overburdened by star names in this 1957 film version. Dan Dailey plays psychiatrist Arthur Turner, who is somewhat put out when he discovers that one of his patients is the ex-boyfriend of his supposedly "normal" fiancée Read More

My Dream Is Yours

Actors: Doris Day, Jack Carson, Lee Bowman, Adolphe Menjou, Eve Arden

Synopsis: My Dream Is Yours is a Technicolor remake of the jaunty 1934 Warner Bros. musical Twenty Million Sweethearts. But there's a significant difference here: whereas in the earlier film singing-waiter Dick Powell was turned into a crooning idol, in the remake it is Doris Day who is catapulted to Read More

Down Memory Lane

Actors: Steve Allen, Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Donald Novis, Gloria Swanson, Mabel Normand

Synopsis: Down Memory Lane is a pastiche film comprised of old comedy footage from the Mack Sennett studios. The vintage clips are tied together by a thin continuity wherein TV host Steve Allen hopes to boost his ratings by screening excerpts from Sennett's silent and talkie two-reel comedies. Among the Read More

Romance on the High Seas

Actors: Doris Day, Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore, Oscar Levant

Synopsis: This cute film is Doris Day's film debut and in it she plays Georgia Garrett, a substitute traveller on an ocean cruise. Her friend Elvira Kent (Janis Paige) had scheduled the cruise but at the last minute cancels when she suspects that her husband is cheating on her and she decides to stay at Read More

Calendar Girl

Actors: Charles Arnt, Jane Frazee, James Ellison, William Marshall, Gail Patrick, Kenny Baker, Janet Martin, Victor McLaglen

Synopsis: In this Republic musical, all heck breaks loose when the girlfriend of an aspiring composer becomes a model for the starving artist who lives next door. The story takes place at the turn of the 19th century and is set in Miss Rich's boardinghouse, the temporary home of many young artists and Read More

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock

Actors: Al Bridge, Harold Lloyd, Georgia Caine, Frances Ramsden, Raymond Walburn, Franklin Pangborn, Jimmy Conlin, Margaret Hamilton, Edgar Kennedy

Synopsis: Absent from films since 1938 (except as producer of a brace of RKO Radio features), silent-screen comedy favorite Harold Lloyd returned before the cameras in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. The project began as a labor of love between Lloyd and the brilliant, innovative producer/writer/director Preston Sturges Read More

I'll Be Yours

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Tom Drake, William Bendix, Adolphe Menjou, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, Louise Ginglebusher (Deanna Durbin) is a girl from a small town who comes top New York City with dreams of making it in show business. She gets her foot in the door in a roundabout way when she gets a job as an usherette at a prestigious movie palace run by tycoon J. Conrad Read More

Addio Mimi!

Actors: Marta Eggerth, Jan Kiepura, Janis Carter, Douglas Dumbrille, Marc Platt

Synopsis: The Italian-American Her Wonderful Lie is based on the novel Latin Quarter by Murger. This literary work is better known as the source for the Puccini opera La Boheme, and indeed, Her Wonderful Life is a modernized adaptation of the Puccini classic, with a few songs from other operas thrown in for Read More

Lover Come Back

Actors: George Brent, Lucille Ball, Vera Zorina, Charles Winninger, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Lucille Ball stars as the wife of a war correspondent, anxiously awaiting her husband's return. Ball is convinced that hubby (George Brent) is looking forward to feminine companionship after four long years at the front. Imagine her surprise when it looks as though her husband wasn't quite as Read More

Two Guys from Milwaukee

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Joan Leslie, Janis Paige, S.Z. Sakall

Synopsis: If Paramount could rake in the bucks by teaming singer Bing Crosby and comedian Bob Hope in a series of Road pictures, then Warner Bros. could do the same. Lacking a Crosby or Hope, Warners paired Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson (who like Crosby and Hope were good buddies off-screen) and came up Read More

You Came Along

Actors: Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Charles Drake, Julie Bishop

Synopsis: "You can live a long time in three days -- sometimes when you're in a tight spot, you can live a year in ten seconds." US Army Air Force Major Bob Collins (Robert Cummings), Captain "Shakespeare" Anders (Don Defore), and Lt. "Handsome" Janoshek (Charles Drake) are three happy-go-lucky combat Read More

The Horn Blows at Midnight

Actors: Jack Benny, Alexis Smith, Guy Kibbee, Allyn Joslyn, Margaret Dumont, Dolores Moran, Reginald Gardiner

Synopsis: Though Jack Benny made a cottage industry out of joking about the purported rottenness of his 1945 vehicle Horn Blows at Midnght, the film is in fact a delightful comedy-fantasy-certainly not Benny's best film, but far from his worst. While dozing off during a radio broadcast, studio musician Read More

Tell It to a Star

Actors: Ruth Terry, Robert Livingston, Alan Mowbray, Franklin Pangborn, Isabel Randolph

Synopsis: In this musical, a humble cigarette girl dreams of auditioning for the handsome bandleader at the nightclub. Her many attempts keep failing until her uncle appears. To help her, he impersonates a colonel and uses his "influence" to get her singing with the band. Eventually their ruse is revealed Read More

Hollywood and Vine

Actors: James Ellison, Wanda McKay, June Clyde, Ralph Morgan, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Hollywood and Vine is set in a drugstore located at the intersection of the title. James Ellison plays a successful screenwriter who likes to do his research first-hand. Assigned to write a film about Hollywood hopefuls, Ellison gets a job as a drugstore soda jerk. Wanda McKay plays Daisy, a Read More

See My Lawyer

Actors: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Alan Curtis, Grace McDonald, Noah Beery, Jr.

Synopsis: Bearing little relation to the hit Broadway play on which it was based, See My Lawyer was the last and least of Olsen and Johnson's starring vehicles for Universal. The zany Hellzapoppin stars play a couple of nightclub entertainers who want to break their contract with proprietor R. J. Wagenhorn Read More

The Great Moment

Actors: Joel McCrea, Betty Field, Harry Carey, William Demarest, Louis Jean Heydt, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: After producing, writing and directing one hit film after another, Preston Sturges finally misfired with the biopic The Great Moment. Sturges was always fascinated with the saga of W.T.G. Morton, the 19th century Boston dentist who, after inventing the first truly effective anesthesia, was forced Read More

Hail the Conquering Hero

Actors: Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines, William Demarest, Bill Edwards, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: It took nerve for writer/director Preston Sturges to lampoon the whole concept of hero worship in the middle of World War II, but once more Sturges' oddball sense of taste and propriety paid off at the box office in Hail the Conquering Hero. Eddie Bracken plays the son of a World War I Marine hero Read More

Reckless Age

Actors: Gloria Jean, Henry Stephenson, Kathleen Howard, Franklin Pangborn, Andrew Tombes

Synopsis: Reckless Age is a by-the-numbers Universal musical, elevated by the presence of perky songstress Gloria Jean. The star plays Linda Wadsworth, the granddaughter of fabulously wealthy department-store magnate J. H. Wadsworth (Henry Stephenson). Rebelling against Wadsworth's close-minded tyranny Read More

