Frank ShannonFilmography

A Dangerous Profession

Actors: George Raft, Ella Raines, Pat O'Brien, Bill Williams

Synopsis: The Dangerous Profession of the title is the bail-bond business. George Raft stars as Kane, a former cop turned professional bail-raiser. When one of his customers, robbery suspect Brackett (Bill Williams), is mysteriously murdered, Kane wants to know why. His reasons are twofold: he has an Read More

Crack-Up

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Ray Collins, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: Art critic and forgery expert George Steele (Pat O'Brien) is apprehended by the police as he desperately tries to break into the Manhattan Museum in the opening scene of Crack-Up, a noir mystery directed by Irving Reis. Steele does not understand his own bizarre actions, but explains that he was Read More

The Iron Major

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Ruth Warrick, Robert Ryan

Synopsis: The Iron Major is the saga of WW1 hero-cum-football coach Frank Cavanaugh, played with his usual no-nonsense professionalism by Pat O'Brien. Leaving home and hearth behind to serve his country in the Great War, Cavanaugh goes on to lead the Dartmouth, Boston College and Fordham football teams to Read More

The Phantom [Serial]

Actors: Jeanne Bates

Synopsis: Lee Falk and Ray Moore's famous syndicated comic strip hero came to the screen in this 15 chapter serial produced by Rudolph C. Flotow for Columbia Pictures. Displaying unusually good judgment, the studio cast the still strapping former silent screen cowboy Tom Tyler as Geoffrey Prescott who, like Read More

Batman [Serial]

Actors: Michael Vallon, Lewis Wilson, John Maxwell, Douglas Croft, Karl Hackett, J. Carrol Naish, Ted Oliver, George Cheseboro

Synopsis: Bob Kane's 1939 Detective Comics superhero The Batman came to the screens in serial form courtesy of Columbia Pictures and producer Rudolph C. Flothow. In time-honored serial fashion, Flothow chose Lewis Wilson for the title role, a relative newcomer, but one with an amazing facial resemblance to Read More

Federal Fugitives

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Doris Day, Victor Varconi, Charles Wilson, George Carleton

Synopsis: Silent film stalwart Neil Hamilton heads the cast of the PRC "special" Federal Fugitives. Hamilton plays secret service officer Captain Madison, assigned to investigate the deaths of three of his colleagues in highly suspicious plane crashes. Posing as an airplane manufacturer, Madison keeps a Read More

Rage in Heaven

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Lucile Watson, Oscar Homolka

Synopsis: A Rage in Heaven was based on a novel by James Hilton, who thanks to Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr. Chips was a "hot property" in 1941. Going through many of the same paces he'd trod in Night Must Fall, Robert Montgomery stars as British steel mill owner Philip Monrell, whose outward charm and Read More

Rawhide Rangers

Actors: Johnny Mack Brown, Fuzzy Knight, Kathryn Adams, Nell O'Day

Synopsis: Rawhide Rangers is a satisfyingly equitable blend of western action, music and comedy relief. The villains are a group of frontier businessmen who set up a "protective" organization for the purpose of extorting money from the local ranchers. Enter hero Johnny Mack Brown, who has arrived in town to Read More

Unfinished Business

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

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

Flash Gordon: The Peril From Planet Mongo

Synopsis: All-American space hero Flash Gordon (played by Larry "Buster" Crabbe) once again does battle with the devious Ming the Merciless (Charles B. Middleton) in this vintage sci-fi adventure. Ming has, as usual, set his sights on conquering the Earth, and has designed a new weapon with this in mind Read More

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 04 - The Destroyer Ray

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 05 - The Palace of Terror

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 03 - Walking Bombs

Flash Gordon: The Purple Death From Outer Space

Synopsis: Interstellar good guy Flash Gordon (Larry "Buster" Crabbe) and evil incarnate Ming the Merciless (Charles B. Middleton) do battle once again in this vintage science fiction epic. A strange new plague known as the Purple Death is sweeping the globe and Flash; his girlfriend, Dale Arden (Carol Hughes Read More

Wildcat Bus

Actors: Fay Wray, Paul Guilfoyle, Don Costello, Paul McGrath

Synopsis: Seven years after helping to rescue RKO Radio from bankruptcy as the heroine of King Kong, Fay Wray returned to the studio as star of the modest programmer Wildcat Bus. Wray is cast as Ted Dawson, whose father Charlie (Oscar O'Shea) runs a lucrative bus line. Before long, however, the Dawsons' Read More

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 02 - Freezing Torture

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 01 - The Purple Death

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 06 - Flaming Death

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 07 - The Land of the Dead

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 11 - Stark Treachery

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 09 - The Pool of Peril

The Return of Frank James

Actors: Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Jackie Cooper, John Carradine, Henry Hull

Synopsis: This Technicolor sequel to 1939's Jesse James does without the services of the earlier film's star Tyrone Power, who after all was shot dead by that "dirty little coward" Bob Ford (John Carradine). Repeating his portrayal of western outlaw Frank James, Henry Fonda is promoted to top billing here. Read More

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 08 - The Fiery Abyss

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 12 - Doom of the Dictator

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe [Serial]

