Frank McHughFilmography

Easy Come, Easy Go

Actors: Elvis Presley, Dodie Marshall, Pat Priest, Pat Harrington, Jr., Elsa Lanchester, Skip Ward, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Elvis Presley hits the high seas in this musical comedy. Ted Jackson (Presley) is a former Navy frogman who divides his time between twin careers as a deep sea diver and nightclub singer. Ted discovers what he believes could be a fortune in Spanish gold aboard a sunken ship and sets out to rescue Read More

F Troop: Will the Real Captain Try to Stand Up?

Synopsis: This final episode of F Troop's first season--and the final one filmed in black and white--opens with a takeoff of the TV western Branded, as Sgt. O'Rourke (Forrest Tucker) is unceremoniously stripped of his rank. In flashback, we discover the reason for O'Rourke's disgrace: It seems that he had Read More

A Tiger Walks

Actors: Brian Keith, Vera Miles, Pamela Franklin, Sabu, Edward Andrews

Synopsis: After a dangerous tiger turns on its trainer and escapes from the circus, a small town in Texas finds itself in an uproar over its capture. As it is hunted by numerous parties, a young girl begins protesting and starts a nationwide movement to plead for the tiger's safety. As the situation gains Read More

The Bing Crosby Show [TV Series]

Actors: Bing Crosby, Beverly Garland

Synopsis: This short-lived 1964 series ran on ABC, and marked crooner Bing Crosby's second foray into network television after a 1954 variety show. Unlike its predecessor, this one was a conventional sitcom; it starred Crosby as Bing Collins, a onetime singer who had years ago left show business to live a Read More

Say One for Me

Actors: Bing Crosby, Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, Ray Walston, Les Tremayne

Synopsis: This musical comedy takes an off-beat religious turn as it tells the tale of a show-biz priest (Bing Crosby) who runs a Broadway theater for spiritually kindred show-folk. His problems begins when a vivacious but troubled chorine (Debbie Reynolds) shows up with a sad story about her ailing father Read More

Career

Actors: Dean Martin, Anthony Franciosa, Shirley MacLaine, Carolyn Jones, Joan Blackman

Synopsis: Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony. In this simplistic, backroom show-business-success saga, Anthony Franciosa plays Sam, a struggling young actor who will forsake his family and take any type of menial job Read More

The Last Hurrah

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter, Dianne Foster, Pat O'Brien, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy stars in John Ford's sentimental adaptation of Edwin O'Connor's novel about the final campaign of a big city mayor, loosely based upon the life of Boston politician James Curley. Tracy is Frank Skeffington, the political boss of an Eastern city dominated by Irish-Americans. Read More

Playhouse 90: Three Men on a Horse

Actors: Jack Carson, Carol Channing, Johnny Carson, Mona Freeman, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Future Tonight Show host Johnny Carson made one of his rare acting appearances in this 1957 Playhouse 90 adaptation of George Abbott and John Cecil Holm's 1935 stage farce Three Men on a Horse. Carson plays Erwin Trowbridge, a henpecked husband who makes his living writing sappy verse for a Read More

There's No Business Like Show Business

Actors: Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey, Johnnie Ray

Synopsis: Like Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), 20th Century-Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business is a "catalogue" film, its thinnish plot held together by an itinerary of Irving Berlin tunes. The story chronicles some twenty years in the lives of a showbiz family, headed by Dan Dailey and Ethel Merman Read More

It Happens Every Thursday

Actors: Loretta Young, John Forsythe, Frank McHugh, Edgar Buchanan, Palmer Lee [Gregg Palmer]

Synopsis: Excluding a brace of 1980s TV-movie appearances, It Happens Every Thursday was the final feature film appearance of Loretta Young. As radiantly beautiful at 40 as she'd been as a teen-aged ingenue, Young plays Jane McAvoy, the pregnant wife of big-city newspaper reporter Bob McAvoy (John Read More

A Lion Is in the Streets

Actors: James Cagney, Barbara Hale, Anne Francis, Warner Anderson, John McIntire

Synopsis: In 1945, James Cagney, through his independent production company, bought the rights to a lurid novel by Adria Locke Langley, concerning the rise of a Southern demagogue, loosely based on the political career of Huey Long. By the time the film finally went into production and was released in 1953 Read More

My Son, John

Actors: Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Robert Walker, Dean Jagger, Minor Watson

Synopsis: Filled with the kind of Red Scare propaganda that must have delighted members of McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, this drama chronicles the attempts of two All-American parents to save their son from the temptations of Communism. Unfortunately, they are too late. The arrogant and Read More

The Pace That Thrills

Actors: Bill Williams, Carla Balenda, Robert Armstrong, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: The title refers to the euphoric pleasures of motorcycle racing, a sport that is exploited to the breaking point in this film. Reckless racer Bill Williams and his cycle-designer buddy Steve Flagg come to blows over the lovely Carla Balenda (a blonde in this picture, a brunette in other films). Read More

The Tougher They Come

Actors: Wayne Morris, Preston S. Foster, Kay Buckley, William Bishop, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Set in a rugged Northwest logging camp, this drama follows the exploits of the lumberjack who inherits the camp. For a long time, he has been courting a pretty young thing, and now that she believes him wealthy, she decides to finally accept his proposal. When she finds out that the company has Read More