My Best Gal

Actors: Jane Withers, Jimmy Lydon, Frank Craven, Fortunio Bonanova, George Cleveland

Synopsis: A druggist's pretty assistance ignores the call of the bright lights and audience that runs in the veins of her show biz family. Eventually though, the family succeeds in getting the talented lass to perform the music of a struggling young composer. His music is great and she enthusiastically Read More

Two Weeks to Live

Actors: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff, Franklin Pangborn, Kay Linaker, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: The title of this "Lum 'N' Abner" comedy isn't explained until the film is half over. Chester Lauck and Norris Goff repeat their radio characterizations of Lum and Abner, proprietors of the Jot-Em-Down Store in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. This time, the boys journey to Chicago, where Abner hopes to Read More

Stage Door Canteen

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

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

Reveille with Beverly

Actors: Ann Miller, William Wright, Dick Purcell, Franklin Pangborn, Tim Ryan

Synopsis: Beverly Ross (nn Miller) is a would-be radio personality, but the closest she gets to being on the air is running the switchboard at a local station. Worse yet, the blustery station owner Mr. Kennedy (Tim Ryan) wants no part of programming "jive" (i.e., swing music) that she loves, preferring the Read More

Honeymoon Lodge

Actors: David Bruce, June Vincent, Rod Cameron, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Honeymoon Lodge is a musical variation on the old Awful Truth plotline. Divorce-bound Bob and Carol Sterling (David Bruce, June Vincent) make a last-ditch attempt to avoid their legal breakup by restaging their mountain-resort honeymoon. Things get complicated when a rancher named Big Boy (Rod Read More

Holy Matrimony

Actors: Monty Woolley, Gracie Fields, Laird Cregar, Una O'Connor, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: A man trying to leave his fame behind discovers the perils of choosing to be the wrong unknown person in this farcical British comedy. Priam Farli (Monty Woolley) is an eccentric but famous and well-respected artist who prefers to work in total seclusion -- so much so that he's spent the last 20 Read More

Crazy House

Actors: Cass Daley, Basil Rathbone, Patric Knowles, Martha O'Driscoll, Leighton Noble, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Olsen and Johnson's followup to their zany, iconoclastic Hellzapoppin' was the more conventional Crazy House. The premise: Having nearly laid waste to Universal while filming Hellzapoppin', O & J are thrown out of the studio when they arrive with plans for a new picture. Only momentarily daunted Read More

Never a Dull Moment

Actors: Harry Ritz, Jimmy Ritz, Al Ritz, Frances Langford, Mary Beth Hughes, Jack LaRue, Stuart Crawford

Synopsis: In their last starring film, The Ritz Brothers play the Three Funny Bunnies, a trio of nightclub comedians. The plot contrives to have our heroes pose as tough Chicago gangsters, which gets them mixed up with genuine hoodlums Tony (George Zucco) and Joey (Jack LaRue), a sexy pickpocket named Flo Read More

Allergic to Love

Actors: Martha O'Driscoll, Noah Beery, Jr., David Bruce, Franklin Pangborn, Fuzzy Knight

Synopsis: Newlywed bliss surround O'Driscoll and Beery until they get on board the ship for their honeymoon in South America. Then she starts sneezing, and hay fever's uncontrollable grip does not seem to want to let up. They try everything, then finally seek out a doctor on the ship. The trouble is Read More

His Butler's Sister

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Pat O'Brien, Franchot Tone, Akim Tamiroff, Evelyn Ankers

Synopsis: In this frothy musical comedy, Ann Carter (Deanna Durbin) is an aspiring singer from the Midwest who decides to move to New York in hopes of advancing her career. Her half brother, Martin Murphy (Pat O'Brien), is already living in the Big Apple, and has told her that he's doing well as a Read More

The Carter Case

Actors: James Ellison, Virginia Gilmore, Franklin Pangborn, Paul Harvey, Lynne Carver

Synopsis: The Carter Case was the second and last Republic film based on the popular radio series Mister District Attorney. Like the first entry, this one is played mostly for laughs, with Radio's Mister District Attorney. James Ellison replacing Dennis O'Keefe as feckless assistant DA P. Cadwallader Jones. Read More

What's Cookin'?

Actors: Dorothy Babbs, Jane Frazee, Robert Paige, Gloria Jean, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: There's plenty cookin' in this brisk, breezy Andrews Sisters vehicle. The plot, such as it is, concerns the efforts by a group of entertainers to package a weekly musical radio show. Their biggest obstacle is a lack of sponsorship, but this is overcome when eccentric business executive J. P. Read More

Moonlight Masquerade

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Jane Frazee, Betty Kean, Eddie Foy, Jr., Erno Verebes

Synopsis: Though musical-comedy favorite Jane Frazee was well established at Universal in mid-1942, every so often she'd head to Republic to star in such confections as Moonlight Masquerade. Frazee is cast as Vicki Forester, daughter of oil-company executive Robert Forrester (Jed Prouty). When the girl was Read More

Call out the Marines

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Binnie Barnes, Paul Kelly, Robert Smith

Synopsis: This RKO Radio programmer reunites Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen in an enjoyable rehash of their earlier Quirt-and-Flagg antics in What Price Glory. The two venerable action stars are respectively cast as Curtis and McGinnis, who after several years' hiatus rejoin the Marines as sergeants. While Read More

The Palm Beach Story

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, William Demarest

Synopsis: As for the opening reels, the principal motivating factor is money. After a deliberately confusing pre-credit sequence (not explained until the film's punch line), Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) are married. "And so they lived happily ever after," exults a title Read More

Strictly in the Groove

Actors: Mary Healy, Richard Davies, Leon Errol, Shemp Howard, Grace McDonald

Synopsis: A college student's passion for swinging music leads him to found his own band. When he starts spending more time playing music than studying, his father, a prominent hotelier, steps in and sends the lad to a dude ranch in Arizona. Undeterred, the boy brings the band with him. Once there, he Read More

Now, Voyager

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville, Gladys Cooper, Ilka Chase

Synopsis: Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel was transformed into nearly two hours of high-grade soap opera by several masters of the trade: Warner Bros., Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, director Irving Rapper, and screenwriter Casey Robinson. Davis plays repressed Charlotte Vale, dying on the vine thanks to Read More

George Washington Slept Here

Actors: Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan, Charles Coburn, Percy Kilbride, Hattie McDaniel

Synopsis: The Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman Broadway hit George Washington Slept Here has herein been tailored to the unique talents of Jack Benny. In the original play, city dweller Bill Fuller, fired up with the spirit of "back to the soil," purchases a ramshackle Colonial-era farmhouse in upstate New York Read More

The Flame of New Orleans

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Bruce Cabot, Roland Young, Anne Revere, Andy Devine, Mischa Auer

Synopsis: Acclaimed French filmmaker Rene Clair made his American debut with this period comedy/drama. Claire Ledeux (Marlene Dietrich) leaves her native France and arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1841, with one goal in mind: marrying a wealthy man. Posing as a pillar of society and a woman of means Read More

A Girl, a Guy and A Gob

Actors: George Murphy, Edmond O'Brien, Henry Travers, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: The girl is stenographer Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball); the guy is her boss, stuffy young shipping magnate Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien); and the gob is a brash sailor known as Coffee Cup (George Murphy). Not surprisingly, the plot involves the efforts by the self-effacing Stephen and the Read More

Where Did You Get That Girl?