Synopsis: Amid the political chaos sweeping across the world in 1939, a new terror arises -- the Purple Death -- and people around the world succumb at random by the hundreds, then thousands, with the identifying symptom being a purple spot on the victim. The authorities are baffled as to the cause or the Read More

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 10 - The Death Mist

Torchy Runs for Mayor

Actors: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Tom Kennedy, John Miljan, Frank Shannon

Synopsis: Torchy Runs for Mayor stars Glenda Farrell as fast-lipped newspaper reporter Torchy Blaine. In possession of a crooked political boss' "little red book" of crimes and misdemeanors, Torchy can't convince any of the newspapers in her city to print the contents. She has to rely on a small-town Read More

Torchy Plays with Dynamite

Actors: Jane Wyman, Allen Jenkins, Tom Kennedy, Sheila Bromley, Joe Cunningham

Synopsis: Torchy Plays with Dynamite was the final entry in Warner Bros.' "Torchy Blane" series, based on characters created by Frederick Nebel. Taking over from series star Glenda Farrell, Jane Wyman imitates Farrell to the nth degree, right down to the mile-a-minute dialogue delivery and the angle of her Read More

The Night of Nights

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Olympe Bradna, Roland Young, Reginald Gardiner, George E. Stone

Synopsis: Directed by Lewis Milestone nine years after taking home the best director Academy Award for All Quiet on the Western Front, this backstage drama stars Pat O'Brien as Dan O'Farrell, a boozy Broadway producer who makes his way back to show-business after a long absence. As a young man, O'Farrell Read More

Union Pacific

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston, Lynne Overman, Brian Donlevy

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille takes us back to the 1860s, then rebuilds the first intercontinental railroad in Union Pacific. The real-life spectacle is occasionally interrupted by the fictional adventures of railroad overseer Joel McCrea, postmistress Barbara Stanwyck (with an incredible Irish brogue), and Read More

Blondes at Work

Actors: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Tom Kennedy, Rosella Towne, Donald Briggs

Synopsis: Blondes at Work is number four in Warner Bros.' lively "Torchy Blane" series. Glenda Farrell returns as girl reporter Torchy Blane, she of the mile-a-minute mouth, while Barton MacLane is back as Torchy's boyfriend/sparring partner, police lieutenant Steve McBride. The story revolves around Read More

Mars Attacks the World

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles B. Middleton, Frank Shannon, Beatrice Roberts

Synopsis: This science fiction film features the revenge of Ming who vowed to destroy the Earth. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Deadly Ray From Mars

Synopsis: You wouldn't know it from the title, but Deadly Ray From Mars is a feature-length abridgement of the 15-episode serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. Space traveller Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe), his lady love Dale Arden (Jean Rogers), and scientific genius Dr. Zarkov (Frank Shannon), blast off for Read More

Torchy Gets Her Man

Actors: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Tom Kennedy, Willard Robertson, George Guhl

Synopsis: In this entry in the "Torchy Blane" series, the plucky young reporter tries to expose a ring of counterfeiters led by a man pretending to be a G-man assigned to investigate the case. He asks her not to print any of the information she has gathered so as not to blow his cover. The ploy works until Read More

Outlaws of the Prairie

Actors: Charles Starrett, Donald Grayson, Iris Meredith, Norman Willis, Dick Curtis

Synopsis: Charles Starrett plays two-fisted frontiersman Dart Collins in this slick Columbia "B" western. Collins wants to find out who's behind a series of gold-shipment robberies. So does heroine Judy Garfield (Iris Meredith), whose stage transport business faces foreclosure if the holdups continue. It Read More

You Can't Take It with You

Actors: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore Read More

Accidents Will Happen

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Gloria Blondell, Dick Purcell, Sheila Bromley, Addison Richards

Synopsis: Ronald Reagan is his usual sprightly self as ambitious insurance claims adjuster Eric Gregg. While diligently investigating a phony insurance racket, Gregg remains blissfully unaware that his own wife Nona (Sheila Bromley) has become deeply indebted to the crooks. Once this fact surfaces, Gregg Read More

Torchy Blane in Panama

Actors: Paul Kelly, Tom Kennedy, Anthony Averill, Larry Williams, Betty Compson

Synopsis: With Glenda Farrell having temporarily taken leave of Warner Bros., the actress' signature role of fast-talking girl reporter Torchy Blane was taken over by Lola Lane in Torchy Blane in Panama. Also absent from the proceedings is Barton MacLane as Torchy's loudmouthed police-lieutenant boyfriend Read More

Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars [Serial]

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Frank Shannon, Beatrice Roberts

Synopsis: Universal Pictures' second Flash Gordon serial was even more opulent than its first, offering better special effects, more impressive sets, a bigger cast, and a more complicated story. When a mysterious beam of light starts disrupting and destroying the Earth's atmosphere, Flash Gordon (Larry "Buster" Crabbe Read More

Holiday

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Both film versions of Phillip Barry's stage comedy Holiday have their merits, but the 1938 version has the added advantage of supercharged star power. Katharine Hepburn and Doris Nolan play Linda and Julia Seton, two daughters of a very well-to-do family. Linda feels a bit lost in the shuffle as Read More