Paid in Full

Actors: Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, Diana Lynn, Eve Arden, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Lizabeth Scott and Diana Lynn are both effectively cast against type in Paid in Full. Scott plays Jane Langley, the spectacularly self-sacrificial older sister of selfish, reckless Nancy Langley (Lynn). Though she is in love with Bill Prentice (Robert Cummings), Jane gives him up to Nancy. And Read More

Mighty Joe Young

Actors: Terry Moore, Ben Johnson, Robert Armstrong, Frank McHugh, Mr. Joseph Young, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: Hoping to make the magic of King Kong happen again, the production team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack came up with the 1949 special-effects smorgasbord Mighty Joe Young. Robert Armstrong reprises his Kong portrayal of Carl Denham as hot-shot showbiz entrepreneur Max O'Hara. While in Read More

Miss Grant Takes Richmond

Actors: Lucille Ball, William Holden, Janis Carter, James Gleason, Gloria Henry

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is Miss Grant, an efficient but naïve secretary hired by William Holden. Ostensibly a legit real estate salesman, Holden is actually the brains of a bookie ring. It takes forever for Ball to tumble to what's going on, but when she does she settles matters in the same fashion as her Read More

The Velvet Touch

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Leo Genn, Claire Trevor, Sydney Greenstreet, Leon Ames

Synopsis: Based upon a story by William Mercer, The Velvet Touch stars Rosalind Russell as Valerie Stanton, a celebrated Broadway actress whose latest smash comedy is coming to the end of its successful run. The play's producer, Gordon Dunning, has produced all of Stanton's hits for the last decade, and Read More

Carnegie Hall

Actors: Emile Boreo, Marsha Hunt, Joseph Buloff, William Prince, Frank McHugh, Martha O'Driscoll, Walter Damrosch, Hans Yaray, Olin Downes

Synopsis: Auteur theorists who've charted the career of "cult" director Edgar G. Ulmer have seldom mentioned Carnegie Hall, simply because it was more expensive than most of Ulmer's films and thus can't be regarded a "low-budget masterpiece." The wafer-thin plotline concerns a young immigrant woman (Marsha Hunt Read More

Easy Come, Easy Go

Actors: Barry Fitzgerald, Diana Lynn, Sonny Tufts, Dick Foran, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Barry Fitzgerald's distinctive brand of Irish blarney, which was wonderful in small doses, leaned towards the precious and boring when he was given a leading role. In Easy Come, Easy Go, Fitzgerald portrays an inveterate horse player who refuses to allow his grown daughter (Diana Lynn) to get 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

The Hoodlum Saint

Actors: William Powell, Esther Williams, Angela Lansbury, James Gleason, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: William Powell plays a cynical con man who graduates from penny-ante operations to a big-time charity racket. The scam involves collecting money on behalf of St. Dismas, bringing Powell in close contact with several men of the cloth. As the racket rolls on, Powell is touched by the sincerity of Read More

The Runaround

Actors: Rod Cameron, Ella Raines, Broderick Crawford, Frank McHugh, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: The Runaround is a game attempt to return to the "screwball comedy" genre so popular in the 1930s. Rival detectives Kildane (Rod Cameron) and Prentice (Broderick Crawford) are hired simultaneously by millionaire Norman Hampton (Samuel J. Hinds). Their client informs the two gumshoes that he has a Read More

State Fair

Actors: Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine, Charles Winninger

Synopsis: Twentieth Century-Fox couldn't make a film version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Oklahoma in 1945--that particular Broadway musical would remain a "hot ticket" until the end of the decade--so the studio did the next best thing by hiring Rodgers & Hammerstein to pen the score for the Read More

A Medal for Benny

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Arturo de Cordova, J. Carrol Naish, Mikhail Rasumny, Fernando Alvarado

Synopsis: John Steinbeck cowrote this sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-wrenching study of small-town hypocrisy. Shiftless Benny (who is never seen) has been tossed out of his Southern California town by the "proper" citizens. Drafted into the army, Benny is killed in action--and now that he's a hero Read More

Bowery to Broadway

Actors: Maria Montez, Jack Oakie, Susanna Foster, Turhan Bey, Ann Blyth

Synopsis: Two Bowery vaudevillians compete to be the first to produce shows on Broadway. They might be friends were they not so convinced that each has stolen ideas from the others. This bouncy musical chronicles their rivalry and the success they find after they finally team up. Unfortunately the success Read More

Going My Way

Actors: Bing Crosby, Rise Stevens, Barry Fitzgerald, Gene Lockhart, Frank McHugh, James Brown

Synopsis: It took some doing to persuade the staunchly Catholic Bing Crosby to play a happy-go-lucky priest in Going My Way; luckily he acquiesced, winning an Academy Award in the process. Crosby is cast as Father Chuck O'Malley, newly arrived at rundown, heavily in debt St. Dominic's Church. Father Read More

Marine Raiders

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey, Frank McHugh, Barton MacLane

Synopsis: In this wartime propaganda film, two Marine officers and their company go on leave when the Army takes over during the Guadalcanal invasion. Their leave is spent in Australia where one of the officers falls in love with a woman. His pal, afraid that there will be no turning back for his buddy Read More

Her Cardboard Lover

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, George Sanders, Frank McHugh, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: No one will ever know what possessed MGM's reigning screen queen Norma Shearer to select the tired old stage farce Her Cardboard Lover as her final film. Set in Florida, the creaky plotline finds Consuelo Croyden (Shearer) attempting to make her disinterested sweetheart Tony Barling (George Read More