Actors: Leon Errol, Helen Parrish, Charles Lang, Eddie Quillan, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a motley band of musicians have only their extreme poverty in common. They end up writing a hit and getting a recording contract. The trouble is, the composer's works are never played without another band member doctoring them up to make them swingier. Fortunately, the Read More

Obliging Young Lady

Actors: Joan Carroll, Edmond O'Brien, Ruth Warrick, Robert Smith, Eve Arden

Synopsis: The studio concocted the film as a showcase for its 9-year-old discovery Joan Carroll, here cast as precocious Bridget Potter. Little Bridget has been willingly "kidnapped" by secretary Linda Norton (Ruth Warrick), who hopes that the girl's disappearance will precipitate a reunion between Read More

Weekend for Three

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Jane Wyatt, Phillip Reed, Edward Everett Horton, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: Boasting a script cowritten by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell from a story by Budd Schulberg, Weekend for Three should have been a comedy classic-but alas, it isn't. Over the protests of her husband Jim (Dennis O'Keefe), Ellen Craig (Jane Wyatt) invites her old friend Randy (Dennis O'Keefe) to Read More

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

Actors: W.C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Margaret Dumont, Leon Errol, Susan Miller, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: W.C. Fields heads to Esoteric studios to pitch a story idea to producer Franklin Pangborn. The producer wants to make a conventional romantic musical starring Fields' niece, teen-aged soprano Gloria Jean, but "The Great Man" has other ideas. As Pangborn sits in dumbfounded silence, Fields unravels Read More

Bachelor Daddy

Actors: Baby Sandy, Edward Everett Horton, Donald Woods, Raymond Walburn, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Universal's "Baby Sandy" series officially ended with Sandy Gets Her Man, but the infant star still had one picture left on her contract, so that's why Bachelor Daddy was born. Edward Everett Horton, Donald Woods, and Raymond Walburn carry the burden of the plot as the Smith Brothers, Joseph Read More

Sullivan's Travels

Actors: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Robert Warwick, Porter Hall

Synopsis: In Preston Sturges' classic comedy of Depression-era America, filmmaker John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), fed up with directing profitable comedies like "Ants in Your Plants of 1939," is consumed with the desire to make a serious social statement in his upcoming film, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" Read More

Tillie the Toiler

Actors: Kay Harris, William Tracy, George Watts, Daphne Pollard, Jack Arnold

Synopsis: Previously brought to the screen as a Marion Davies vehicle in 1927, Russ Westover's long-running comic strip Tillie the Toiler was again cinematized in 1942 with Kay Harris (who looked not at all like the original "Tillie") in the lead. While attending stenographer school, Tillie Jones meets Read More

The Villain Still Pursued Her

Actors: Anita Louise, Alan Mowbray, Buster Keaton, Joyce Compton, Richard Cromwell

Synopsis: Like Prohibition, Franklin-Blank Productions' The Villain Still Pursued Her is best regarded as a "noble experiment". Using the hoary old stage melodrama The Drunkard: or, the Fallen Saved as its inspiration, the film is a contemptous send-up of all such Victorian mellers, its "serious" moments Read More

Public Deb No. 1

Actors: George Murphy, Brenda Joyce, Elsa Maxwell, Mischa Auer, Charlie Ruggles

Synopsis: Communism-the American variety-is given a hilarious going-over in 20th Century-Fox's Public Deb No. 1. Spoiled society girl Penny Cooper (Brenda Joyce) impulsively lends her voice to a Communist rally, which earns her a public spanking by 100% All-American waiter Alan Blake (George Murphy). Read More

Spring Parade

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Robert Cummings, Mischa Auer, Henry Stephenson, S.Z. Sakall

Synopsis: In this light and lovely romantic musical, a Hungarian woman (Deanna Durbin) attends a fair in Austria and buys a card from a gypsy fortune teller. It says that she will meet someone important and is destined for a happy marriage. Afterward she gets a job as a baker's assistant. She then meets a Read More

The Bank Dick

Actors: W.C. Fields, Cora Witherspoon, Una Merkel, Evelyn del Rio, Jessie Ralph, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: W.C. Fields plays Egbert Souse, a bibulous denizen of Lompoc who supports his family by winning radio contests. When a fleeing bank robber is knocked cold upon tripping over the park bench where Egbert sits, Souse is hailed as a hero and offered the job of bank guard. The next day, he is Read More

Christmas in July

Actors: Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, Alexander Carr, William Demarest

Synopsis: This modest Preston Sturges comedy stars Dick Powell as an office clerk dreaming of better things and Ellen Drew as his more pragmatic girlfriend. Powell convinces himself that his fortune will be made if he can win a slogan contest sponsored by a coffee company. Powell's contribution: "If you Read More

Hit Parade of 1941

Actors: Kenny Baker, Frances Langford, Hugh Herbert, Mary Boland, Ann Miller

Synopsis: In this musical, the second entry in a five-film series, a thrift shop owner sells his business and buys a small time radio station. He begins looking for sponsors. He finds one with a department store owner who will only lend him the money if he will allow his daughter, an aspiring tap-dancer and Read More

Turnabout

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Carole Landis, John Hubbard, William Gargan, Veree Teasdale

Synopsis: One of several "naughty" screwball comedies based on the works of Thorne Smith (of Topper fame), Hal Roach's Turnabout stars Carole Landis and John Hubbard as unhappily married couple Sally and Tim Willows. Bored with her humdrum existence, Sally spends most of her time figuring out ways of Read More

Fifth Avenue Girl

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, Veree Teasdale, James Ellison, Tim Holt

Synopsis: A wealthy older man and a poor young woman each get a chance to see how the other half lives in this comedy. Alfred Borden (Walter Connolly) is a millionaire who feels neglected by his family. His wife Martha (Verree Teasdale), daughter Katherine (Kathryn Adams), and son Tim (Tim Holt) usually Read More

Broadway Serenade

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Lew Ayres, Ian Hunter, Frank Morgan, Wally Vernon

Synopsis: Jeanette MacDonald and Lew Ayres make strange bedfellows in the overproduced MGM musical Broadway Serenade. She plays aspiring singer Mary Hale, and he plays her husband, struggling songwriter James Geoffrey Seymour. The couple's vaudeville act breaks up when Mary is hired for a big-time Broadway Read More