Four Mothers

Actors: Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains

Synopsis: Four Mothers was the last of three films inspired by Fannie Hurst's sentimental novel Sister Act. As in the earlier Four Daughters and Four Wives, the quartet of heroines-Ann, Kay, Thea and Emma Lemp-are enacted by real-life siblings Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola Lane, and by Gale Page as the Read More

Back Street

Actors: Charles Boyer, Margaret Sullavan, Richard Carlson, Frank McHugh, Tim Holt

Synopsis: Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullavan star in this adaptation of Fannie Hurst's tearjerking novel about a woman who chooses to stand beside a man who cannot marry her. Rae (Margaret Sullavan) is a woman from Ohio who meets a dashing gentleman from out of town, Walter (Charles Boyer). They soon fall Read More

All Through the Night

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne, Jane Darwell, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Humphrey Bogart plays Gloves Donahue, a rough-hewn but essentially decent New York gambler. The Runyonesque plot gets moving when Gloves tries to find out what's holding up his favorite restaurant's daily shipment of cheesecake. Paying a call on the bakery, Gloves stumbles into a Nazi spy ring Read More

Manpower

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Manpower was Warner Bros' latest reworking of 1932's Tiger Shark, with power-company linemen substituting for tuna fisherman. While repair some downed lines in a heavy thunderstorm, Hank McHenry (Edward G. Robinson) saves the life of his best pal Johnny Marshall (George Raft). While Johnny emerges Read More

City for Conquest

Actors: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Frank Craven, Donald Crisp, Arthur Kennedy

Synopsis: There are three key characters in Anatole Litvak's filmization of Aben Kandel's novel City for Conquest, as opposed to the six or more in the book -- but the real star, to a large extent, is New York City and its entire population. For purposes of the movie, however, the dramatic arc is linked to James Cagney Read More

I Love You Again

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Frank McHugh, Edmund Lowe, Donald Douglas

Synopsis: Those popular MGM co-stars William Powell and Myrna Loy take a break from their usual Thin Man duties to star in the zany comedy I Love You Again. The film opens with Loy prepared to divorce her dull businessman husband Powell. A blow on the head causes Powell to remember his former life as a Read More

The Fighting 69th

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, George Brent, Jeffrey Lynn, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Officially, America had no intention of entering the Second World War in 1940: Why, then, were there so many "preparedness" pictures like The Fighting 69th? This film, based on the experiences of military priest Father Duffy (Pat O'Brien), is set during World War I. The US 69th division was a Read More

'Til We Meet Again

Actors: Merle Oberon, George Brent, Pat O'Brien, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Binnie Barnes

Synopsis: 'Til We Meet Again is an inflated remake of 1932's One Way Passage. As in the original, the hero is a convicted murderer en route to the death house by way of a merchant ship; the heroine is suffering from a terminal illness. Once more, hero and heroine fall in love, each keeping the facts of his Read More

Virginia City

Actors: Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins, Randolph Scott, Humphrey Bogart, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Promoted as a follow-up to the popular 1939 western Dodge City (which, indeed, was left wide open for a sequel in its closing scenes), Virginia City bears only surface resemblance to the earlier film. Indeed, the only discerning links between the two pictures are the western setting and the Read More

Dust Be My Destiny

Actors: John Garfield, Priscilla Lane, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Billy Halop

Synopsis: John Garfield once more plays a social outcast who's had nothing but lousy breaks. Released from prison for a crime he didn't commit, Garfield is promptly arrested as a vagrant and sent to a work farm. He falls in love with Priscilla Lane, stepdaughter of the farm's no-good foreman. Garfield Read More

Indianapolis Speedway

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, John Payne, Gale Page, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: In this drama, a remake of The Crowd Roars, two auto racing brothers become rivals on the racetrack when the older brother tries to keep his younger one from dropping out of school and becoming a driver too. The stubborn younger brother just gets behind the wheel of someone else's car and the race Read More

Four Wives

Actors: Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, John Garfield, Frank McHugh, May Robson, Eddie Albert, Priscilla Lane

Synopsis: In this drama, the sequel to Four Daughters, the daughters are now adults. Three of the sisters rally together to find a new love for the fourth sister whose husband recently committed suicide. The widowed woman then discovers that she is pregnant with her deceased husband's child and this causes Read More

Wings of the Navy

Actors: George Brent, Olivia de Havilland, John Payne, Frank McHugh, John Litel

Synopsis: Filmed on-location at the Naval Air Training Stations in San Diego, CA, and Pensacola, FL, this black-and-white Warner Bros. drama was dedicated to the U.S. Naval Aviation Service and probably served as propaganda when it was released in 1939, right before the U.S. involvement in WWII. Submarine Read More

The Roaring Twenties

Actors: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane, Jeffrey Lynn, Gladys George

Synopsis: Based upon an idea by Broadway columnist Mark Hellinger, The Roaring Twenties opens during World War I as doughboys Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), and George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) discuss what they will do when the war is over. Bartlett wants to go back to repairing Read More

On Your Toes

Actors: Vera Zorina, Eddie Albert, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, James Gleason

Synopsis: In this musical, a composer abandons vaudeville in favor of the legitimate stage. He soon finds himself entangle with a Russian ballet company that contains his old childhood lover, but when the troupe mistake him for a traitor trouble ensues. Perhaps the film is most notable for Balanchine's Read More