Meet the Mayor

Actors: Frank Fay, Ruth Hall, Hale Hamilton, George Meeker, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Obviously filmed several years before its 1938 release, Meet the Mayor serves as a vehicle for popular Broadway comedian Frank Fay. Unfortunately, Fay's smug, self-satisfied line deliveries had never played well on screen, and didn't here. The star is cast as Spencer Brown, elevator operator in a Read More

Four's a Crowd

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Rosalind Russell, Patric Knowles, Walter Connolly

Synopsis: A standard-issue "screwball comedy" of the 1930s, Four's a Crowd starred a quartet of Warner Bros' biggest stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Rosalind Russell and Patric Knowles. Flynn plays a publicity agent hired to stir up "good press" for a nasty millionaire (Walter Connolly). Errol Read More

The Girl Downstairs

Actors: Franziska Gaal, Franchot Tone, Walter Connolly, Reginald Gardiner, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: "Discovered" for American films by Cecil B. DeMille, popular Hungarian actress Franceska Gaal made the last of her three Hollywood screen appearances in MGM's The Girl Downstairs. A Cinderella yarn, the film stars Gaal as scullery maid Katerina Linz, who is romanced by callous playboy Paul Wagner Read More

Carefree

Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ralph Bellamy, Luella Gear, Jack Carson

Synopsis: It's more Ginger Rogers than Fred Astaire, and more comedy than singing and dancing in this Astaire-Rogers entry into the screwball comedy sweepstakes which features a top-of-the-line Irving Berlin score (Change Partners, I Used to be Color Blind, The Night is Filled with Music). Fred Astaire Read More

Mad About Music

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Herbert Marshall, Arthur Treacher, Gail Patrick, William Frawley

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a girl with a lively imagination gets in hot water when she tries to make her tall tales real. Gloria Harkinson (Deanna Durbin) is the teenage daughter of Gwen Taylor (Gail Patrick), a well-known Hollywood actress who has shipped Gloria off to a boarding school in Read More

Doctor Rhythm

Actors: Bing Crosby, Mary Carlisle, Beatrice Lillie, Andy Devine, Rufe Davis

Synopsis: Bing Crosby plays the melodic medico of the title. To help cover for his ailing policeman pal (Andy Devine), Crosby takes the policeman's latest assignment and becomes the bodyguard for a loopy but wealthy matron (Bea Lillie). Bing falls in love with the lady's niece (Mary Carlisle), expressing Read More

Just Around the Corner

Actors: Shirley Temple, Joan Davis, Charles Farrell, Amanda Duff

Synopsis: Just Around the Corner is the film in which little Shirley Temple ends the Depression all by herself! The story starts realistically enough, with 10-year-old Penny Hale (Temple) sharing a basement apartment with her widowed father Jeff (Charles Farrell, in his final Fox film). Once a prosperous Read More

Joy of Living

Actors: Irene Dunne, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Alice Brady, Guy Kibbee, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: Given the talent involved, The Joy of Living should have been far better than it is. Irene Dunne plays Maggie, a popular musical-comedy star saddled with a possessive, spendthrift family. Maggie would like to leave the house once in a while and experience "real life," but her parents (Alice Brady, Guy Kibbee Read More

Three Blind Mice

Actors: Loretta Young, Joel McCrea, David Niven, Stuart Erwin, Marjorie Weaver

Synopsis: Whenever things got slow at 20th Century-Fox, the studio revved up its old reliable "three girls looking for millionaires" plotline. Three Kansas sisters (Loretta Young, Marjorie Weaver and Pauline Moore) use a small inheritance to set themselves up in a Manhattan penthouse. Figuring that Young Read More

Vivacious Lady

Actors: Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, James Ellison, Beulah Bondi, Charles Coburn

Synopsis: James Stewart and Ginger Rogers were "an item" when Vivacious Lady was filmed, and their obvious real-life affection for one another pours over onto the screen. Stewart plays Peter Morgan, a young botany professor who while on a visit to New York impulsively marries free-spirited nightclub singer Read More

Topper Takes a Trip

Actors: Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray, Veree Teasdale

Synopsis: Except for a few clips from 1937's Topper, Cary Grant is absent from the proceedings of the 1939 sequel Topper Takes a Trip, though his Topper co-stars Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke and Alan Mobray are back in harness and in fine fettle. Picking up where the first film left off, we Read More

Always Goodbye

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: Former doctor Jim Howard (Herbert Marshall) helps desperate Margot Weston (Barbara Stanwyck), pregnant and unmarried; when her son is born, Jim helps her place the baby with Phil Marshall (Ian Hunter) and his wife, on the condition that neither the Marshalls nor the child ever know Margot is his Read More

She Married an Artist

Actors: John Boles, Luli Deste, Frances Drake, Helen Westley, Alex D'Arcy

Synopsis: The plot of She Married an Artist is summed up by the title, as was often the case in such 1930s romantic comedies. European import Lulli Deste plays Toni, the wife of commercial artist Lee Thornwood (John Boles). Because Thornwood's portraits of comely model Sally Dennis (Frances Drake) are in Read More

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, David Niven, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: The great Ernst Lubitsch directed this farce (written by Charles M. Brackett and Billy Wilder) about a free-wheeling millionaire, Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper), who enjoys getting married but has a hard time staying married: he's had seven wives and is looking for number eight. He thinks he may Read More

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Actors: Shirley Temple, Randolph Scott, Jack Haley, Gloria Stuart, Helen Westley, Phyllis Brooks

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1917 and 1932, Kate Douglas Wiggins' bucolic novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is herein refashioned--and completely, totally, utterly rewritten--as a vehicle for 10-year-old Shirley Temple. Unable to land a radio contract for himself and his niece Rebecca Winstead (Temple) Read More

Living on Love

Actors: James Dunn, Whitney Bourne, Joan Woodbury, Solly Ward, Tom Kennedy

Synopsis: A remake of Rafter Romance (1933), which starred Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster, Living On Love treats the story of two unwilling apartment-mates a bit more briskly and broadly, to the point of being downright screwy at times. This time out, it's Solly Ward as landlord Eli White, who takes two Read More

Turn off the Moon

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Eleanore Whitney, Johnny Downs, Kenny Baker

Synopsis: Department store owner Elliot Dinwiddy (Charlie Ruggles) never makes a decision without first consulting his astrologer Dr. Wakefield (Andrew Tombes). Problem is, Dinwiddy's dependence upon the stars to dictate his fate has a negative trickle-down effect on his impending marriage to his secretary Read More

Love on Toast

Actors: John Payne, Ben Baker

Synopsis: Love on Toast was one of several mid-1930s Hollywood films helmed by E. A. DuPont, a once-celebrated German filmmaker then on the skids. The plot concerns a female press agent who must select a "Mr. Manhattan" and "Miss Brooklyn" for an ad campaign mounted by a soup company. The Mr. Manhattan Read More