Dodge City

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Sheridan, Bruce Cabot, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: This landmark western -- which, along with Stagecoach, has often been credited with revitalizing what had become a stagnant genre -- stars Errol Flynn as Wade Hatton, a cattle man who arrives in the frontier community of Dodge City, which is overrun by footloose cowboys and outlaws. When Hatton Read More

Daughters Courageous

Actors: John Garfield, Claude Rains, Fay Bainter, Donald Crisp, May Robson

Synopsis: This family drama features the same cast and crew from the highly successful Four Daughters, but it isn't actually a sequel. Whereas the first film was a chronicle of the Lemp family, this one centers on the Masters family. This film is also characterized by a much happier ending than its Read More

Swing Your Lady

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Louise Fazenda, Penny Singleton, Leon Weaver, Ronald Reagan

Synopsis: This musical comedy is based on a modestly successful Broadway play and stars Humphrey Bogart as wrestling promoter Ed Hatch. Ed is in Kentucky with his dopey, muscle-bound client Joe "The Wrestling Hercules" Skopapoulous (Nat Pendleton). The two are further accompanied by Ed's assistant Shiner (Allen Jenkins Read More

Little Miss Thoroughbred

Actors: John Litel, Ann Sheridan, Frank McHugh, Janet Chapman, Eric Stanley

Synopsis: In this heartwarming tearjerker, an adorable orphan becomes determined to find her father, whom she is convinced is still alive. She then leaves the nuns who have been her guardians and sets out on her quest. She never finds her real father, but she does manage to find a soft-hearted gambler who Read More

He Couldn't Say No

Actors: Frank McHugh, Jane Wyman, Cora Witherspoon, Diana Lewis, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: In this comedy, a milquetoast office clerk is forcibly betrothed to a woman by her overbearing mother. The trouble begins when the man buys a rather erotic statue of a woman. The mother and her daughter are so appalled that they leave. The man loves his statue and soon learns that the model is the Read More

Four Daughters

Actors: Claude Rains, May Robson, Priscilla Lane, Lola Lane, Rosemary Lane

Synopsis: Fannie Hurst's Sister Act was the source for this money-making Warners weeper. The four daughters of the title are played by the Lane Sisters--Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola--and by Gale Page. All are musical prodigies, and all are daughters of master-musician Claude Rains. To help make ends meet, Rains Read More

Boy Meets Girl

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Marie Wilson, Ralph Bellamy, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Once a staple of summer stock and community theatres, Bella and Samuel Spewack's Broadway farce Boy Meets Girl dates rather badly when seen today. The 1938 movie version is also a bit mildewed, though it is saved by the dynamo-like energy of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. The stars are cast as Read More

Valley of the Giants

Actors: Wayne Morris, Claire Trevor, Frank McHugh, Alan Hale, Donald Crisp, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: This third film version of Peter B. Kyne's Valley of the Giants benefits from the breahtaking Technicolor location photography of Sol Polito. Hero Bill Cardigan (Wayne Morris) is a lifetime resident of California's Tall Timber country. When evil land-despoiler Howard Fallon (Charles Bickford) Read More

Ever Since Eve

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Marion Davies, Patsy Kelly, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: A lovely stenographer, tired of men falling all over her, tries to make herself homely in this comedy. With her horn rim specs and tweed suits, she finds that she is actually able to get some work done. She begins working as a writer's secretary to help him make his deadline. When the writer Read More

Mr. Dodd Takes the Air

Actors: Kenny Baker, Alice Brady, Jane Wyman, Henry O'Neill, Ferris Taylor

Synopsis: In this satire, an electrician from a tiny town impresses a New York radio sponsor with his booming baritone singing voice. He immediately contracts the worker to come to the Big Apple. Unfortunately, he suffers from bronchitis that changes him into a tenor. He still goes on the air, but everyone Read More

Marry the Girl

Actors: Mary Boland, Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert, Carolyn Hughes, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: The disarmingly zany Marry the Girl was one of the better Hugh Herbert "B"-vehicles for Warner Bros. Much of the story takes place within the walls of the ramshackle newspaper syndicate owned by the screwball Radway family. Purportedly the head of the operation, John B. Radway (Hugh Herbert) is Read More

Submarine D-1

Actors: Pat O'Brien, George Brent, Wayne Morris, Frank McHugh, Doris Weston

Synopsis: With the considerable input of ex-Navy officer Frank Wead (who wrote the script) and technical adviser Cmdr. G. W. D. Dashielle, Submarine D-1 is far more realistic than the usual run of maritime melodramas. Pat O'Brien and Wayne Morris star as Butch Rogers and Sock McGillis, old submarine hands Read More

Moonlight Murder

Actors: Chester Morris, Leo Carrillo, Frank McHugh, Benita Hume

Synopsis: Moonlight Murder takes place virtually in its entirety at the Hollywood Bowl. Despite dire warnings by a sinister mystic (Pedro de Cordoba), opera-star Gino D'Acosta (Leo Carrillo) insists that he will sing in the Bowl's current production of Il Trovatore. He gets no farther than the "Anvil Read More

Three Men on a Horse

Actors: Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Carolyn Hughes, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: All but forgotten today, the George Abbott-John Cecil Holm stage comedy Three Men on a Horse was once a staple of the community theatre and summer-stock circuit (a 1958 TV production starred no less than Johnny Carson). Though a faithful adaptation of the Broadway original, this 1936 film version Read More