The Life of the Party

Actors: Joe Penner, Gene Raymond, Parkyakarkus [Harry Einstein], Harriet Hilliard, Victor Moore

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, an irresponsible young heir is betrothed to the singing daughter of a wealthy matron. Unfortunately, the willful young is not even slightly interested in her "fiance," preferring the attentions of another instead. Unfortunately, the other man has a big problem. Though he Read More

We Have Our Moments

Actors: Sally Eilers, James Dunn, David Niven, Mischa Auer, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: Previously teamed in six early-1930s films, James Dunn and Sally Eilers bring the total up to seven with their last co-starring vehicle We Have Our Moments. A trio of American crooks board a ship bound for Europe, intending to get rid of $100,000 in stolen dough. With detective John Wade (James Dunn Read More

All Over Town

Actors: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Mary Howard, Harry Stockwell, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Olsen and Johnson's second starring vehicle for Republic was better than their first (Country Gentlemen), but a Hellzapoppin' it wasn't. Ole and Chic play a couple of itinerant vaudevillians, teamed with Sally the Singing Seal ("the eighth wonder of the world"). Heroine Joan Eldredge (Mary Howard) Read More

Rich Relations

Step Lively, Jeeves!

Actors: Arthur Treacher, Patricia Ellis, Robert Kent, Alan Dinehart, George Givot

Synopsis: Step Lively, Jeeves was the second 20th Century-Fox programmer to star Arthur Treacher as P.G. Wodehouse's resourceful butler Jeeves. In the first film, Thank You, Jeeves (36), the faithful family retainer extricated his boss Bertie Wooster (David Niven) from a jam. In the second film, Jeeves is Read More

She's Dangerous

Actors: Tala Birell, Cesar Romero, Walter Pidgeon, Walter Brennan, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: Tala Birell, one of the more talented of the Garbo wannabes of the 1930s, stars in the Universal quickie She's Dangerous. The star is cast as Stephanie, a glamorous private detective who's been hired to track down a gang of bond thieves. She charms her way into the confidence of gang leader Nick Read More

They Wanted to Marry

Actors: Betty Furness, Gordon Jones, E.E. Clive, Patsy Lee Parsons, Henry Kolker

Synopsis: The "they" who want to marry in this RKO Radio programmer are news photographer Jim Tyler (Gordon Jones) and cute society deb Sheila Hunter (Betty Furness). The heroine's father (Henry Kolker) disapproves of the union, requiring Gordon to take a "respectable" job in daddy's advertising agency. Our Read More

When Love Is Young

Actors: Virginia Bruce, Kent Taylor, Walter Brennan, Greta Meyer, Christian Rub

Synopsis: In this drama, a girl from a small town in Pennsylvania dreams of being a star while she goes to school. The trouble is, no one notices her. Later a mentor turns her into a successful Broadway entertainer. She returns to her former college to get sweet revenge. Songs include: "When Love Is Young," Read More

Thrill of a Lifetime

Actors: Yacht Club Boys, Judy Canova, Ben Blue, Eleanore Whitney, Johnny Downs

Synopsis: "Camp Romance," a place for the romantically challenged, provides the setting of this musical. The story centers on a frumpy secretary's crush on her handsome boss, the camp manager. The manager has been working on a musical. Just as he is about to finish it, the secretary gives herself a 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

Hotel Haywire

Actors: Leo Carrillo, Mary Carlisle, Lynne Overman, George Barbier, Spring Byington

Synopsis: The inimitable Preston Sturges originally scripted Hotel Haywire with George Burns and Gracie Allen in mind, but by the time the film went before the cameras, the Burns and Allen roles had been recast with Benny Baker and Colette Lyons -- and significantly abbreviated in the process. A dentist Read More

Easy Living

Actors: Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland, Luis Alberni, Mary Nash

Synopsis: Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in Read More

Stage Door

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier

Synopsis: Adapted from the Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman play, Stage Door is a comedic portrait of the theatrical community in New York. Katharine Hepburn stars as Terry Randall a young woman who comes from a wealthy, socially connected family. Aspiring for a career on the stage, Terry opts to see if Read More

High Hat

Actors: Frank Luther, Dorothy Dare, Lona Andre, Franklin Pangborn, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: Filmed on a budget of about 78 cents, High Hat was a foredoomed attempt to turn radio singer Frank Luther into a movie star. Luther struggles manfully in the role of Suwanee Collier, the boyfriend and mentor of aspiring vocalist Elanda Lee (Dorothy Dare). A classical singer, Elanda refuses to Read More

Dangerous Holiday

Actors: Ra Hould, Hedda Hopper, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Jack LaRue, Jed Prouty

Synopsis: Hoping to ape the success of Sol Lesser's Bobby Breen musicals, Republic Pictures fashioned Dangerous Holiday as a movie vehicle for pint-sized violin prodigy Ra Hould. The star is appropriately cast as preteen violin virtuoso Ronnie Campbell who is so coddled and protected by his family and Read More

The Mandarin Mystery

Actors: Eddie Quillan, Charlotte Henry, Rita La Roy, Wade Boteler, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: There was some novelty value in the fact that an actor whose initials were E.Q. was cast as intellectual sleuth Ellery Queen in Republic's The Mandarin Mystery. That actor was Eddie Quillan, who though a talented and appealing performer was woefully miscast as Queen. The story, based on the Ellery Read More

Hats Off

Actors: Mae Clarke, John Payne, Helen Lynd

Synopsis: The first musical comedy from the Grand National assembly line, Hats Off stars John Payne and Mae Clarke as rival press agents Jimmy Maxwell and Jo Allen. Both have been assigned to stir up publicity for separate expositions at the 1936 Texas Centennial (newsreel footage of which predominates Read More

Dangerous Number

Actors: Robert Young, Ann Sothern, Reginald Owen, Cora Witherspoon, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: The Dangerous Number of the title is madcap showgirl Elinor (Ann Sothern). Notorious throughout Manhattan for her zany antics, Elinor is also quite a handful for her conservative husband Hank (Robert Young). In addition, Hank must contend with the heroine's flamboyant ex-burlesque queen mother Read More

The Lady Escapes

Actors: Gloria Stuart, Michael Whalen, George Sanders, Cora Witherspoon, Gerald Oliver-Smith

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, a married couple, tired of constantly bickering, separate. The woman heads to France where she immediately gets involved with a suave playboy. This causes the husband to decide that he wants her back. He gets his chance after he finds out the lothario has another lover. In Read More

It's All Yours

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

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

I'll Take Romance

Actors: Grace Moore, Melvyn Douglas, Helen Westley, Stuart Erwin, Walter Kingsford

Synopsis: Opera diva Grace Moore plays (what a stretch!) an opera diva in I'll Take Romance. Moore reneges on an agreement to open the opera season in Buenos Aires, opting instead for a better-paying job in Paris. Melvyn Douglas, acting on behalf of the Buenos Aires company, pretends to fall in love with Moore Read More

Swing High, Swing Low

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Charles Butterworth, Jean Dixon, Dorothy Lamour