Freshman Love

Actors: Frank McHugh, Patricia Ellis, Warren Hull, Joseph Cawthorn, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In this lively campus comedy, a stern rowing coach sets up a rigorous practice schedule for his team and insists they lead strictly disciplined lives (meaning no girls and no fun) so that they will become winners and thereby save his endangered job. Unfortunately, a seductive coed keeps leading Read More

Snowed Under

Actors: George Brent, Genevieve Tobin, Glenda Farrell, Patricia Ellis, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: In this comedy, a blocked writer decides he needs a little peace and quiet to spark his creativity so that he can write the final act of his play. Unfortunately, he no sooner settles down in his remote cabin when his first wife comes to call. She is followed by his second wife. A real ruckus Read More

Stage Struck

Actors: Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Warren William, Frank McHugh, Jeanne Madden

Synopsis: Stage Struck is one of the least known of Busby Berkeley's Warner Bros. musicals, chiefly because there are no major production numbers. The plot is that old saw about young, unknown hopefuls who put on a Big Show and become overnight stars. Alas, the magic didn't work for leading lady Jeanne Madden Read More

Bullets or Ballots

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Barton MacLane, Frank McHugh, Joseph King, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Blondell

Synopsis: Two-fisted New York police detective Edward G. Robinson is so volatile that he manages to get himself thrown off the force in disgrace. The local gangsters are delighted, in that Robinson had been breathing down their necks. When Robinson goes to crime boss Barton MacLaine insisting that he's Read More

Page Miss Glory

Actors: Marion Davies, Pat O'Brien, Dick Powell, Mary Astor, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions moved from MGM to Warners with Page Miss Glory--along with Cosmopolitan's biggest commodity, actress Marion Davies. The plotline has something to do with a composite photo prepared for a magazine contest: The combined facial attributes of Garbo, Dietrich Read More

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Actors: Ian Hunter, James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Grant Mitchell, Mickey Rooney, Victor Jory, Ross Alexander, Joe E. Brown, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dick Powell

Synopsis: Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was transferred to the screen by Warner Bros. in 1935. Like most of Shakespeare's comedies, the story contains several seemingly unrelated plotlines, all tied together by a single unifying event, in this Read More

Stars over Broadway

Actors: Pat O'Brien, James Melton, Jane Froman, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: This musical chronicles the rise to stardom of a humble bellhop after he is discovered by a talent agent. Though he becomes a very popular singer of contemporary songs, the young man really aspires to a career in opera. At first his manager is appalled and refuses to let him, but when his Read More

Three Kids and a Queen

Actors: May Robson, Frankie Darro, Charlotte Henry, William Benedict, Billy Burrud

Synopsis: The indomitable May Robson is firmly in the driver's seat of this Runyonesque comedy-drama. While riding through Central Park, peppery millionairess Mary Jane Baxter (Robson) is thrown from her carriage and rescued by three scruffy orphans (Frankie Darro, Billy Benedict, Billy Burrud). The kids Read More

Devil Dogs of the Air

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay, Frank McHugh, Helen Lowell

Synopsis: Warner Bros.' Devil Dogs of the Air is very much a "formula" picture -- but what a wonderful formula it is! James Cagney plays reckless stunt flyer Tommy O'Toole, who is encouraged to join the Marine Flying Corps by his old Brooklyn buddy Lt. William Brannigan (Pat O'Brien). An undeniably talented Read More

Gold Diggers of 1935

Actors: Dick Powell, Gloria Stuart, Adolphe Menjou, Glenda Farrell, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: With little plot but incredible photography and choreography, Gold Diggers of 1935 was exactly what you would expect a Busby Berkeley movie to be--visually stimulating, awe-inspiring and almost Freudian in its obsession toward perfection. The Titanic scale of Berkeleian choreography was especially Read More

Maybe It's Love

Actors: Gloria Stuart, Ross Alexander, Frank McHugh, Helen Lowell, Phillip Reed

The Irish in Us

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Olivia de Havilland, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: This fast-paced Warner Bros. comedy stars James Cagney and Pat O'Brien as brothers who fight over the same girl. Mrs. O'Hara (Mary Gordon) is the loving mother of three sons: fireman Mike (Frank McHugh), policeman Pat (O'Brien), and the boxing promoter Danny (Cagney). Mike wants to marry Lucille Read More

Six-Day Bike Rider

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Maxine Doyle, Frank McHugh, Gordon Westcott, Arthur Ayleswofth

Synopsis: A popular fad of the early 1930s provided the framework for this Joe E. Brown romp. Hoping to impress his girlfriend Phyllis (Maxine Doyle), champion bicyclist Wilfred Simpson (Brown) enters a bike-racing marathon at Madison Square Garden. Newsreel shots of genuine six-day races are incorporated Read More

Smarty

Actors: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Edward Everett Horton, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: A battling married couple come to blows and afterwards the battered wife seeks legal council. This drama chronicles the events that take place afterwards. Her lawyer immediately suggests she divorce her pugnacious husband. During the proceedings she and the attorney fall in love and afterward Read More

6 Day Bike Rider

Return of the Terror

Actors: Mary Astor, Lyle Talbot, John Halliday, Frank McHugh, J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: An Edgar Wallace yarn was the basis for the uncharacteristic Warner Bros. melodrama Return of the Terror. Hoping to escape prosecution for a series of poison murders, Dr. Redmayne (John Halliday) feigns insanity at his trial. The audience knows that Redmayne is innocent, so when he escapes from Read More

The Merry Wives of Reno

Actors: Margaret Lindsay, Donald Woods, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: The Merry Wives of Reno are Madge (Margaret Lindsay), Bunny (Glenda Farrell) and Lois (Ruth Donnelly). Madge is a comparative newlywed who heads to the "divorce capital" of Reno, Nevada after a spat with her young husband Frank (Donald Woods). Likewise in Reno is Bunny (Glenda Farrell), who has a Read More

Here Comes the Navy

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Gloria Stuart, Frank McHugh, Dorothy Tree

Synopsis: Actually this film should have been titled "Here Comes Jimmy Cagney Again, so Duck!". James Cagney is a bantam-cock sailor who runs up against chief petty officer Pat O'Brien. Seems that Cagney and O'Brien had come to blows early in the film when O'Brien stole Cagney's date at a dance hall. Read More

Let's Be Ritzy

Actors: Lew Ayres, Patricia Ellis, Isabel Jewell, Frank McHugh, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Lew Ayres and Patricia Ellis are the "official" stars of Let's Be Ritzy, but the film is dominated by Frank McHugh as brash radio performer Bill Damroy. In his efforts to appease his social-climbing girlfriend Betty (Isabel Jewell), Damroy gets young hero Jimmie (Lew Ayres) mixed up in all sorts Read More

Happiness Ahead

Actors: Dick Powell, Frank McHugh, Josephine Hutchinson, John Halliday, Dorothy Dare

Synopsis: Josephine Hutchinson is a beautiful heiress bored by her stifling lifestyle. She bolts her family mansion on New Years' Eve and heads for a boisterous nightclub, where she meets blue-collar worker Dick Powell. Hutchinson pretends to be poor, and soon she and Powell are pitching woo. Powell has Read More

Heat Lightning

Actors: Aline MacMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston S. Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell

Synopsis: An interesting precursor to such films as The Petrified Forest and Bus Stop, Heat Lightning takes place in a remote California-desert gas station-café. Several strange characters pass through the establishment's portals during one fateful 24-hour period, including cad-and-bounder George (Preston S. Foster Read More

Fashions of 1934

Actors: Bette Davis, William Powell, Veree Teasdale, Reginald Owen, Hugh Herbert, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Now known simply as Fashions, the lavish Warner Bros. musical Fashions of 1934 stars the unlikely but copacetic team of William Powell and Bette Davis. It all begins when genial con artist Sherwood Nash (Powell) transfers his base of operations from New York to Paris. Sensing that the fashion Read More

The Telegraph Trail

Actors: John Wayne, Marceline Day, Frank McHugh, Otis Harlan, Albert J. Smith, Yakima Canutt

Synopsis: Directed by Tenny Wright, The Telegraph Trail features John Wayne as John Trent, a calvary scout who has been sent to put a stop to sleazy opportunist Gus Lynch's (Albert J. Smith) crooked business dealings. Lynch (Smith) has convinced High Wolf (Yakima Canutt), a local Native American tribe Read More

Lilly Turner

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: This weepie, adapted from a play by Philip Dunning and George Abbott, is a vehicle for Ruth Chatterton as the titular Lilly. Her sufferings begin when she marries a man who later turns out to be a bigamist. She has their baby but marries another man so the child can have a father. The new husband Read More

The House on 56th Street

Actors: Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Gene Raymond, John Halliday, Margaret Lindsay

Synopsis: This melodrama chronicles three decades in the life of the New York located title house beginning at the turn of the century when a chorine falls in love with a wealthy young man. He loves her too and this inspires the lass to leave her sugar daddy, marry and move into the beautiful home that is Read More

Hold Me Tight

Actors: James Dunn, Sally Eilers, Frank McHugh, June Clyde, Ken Thomson

Synopsis: In this family drama, a married couple work in a department store. He is a shipping clerk; she works in the dress department. The husband loses his job when he is framed for a robbery by a sleazy security guard. His unemployment spawns marital discord until the very end when the truth is at last Read More

Son of a Sailor

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Jean Muir, Thelma Todd, Johnny Mack Brown, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown is a sailor who hopes to match the accomplishments of his seaman father. Unfortunately, Joe is perhaps the clumsiest gob ever to sail the seven seas. Nor can he steer clear of trouble: Through a series of wholly unbelievable circumstances, Joe finds himself alone on deck of a ship Read More

Grand Slam

Actors: Paul Lukas, Loretta Young, Frank McHugh, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Paul Lukas plays a nightclub headwaiter who rises to fame as a bridge expert. He marries hat check girl Loretta Young, likewise a card fanatic. Lukas and Young find themselves vying for the national bridge championship, which results in the expected frictions. All is forgiven in the climactic Read More

Convention City

Actors: Joan Blondell, Adolphe Menjou, Dick Powell, Mary Astor, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: Practically every member of the Warner Bros. stock company except Glenda Farrell shows up in the rowdy, raunchy pre-Code comedy Convention City. Joan Blondell plays Nancy Lorraine, an enterprising lass who is employed by a big-city hotel as a "hostess" for out-of-town conventioneers. She spends a Read More