Synopsis: Swing High Swing Low is a new coat of paint on the old stage play Burlesque, first filmed in 1929 as The Dance of Life. Ex-serviceman Skid Johnson (Fred MacMurray) rises to the uppermost rungs of show business as a bandleader. As his fame swells, so does his head, and he becomes impossibly Read More

It Happened in Hollywood

Actors: Richard Dix, Victor Kilian, Franklin Pangborn, Charles Arnt

Synopsis: By 1937, everyone was tired of films about silent stars who couldn't make the transition to talkies (and would be until Singin' in the Rain), but this Columbia comedy-drama still had its moments in spite of gross inaccuracies. Richard Dix is Western star Tim Bart, a screen hero who is adored by Read More

A Star Is Born

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

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

Danger: Love at Work

Actors: Ann Sothern, Jack Haley, Mary Boland, John Carradine

Synopsis: An airy screwball comedy, Danger--Love at Work explores the lives of a wealthy but wacky family. Ann Sothern plays the daughter, the only remotely "normal" member of the clan. Poor Jack Haley enters the scene as a feckless attorney who tries to get the family to finalize an important land deal. Read More

Give Us This Night

Actors: Gladys Swarthout, Philip Merivale, Ben Baker, Michelette Burani

Synopsis: Charismatic Polish opera singer Jan Kiepura made his Hollywood debut in Give Us This Night. His thick Slavic accent notwithstanding, Kiepura is cast as Italian fisherman Antonio. In the habit of singing as he fishes, Antonio catches the attention of opera diva Maria (played by real-life operatic Read More

Three Smart Girls

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Binnie Barnes, Alice Brady, Ray Milland, Charles Winninger, Mischa Auer

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin, the teenaged soprano who literally saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy, made her feature-film debut in Three Smart Girls. Durbin, Nan Grey and Barbara Read play three wealthy young sisters, living with their divorced mother (Nella Walker) in Europe. The girls learn that their Read More

To Mary - with Love

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Ian Hunter, Claire Trevor, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy star as a husband and wife who've been married ten years...but they might not make it to eleven. The husband is a businessman who has rebuilt his fortune after the 1929 crash. The wife has stood by her man through thick and thin, rich and poor. Now it's 1935, and the Read More

Don't Gamble with Love

Actors: Ann Sothern, Bruce Cabot, Irving Pichel, Ian Keith, Thurston Hall

Synopsis: In this drama, an honest gambler tries to go straight. Although the gambling house he runs is illegal, the man insists that all house games be on the up-and-up. Trouble ensues when his wife demands he shut down the house to protect the good name of their newborn baby. He gives in and sells the Read More

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglas Dumbrille, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in Read More

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

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

Doughnuts and Society

Actors: Louise Fazenda, Maude Eburne, Ann Rutherford, Eddie Nugent, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: Doughnuts and Society is the first of several attempts by Republic Pictures to create a new screen team comparable to MGM's Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. In this one, Louise Fazenda and Maude Eburne are paired up as Kate Flannagan and Belle Dugan, joint owners of a greasy-spoon diner. Read More

Tango

Actors: Marian Nixon, Chick Chandler, Matty Kemp, Marie Prevost, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: In this melodrama a chorine endeavors to become a star, but it isn't easy. Her wealthy boyfriend wants to marry her until his snooty family rejects her. At her job, her boss is cruel to her. Still the woman persists and even gets jobs waiting tables and modeling. Luckily for her, a good friend Read More

Eight Bells

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

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

She Couldn't Take It

Actors: George Raft, Joan Bennett, Walter Connolly, Billie Burke, Lloyd Nolan

Synopsis: When he's shipped off to prison on a tax-evasion charge, millionaire Van Dyke (Walter Connolly) breathes a sigh of relief: at least he'll be free of his dizzy, spendthrift wife (Billie Burke) and spoiled-rotten daughter Carol (Joan Bennett). Once behind bars, Van Dyke strikes up a friendship with Read More

$1,000 a Minute

Actors: Roger Pryor, Leila Hyams, Edgar Kennedy, Edward S. Brophy, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: Two rich and wealthy millionaires who have a lot of money bet that reporter Robert Pryor can't spend $720,000 in twelve hours. If you're asking "Why $720,000?", the answer is: because this Republic programmer is titled $1000 a Minute . Anyway, a couple of cops spot Pryor flashing a roll of bills Read More

Tomorrow's Youth

The Headline Woman

Actors: Heather Angel, Roger Pryor, Jack LaRue, Ford Sterling, Conway Tearle

Synopsis: This typically lightning-paced Mascot Studios production stars Heather Angel as the title character, a thrill-seeking socialite named Myrna Van Buren. During a raid on a gambling joint, Myrna witnesses the murder of gambler Johnny Corinti (Theodore Von Eltz). Hoping to get an exclusive story Read More

Chasing Those Depression Blues

That's Gratitude

Actors: Frank Craven, Mary Carlisle, John Buckler

Synopsis: Frank Craven, the actor-playwright best known for his performance as The Stage Manager in the original Broadway production of Our Town, was star, screenwriter and director of Columbia's That's Gratitude. The avuncular Craven plays fly-by-night stage producer Bob Grant, who inadvertently saves the Read More

Unknown Blonde

Actors: Helen Jerome Eddy, Edward Arnold, John Miljan, Leila Bennett

Synopsis: This well-mounted Majestic Pictures effort was inspired by Collusion, a novel by Theodore D. Irwin. Edward Arnold is in his element as Frank Rodie, an honest lawyer who turns dishonest to pay off his wife's stock-market losses. Still desperate for money, Rodie offers to serve as a co-respondent in Read More

College Rhythm

Actors: Joe Penner, Lanny Ross, Jack Oakie, Helen Mack, Lyda Roberti

Synopsis: Paramount Pictures' annual college musical of 1934 is a pip, as they used to say. Jack Oakie plays Finnegan, a conceited gridiron hero whose prowess on the football field is exceeded only by his appreciation of the ladies. But his strutting manner and accompanying overbearing ego have alienated 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

Cockeyed Cavaliers

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Thelma Todd, Dorothy Lee, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: Considered by many to be the best of the many Bert Wheeler-Robert Woolsey vehicles of the 1930s, Cockeyed Cavaliers is set in Merrie Olde England, where the comic-opera ambience is immediately established when a Walter Winchellesque town crier (Franklin Pangborn) sings the local gossip. Bert and Bob Read More

King Kelly of the USA

Actors: Guy Robertson, Irene Ware, Edgar Kennedy, Franklin Pangborn, Joyce Compton

Synopsis: Poverty Row studio Monogram took a stab at musical production with King Kelly of the U.S.A., a cinematic blunder starring opera baritone Guy Robertson, who plays James "King" Kelly, a theatrical entrepreneur sailing to Europe with his latest show, "Kelly's Affairs of 1934." En route, he falls in Read More