Tomorrow at Seven

Actors: Chester Morris, Vivienne Osborne, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: Tomorrow at Seven is one of those "you will die at the appointed hour" murder mysteries which flooded the market in the early 1930s. An unknown killer considerately informs his victims-to-be of their imminent demises by mailing them the Ace of Spades-hence his nom-de-murder, "Mr. Ace." Novelist Chester Morris Read More

Havana Widows

Actors: Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Guy Kibbee, Lyle Talbot, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: The wonderful Warner Bros. stock company goes through its customarily breezy paces in Havana Widows. Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell star as Mae and Sadie, a couple of hard-boiled dames who support themselves by shaking down wealthy and susceptible older men in Havana. Their current target is Read More

Footlight Parade

Actors: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: The last--and to some aficionados, the best--of choreographer Busby Berkeley's three Warner Bros. efforts of 1933, Footlight Parade stars James Cagney as a Broadway musical comedy producer. Cagney is unceremoniously put out of business when talking pictures arrive. To keep his head above water Read More

Parachute Jumper

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Leo Carrillo, Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: Grounded daredevil pilot Douglas Fairbanks Jr. secures a job protecting shady Leo Carrillo from his many enemies. Carrillo takes a liking to the young man and promotes him to a flying job--smuggling narcotics into the United States. Fairbanks eventually redeems himself with the help of good girl Bette Davis Read More

Elmer the Great

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Patricia Ellis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Preston S. Foster

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown plays Elmer Kane, a rookie ballplayer with the Chicago Cubs whose ego is matched only by his appetite. Because he is not only vain but naive, Elmer's teammates take great delight in pulling practical jokes on him. Still, he is so valuable a player that the Cubs management hides the Read More

Ex-Lady

Actors: Bette Davis, Gene Raymond, Frank McHugh, Monroe Owsley, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: In this romantic sex-comedy from director Robert Florey, Bette Davis stars as Helen Bauer, a free-spirited, self-sufficient feminist who would rather pursue her career as a graphic artist than settle down and marry Don Peterson (Gene Raymond), the advertising writer she loves, out of fear that Read More

The Mystery of the Wax Museum

Actors: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Allen Vincent, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: The Mystery of the Wax Museum begins in London in the 1920s. Lionel Atwill plays Ivan Igor, a brilliant sculptor who manages a wax museum. Regarding his historical creations as his friends, Igor refuses the entreaties of his business partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), to turn his labor-of-love 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

Private Jones

Actors: Lee Tracy, Donald Cook, Gloria Stuart, Shirley Grey, Emma Dunn

Synopsis: In this war comedy, the reluctant hero finds himself drafted and forced to fight the Germans whom he feels he has nothing against. He spends as much time as possible working in the kitchen and loving the commander's wife on the sly. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Union Depot

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Alan Hale, George Rosener

Synopsis: A Grand Hotel derivation set in a major metropolitan train terminal, Union Depot features most of the reliable Warner Bros. stock company. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. stars as a slick thief; Joan Blondell costars as a stranded chorus girl; Alan Hale Sr. is featured as a phony baron absconding with Read More

Blessed Event

Actors: Lee Tracy, Mary Brian, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Ned Sparks

Synopsis: Blessed Event is one of several early-1930s films inspired by the meteoric rise to fame of gossip columnist Walter Winchell--and like most such films, its title is based on a Winchell tag line. Lee Tracy plays a glib-tongued reporter who is conducting a feud with popular singer Dick Powell (making Read More

The Crowd Roars

Actors: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Eric Linden, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: Howard Hawks directed this fast-paced auto racing drama. Joe Greer (James Cagney) is a top-ranked race car driver; his younger brother Eddie (Eric Linden) wants to follow in Joe's footsteps, but Joe knows his brother's reckless side and tries to keep him away from the racer's life. Eddie, however Read More

Life Begins

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

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

One Way Passage

Actors: William Powell, Kay Francis, Frank McHugh, Aline MacMahon, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: William Powell plays a condemned murderer who is being transported from Hong Kong to San Quentin by way of a luxury liner. Also on board is the lovely Kay Francis, who is suffering from a fatal heart condition. The sympathetic detective (Warren Hymer) escorting Powell allows the prisoner to roam Read More

The Dark Horse

Actors: Warren William, Bette Davis, Guy Kibbee, Frank McHugh, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: Alfred E. Green directs the political satire The Dark Horse, starring Bette Davis early in her career. The progressive party nominates moronic candidate Zachary Hicks (Guy Kibbee) for governor. Party secretary Kay Russell (Davis) wants to hire her sweetheart, Hal Blake (Warren William), for Read More

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain

Actors: Ann Dvorak, Lee Tracy, Richard Cromwell, Guy Kibbee, Leslie Fenton

Synopsis: In this strange, convoluted tale, a hotel clerk ends up pregnant and alone after she has a brief fling with a wealthy playboy. Shortly after her daughter's birth, she hooks up with a criminal. She does not realize that the good-hearted bellboy with whom she works secretly loves her. When the Read More

High Pressure

Actors: William Powell, Evelyn Brent, George Sidney, Guy Kibbee, Evelyn Knapp

Synopsis: Based on Abel Kandel's 1931 play Hot Money, this delightfully daffy comedy from Warner Bros. is a typical example of that studio's turbo-charged dialogue and irreverent attitude. William Powell, at the top of his game here, plays Gar Evans, the "world's foremost promoter," hired by Jewish Read More

Millie

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Lilyan Tashman, Robert Ames, Joan Blondell, John Halliday

Synopsis: Yet another variation on the already then-ancient Madame X theme, this early talkie stars Helen Twelvetrees in the title role, a small-town girl marrying a New York City businessman (James Hall). The union produces a daughter, but ends when Millie catches her husband with a mistress (Marie Read More

The Wide Open Spaces

Kiss Me Again

Actors: Bernice Claire, Walter Pidgeon, Edward Everett Horton, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: In this musical, based on a famed operetta, a humble shop girl jilts her lover because his aristocratic family disapproves of the match. She then goes on to become a renowned opera star. Only then is she able to marry her lover. Songs include: "Kiss Me Again", "The Mascot of the Troop", "The Time Read More

Bad Company

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Ricardo Cortez, John Garrick, Paul Hurst, Frank Conroy

Synopsis: Writer/director Tay Garnett reunited the stars of his fabulously successful Her Man (1930) for the 1931 RKO crime drama Bad Company. Ricardo Cortez plays a ruthless, near-psychotic gangster who withal follows his own code of honor. Helen Twelvetrees co-stars as a trusting young woman who marries Read More

Corsair

Actors: Chester Morris, William Austin, Frank McHugh, Emmett Corrigan

Synopsis: Of interest mainly because of the talent involved, this film remains a tepid bootleg melodrama about a small-town football hero attempting to prove that he is as ruthless as his rich girlfriend's father. Spoiled Alison Corning (Alison Loyd) persuades her Wall Street banker father (Emmett Corrigan) Read More

Bright Lights

Synopsis: In this light-hearted musical, an early color film, a successful actress tires of the bustle and hustle of her tawdry life and settles down to what she thinks is the blissful mundaneness of married life. Unfortunately, the actual drudgery of wifedom takes her by surprise and domestic turmoil Read More

Men of the Sky

Actors: Irene Delroy, Jack Whiting, Bramwell Fletcher, John St. Polis, Edwin Maxwell

Synopsis: In this drama, the love affair between an American pilot and a French spy is chronicled. Also involved is the spy's father, also an agent. Although the story begins happily, by the film's end, tragedy ensues. Songs include: "Every Little While," "Boys March," "Stolen Dreams," and "You Ought to See Read More

The Front Page

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: This first of four film versions of the Ben Hecht/Charlrd MacArthur Broadway hit stars Adolphe Menjou as explosive Chicago newspaper-editor Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien as his star reporter Hildy Johnson. Hildy is on the verge of getting married and retiring from Burns' dirty little tabloid, but Read More

Up for Murder

Actors: Lew Ayres, Genevieve Tobin, Purnell Pratt, Richard Tucker, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a cub reporter falls for the society editor who is already the mistress of the publisher. The two men begin a rivalry that culminates with the publisher's death. Of course, the reporter stands trial. He is sentenced to hang. Fortunately, he is proven innocent before the floor Read More

Traveling Husbands

Actors: Evelyn Brent, Frank Albertson, Constance Cummings, Hugh Herbert, Carl Miller

Synopsis: The peripatetic spouses referred to in the title are all travelling salesmen, scooting to and from their wives via train. In Detroit on business, young unmarried salesman Barry (Frank Albertson) finds himself at a wild party where his fellow drummers, husbands all, are being entertained by a bevy Read More

Going Wild

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Lawrence Gray, Laura Lee, Walter Pidgeon, Ona Munson

Synopsis: In this comedy, a luckless newspaper reporter heads for a coastal resort and finds himself mistaken for a famous dare-devil pilot by two gorgeous girls. Though he knows, better, he willingly does nothing to deny it. Rollicking trouble follows when he discovers that someone is trying to kill the Read More

The Dawn Patrol

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., James Finlayson, Neil Hamilton, Gardner James, William Janney, Edmund Breon, Clyde Cook

Synopsis: Set during World War I, The Dawn Patrol is a study of the pressures and pitfalls of authority. A British Royal Flying Corp squadron commander (Neil Hamilton) is compelled by the higher-ups to send his boys out in dangerous, rickety aircraft. He is tormented by the responsibility, but does his duty Read More

The Widow from Chicago

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Alice White, Neil Hamilton, Frank McHugh, Lee Shumway

Synopsis: The Widow from Chicago is Polly Henderson (Alice White) -- only she isn't really a widow and in fact has never been married. It's like this: Polly's police-detective brother Jimmy (Harold Goodwin), hoping to get the goods on the criminal gang run by vice lord Dominic (Edward G. Robinson) Read More

Top Speed

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Bernice Claire, Jack Whiting, Frank McHugh, Laura Lee

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a bored office clerk finds much-needed excitement by masquerading as a millionaire. To do so, he borrows the speedboat of his girl friend's father. Slapstick mayhem ensues on the water until the lad ends up winning the big race. Songs include: "Goodness Gracious," "I'll Read More

College Lovers

Actors: Jack Whiting, Frank McHugh, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Russell Hopton, Wade Boteler

Synopsis: In this youthful sports comedy two football jocks, Eddie Smith and Tiny Courtlay are grid iron rivals competing to win the heart of coed Mary Hutton who loves a nerd. In the film's climax. Eddie and Tiny quibble over which of them will get to take the ball for the final yard in the big game. Read More