Manhattan Love Song

Actors: Robert Armstrong, Dixie Lee, Helen Flint, Franklin Pangborn, Nydia Westman

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, Manhattan Love Song charts the misadventures of the madcap Stewart sisters, Jerry (Dixie Lee) and Carol (Helen Flint). Suddenly finding themselves broke, the girls are forced to become the servants of their former chauffeur Williams (Robert Armstrong) and maid Read More

Imitation of Life

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Ned Sparks, Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Rochelle Hudson

Synopsis: The first of two film version of Fannie Hurst's novel, 1934's Imitation of Life chronicles the friendship between two women--one white (Claudette Colbert), one black (Louise Beavers). Colbert is a widow with a baby daughter who hires Beavers, who also has a daughter, as a housekeeper. Colbert is a Read More

Young and Beautiful

Actors: William Haines, Judith Allen, Joseph Cawthorn, John Miljan

Synopsis: Produced by small-scale Mascot Pictures, this behind-the-scenes look at a now forgotten annual Hollywood event, the WAMPAS Baby Star selection, starred former MGM light leading man William Haines in his penultimate film role. Well cast as Bob Preston, the brash publicity director of Superba Read More

Many Happy Returns

Actors: Guy Lombardo, Gracie Allen, George Burns, Joan Marsh, George Barbier

Synopsis: Department-store owner Horatio Allen's (George Barbier) biggest mistake is to name his scatterbrained daughter Gracie (Gracie Allen) as his sole heir. Suddenly Gracie becomes obsessed with the notion of converting her dad's store into a bird sanctuary. Psychologist Dr. Otto von Strudel (Egon Brecher Read More

International House

Actors: Peggy Hopkins Joyce, W.C. Fields, Stuart Erwin, Sara Maritza, George Burns, Rudy Vallee

Synopsis: Hollywood responded to the exigencies of the Depression with such glorious nonsense as International House. The plot is motivated by a revolutionary television device called the Radioscope, which its Chinese inventor (Edmund Breese) is offering to the highest bidder. All interested parties are Read More

Flying Down to Rio

Actors: Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Raul Roulien, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire

Synopsis: The top-billed stars in the extravagant RKO musical Flying Down to Rio are Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond. Forget all that: this is the movie that first teamed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We're supposed to care about the romantic triangle between aviator/bandleader Raymond, Brazilian heiress Read More

Blue of the Night

Synopsis: This is a musical comedy which starred Bing Crosby and included the song "Auf Wiedesehn". ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Bed of Roses

Actors: Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, John Halliday, Pert Kelton, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: In this sassy dramatic comedy, two reform-school girls finally graduate and as soon as they get out decide to board a New Orleans-bound stern-wheeler and rustle up a couple of handsome, wealthy men. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Professional Sweetheart

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Norman Foster, ZaSu Pitts, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: An earthy, fun-loving radio pitchwoman finds it difficult to live up to her squeaky-clean public persona as the "Purity Girl of the Air." This comedy chronicles the frantic efforts of her bosses to keep her on the straight and narrow when she goes out on the town. It's not easy because she is a Read More

Only Yesterday

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, John Boles, Edna May Oliver, Billie Burke, Jimmy Butler, Benita Hume, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: Distantly related to Frederick Lewis Allen's non-fiction book of the same name, Only Yesterday uses fictional characters to trace the years between 1917 and 1929. Wealthy New Yorker John Boles recalls a long-ago affair with southern belle Margaret Sullavan. She gave birth to his child without ever Read More

Sing, Bing, Sing

Sweet Cookie

Wild Poses

Synopsis: It is time for Spanky McFarland and his family to have a group portrait taken, and prissy photographer Otto Phocus is the man for the job. At least, that's what Otto thinks, before he's worn to a frazzle trying to coax a smile out of the taciturn Spanky. Meanwhile, the rest of the Our Gang Read More

The Important Witness

Actors: Noel Francis, Donald Dillaway, Dorothy Burgess, Noel Madison, Sarah Padden

Synopsis: In this crime comedy, a stenographer is kidnapped after she witnesses a mob hit. The hostage soon finds herself the object of the crime lord's affections. She earns his trust and then escapes. She hops a bus and heads for L.A. where she plans on clearing the name of her girlfriend, the prime Read More

Headline Shooter

Actors: William Gargan, Frances Dee, Ralph Bellamy, Jack LaRue, Gregory Ratoff

Synopsis: Headline Shooter is a brisk comedy/melodrama about a newsreel photographer (William Gargan). He prefers to risk his neck to get "swell" pictures, while his reporter girl friend (Frances Dee), though no less fearless, would prefer that he give up his dangerous profession. Ralph Bellamy (as always!) Read More

Torchy's Loud Spooker

Dream Stuff

Synopsis: Emerson Treacy stars in this Mack Sennett-produced comedy short as Clarence, a hapless would-be lover (a "quivering mass of dormant sex appeal") who can't work up the words or the courage to propose to Betty (Joyce Compton). He makes the mistake of relying on his uncle (Walter Catlett), a Read More

Art in the Raw

Sweepings

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Alan Dinehart, Eric Linden, William Gargan, Gloria Stuart

Synopsis: Lionel Barrymore plays a Marshall Field-like Chicago businessman who emerges from the wreckage of the 1871 fire to build a department-store empire. Barrymore is aided by his Jewish manager Gregory Ratoff, who despite his business acumen is never made a full partner. The store magnate's four Read More

Torchy Turns Turtle

Design for Living

Actors: Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Design for Living was based on the stage comedy by Noel Coward, though little of his dialogue actually made it to the screen. Playwright Fredric March and artist Gary Cooper both fall in love with Miriam Hopkins, an American living in Paris. Both men love the girl, and the girl can't make up her Read More

Lighthouse Love

Torchy Rolls His Own

The Loud Mouth

The Giddy Age

Doctor's Orders

A Fool's Advice

Torchy Turns the Trick

Torchy's Night Cap

Stepping Sisters

Actors: Louise Dresser, Minna Gombell, Jobyna Howland, William Collier, Sr., Howard Phillips

Synopsis: Stepping Sisters was a variation on Fox Studio's favorite plots, "three girls on the make," the difference being that the three ladies depicted herein were well past the "girl" stage. Louise Dresser, Minna Gombell, and Jobyna Howland are cast as Mrs. Ramsey, Rosie La Marr, and Lady Read More

Torchy's Busy Day

What Price Taxi

The Midnight Patrol

Actors: Regis Toomey, Betty Bronson, Edwina Booth, Mary Nolan, Earl Foxe

Synopsis: Upon her release from prison, Joyce Greeley (Edwina Booth) is promptly and mysteriously murdered. Fledgling crime reporter John Martin (Regis Toomey) wants to find out why and also wants to discern the role of Joyce's lawyer Judson (Earl Foxe) in this whole sordid mess. Martin befriends the dead 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

Torchy Raises the Auntie

Two Reelers: Comedy Classics 10

Rough House Rhythm

A Woman of Experience

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, William Bakewell, Lew Cody, ZaSu Pitts, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: In this dramatic adventure a shady lady becomes a spy for the Austrian intelligence agency and ends up involved with a man suspected of being a German spy. She only pretends to love him to discover the truth. The man she really loves is a young naval officer, but in order to serve her country, she Read More

Not So Dumb

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

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

Cheer up and Smile

Actors: Dixie Lee, Arthur Lake, Olga Baclanova, Charles Judels, Whispering Jack Smith

Synopsis: A pre-Dagwood Arthur Lake plays a hapless hayseed who becomes a popular crooner in this fluffy musical comedy that begins during the robbery of a big-city radio station. There the gunman forces him to sing on the air. The audience loves him and he is an instant star. Delighted with his sudden Read More

A Lady Surrenders

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Genevieve Tobin, Basil Rathbone, Rose Hobart, Carmel Myers

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a husband gets on with his life after his wife goes to Europe to get a divorce. Thinking the deed done, the husband marries another. Unfortunately, his first wife returns and tells him that she never went through the procedure and that she has no intention of ever freeing him. Read More

Her Man

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Marjorie Rambeau, Ricardo Cortez, Phillips Holmes, James Gleason

Synopsis: Helen Twelvetrees became a major star in this laundered version of the "naughty" Broadway play Frankie and Johnny. A singer in a Havana dive, Frankie is fought over by the proprietor, Johnny (Ricardo Cortez), and Dan O'Keefe (Phillips Holmes), an American sailor who sees some good in the girl. Read More

Next Door Neighbors

Next-Door Neighbors

Actors: Edgar Kennedy, Arthur Housman, Franklin Pangborn, Pert Kelton

Synopsis: Laurel and Hardy weren't the only comics to employ the "tit for tat" idea of reciprocal destruction in their comedies. Here, two men who are better known as supporting players to Laurel and Hardy star in an amusing tit-for-tat short comedy. Edgar Kennedy plays a composer in need of a little peace Read More

Happy Birthday

Lady of the Pavements

Actors: Lupe Velez, Jetta Goudal, Albert Conti, George Fawcett

Synopsis: D.W. Griffith's last silent film, The Lady of the Pavements was based on La Paiva, a story by Karl Gustav Vollmoeller. Set in 19th-century Paris, the story concerns the romantic travails of Prussian aristocrat Count Karl von Arnim (played by future "Hopalong Cassidy" star William Boyd). Feeling Read More

The Sap

Actors: Edward Everett Horton, Alan Hale, Patsy Ruth Miller, Russell Simpson, Jerry Mandy

Synopsis: The Sap is Edward Everett Horton, a small-towner with big plans, but lacking the wherewithal to put them in motion. Even worse, Horton allows everyone to take advantage of him, further driving the nails into the coffin of his ambitions. When his brother-in-law gets mixed up with an embezzlement Read More

Friend From India

Actors: Elinor Fair, Franklin Pangborn, Ethel Wales, Louis Natheaux, Edgar Norton

Synopsis: Produced by Cecil B. DeMille, Friend from India was directed by, of all people, prissy character actor Franklin Pangborn, who also played the leading role. The star plays an impoverished young man who is forced to impersonate a Hindu prince. This leaves our hapless hero wide open for the assaults Read More

Blonde for a Night

Actors: Marie Prevost, Harrison Ford, Franklin Pangborn, Lucien Littlefield, T. Roy Barnes

Synopsis: Previously teamed for a number of boudoir farces like Getting Gertie's Garter and Up in Mabel's Room, star Marie Prevost and director E. Mason Hopper once more pooled their talents in Blonde for a Night. Prevost plays the dowdy brunette wife of roving husband Harrison Ford, who prefers to spend Read More

On Trial

Actors: Pauline Frederick, Bert Lytell, Lois Wilson, Holmes Herbert, Richard Tucker

Synopsis: First filmed 1917, the Elmer Rice play On Trial was remade as a talkie eleven years later. The original stage version was hailed for its innovational use of flashbacks, a technique faithfully carried over to the screen. Bert Lytell stars as Robert Strickland, who as the picture opens is standing Read More

Cradle Snatchers

Actors: Louise Fazenda, Ethel Wales, Franklin Pangborn, Dorothy Phillips

Synopsis: This first film version of the popular Russell Medcraft-Norma Mitchell stage farce The Cradle Snatchers is also one of the earliest directorial efforts of Howard Hawks. Tired of their husbands' philandering, three wealthy matrons decide to fight fire with fire by hiring three college boys to pose Read More

My Friend from India

The Night Bride

Synopsis: Flamboyant flapper Cynthia Stockton (Marie Prevost) and misogynistic author Stanley Warrington (the "original" Harrison Ford) "meet cute" when their cars collide. Hoping to escape Warrington's wrath, Cynthia hitches a ride on a milk truck and returns home earlier than expected. Upon finding her Read More

The Night Ride

Actors: Robert Edeson, Franklin Pangborn

The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary

Actors: May Robson, Phyllis Haver, Harrison Ford, Arthur Hoyt, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1914, the popular turn-of-the-century stage farce Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary was remade in 1927. This time, the title character was played by May Robson, repeating her original Broadway role. A priggish spinster, Aunt Mary (Robson) kicks up her heels when she is reunited with Read More

Getting Gertie's Garter

Actors: Sally Rand, Harry Myers, Fritzi Ridgeway, Lila Leslie, William Orlamond

Synopsis: As a follow-up to the successful marital farce Up in Mabel's Room, PDC Productions came out with a film version of the evergreen Avery Hopwood stage comedy Getting Gertie's Garter. Charles Ray, once again trying vainly to shed his "boy next door" image, stars as a bachelor lawyer who gives a Read More

Finger Prints

Actors: Louise Fazenda, Warner P. Richmond, Helene Costello, John T. Murray

Synopsis: Hardly an important film, Finger Prints pleased the crowd with its heady combination of slapstick comedy and old-dark-house melodrama. A professional crook is collared by the law, but not before squirreling away a fortune in hidden money in a crumbling country mansion. The crook's sister is Read More

Girl in the Pullman

Actors: Marie Prevost, Harrison Ford

Synopsis: Girl in the Pullman is a standard door-slamming farce in the fine tradition of Up in Mabel's Room and Getting Gertie's Garter. While on his honeymoon with his new bride, Harrison Ford (not the same!) discovers that his ex-wife is occupying the adjacent pullman sleeper in the company of her new Read More

Exit Smiling

Actors: Beatrice Lillie, Jack Pickford, Doris Lloyd, DeWitt Jennings, D'Arcy Corrigan

Synopsis: Exit Smiling is perhaps the only film that ever fully utilized the comic genius of the incomparable Beatrice Lillie. The star is cast as the wardrobe lady of a touring theatrical company. She is introduced to the audience via subtitle as "Violet, the drudge of the troupe...Who also plays parts Read More