The Affairs of Cappy Ricks

Actors: Walter Brennan, Mary Brian, Lyle Talbot, Frank Shields, Frank Melton

Synopsis: Returning from a trip, wealthy seaman Cappy Ricks (Walter Brennan) is annoyed to find his home automated, his daughters' romances awry and his business in disarray, so he schemes with Bill (Lyle Talbot) to trap everyone aboard Cappy's yacht. Later, they fake a fire to maroon everyone on an island Read More

The Adventurous Blonde

Actors: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Anne Nagel, Tom Kennedy, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In their third crime-solving adventure, smart-aleck newspaper woman Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell) and slightly dense homicide dick Steve McBride (Barton MacLane) are about to get hitched when Torchy's reporter friends pull a practical joke on them. As a wedding present, the harebrained newsboys 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

The Eagle's Brood

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, James Ellison, William Farnum, George "Gabby" Hayes, Addison Richards

Synopsis: In the second of producer Harry Sherman's Hopalong Cassidy Westerns, Deputy Sheriff Cassidy (William Boyd) promises El Toro (William Farnum), a retired Mexican outlaw, that he will search for the old man's grandson, missing after a gang of outlaws robbed and murdered the child's parents. With the Read More

End of the Trail

Actors: Jack Holt, Louise Henry, Douglas Dumbrille, George McKay

Synopsis: In this western, a Spanish-American war veteran cannot find gainful employment. In desperation, he becomes a cattle rustler until he can get back on his feet. Just as he is ready to go straight, his girlfriend's younger brother is shot. The veteran kills the murderer, but is then arrested by the Read More

Spaceship to the Unknown

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles B. Middleton, Priscilla Lawson

Synopsis: In 1936, Universal Pictures created a sensation with Flash Gordon, a 13-part adventure serial based on the popular comic strip of the day about a dare-devil do-gooder in outer space. Flash Gordon: Rocketship is a condensed version of that original serial, compressing the original twelve episodes Read More

Rocketship

Synopsis: In this sci-fi film, Flash Gordon and friends take on Mongo's sea monster, deadly ray guns, and robots to keep the evil Emperor Ming from destroying Earth. The film is also titled Flash Gordon. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Prisoner of Shark Island

Actors: Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart, Claude Gillingwater, Arthur Byron, Harry Carey, O.P. Heggie

Synopsis: Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, American history's most famous victim of circumstance. In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of Read More

Black Gold

Actors: Frankie Darro, LeRoy Mason, Gloria Shea, Berton Churchill, Stanley Fields

Synopsis: Stodgily directed by actor Russell Hopton, this low-budget oil-drilling melodrama was one of three action-adventures teaming boy actor Frankie Darro with B-Western villain LeRoy Mason, the latter changing his billing to "Roy Mason" for the occasion. Young master Darro plays Clifford Riley Read More

The Texas Rangers

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Jack Oakie, Jean Parker, Lloyd Nolan, Edward Ellis

Synopsis: Made with the full cooperation of the real-life Texas Rangers (who never met a publicity gimmick they didn't like), this sprawling historical western stars Fred MacMurray as Jim Hawkins, one of three outlaws working the Lone Star State in the years following the Civil War. Both Hawkins and his Read More

Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe

Synopsis: In 1936, Flash Gordon was among the most popular comic strip characters in America when Universal Pictures first brought his planet-hopping exploits to the big screen in the 13-episode serial Flash Gordon, one of the most lavishly produced and wildly popular "chapter-plays" of its day. Flash Read More

G-Men

Actors: James Cagney, Margaret Lindsay, Lloyd Nolan, Ann Dvorak, Robert Armstrong, Barton MacLane

Synopsis: In G Men, Warner Bros. "bad boy" James Cagney plays James "Brick" Davis, a young lawyer whose education has been financed by soft-hearted racketeer McKay (William Harrigan). When Cagney's best pal, detective Eddie Buchanan (Regis Toomey), is killed in a gangland shooting, James decides to become a Read More

Men Without Names

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Madge Evans, Lynne Overman, David Holt, John Wray

Synopsis: The title refers to those special government agents who go undercover to flush out criminal gangs. In his second starring role, Fred MacMurray plays a government man who travels incognito as he trails a team of crooks from Brooklyn to Kansas. Lynne Overman is MacMurray's easygoing partner, who Read More

Rasputin and the Empress

Actors: John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Ralph Morgan, Diana Wynyard

Synopsis: It's hard to separate fact and fancy from the many accounts of what happened on the set when all three of the fabulous Barrymores -- Ethel, John and Lionel -- appeared together for the only time in Rasputin and the Empress. As for the end result, John offers the subtlest (!) performance as Russian Read More

Icebound

Actors: Lois Wilson, Richard Dix, Helen Du Bois, Edna May Oliver, Vera Reynolds

Synopsis: It seems like the flashier Cecil B. DeMille made his films, the more intimate were those made by his older brother William C. DeMille. This drama, based on the stage play by Owen Davis, concerns a greedy New England family. The most broad-minded one of the bunch is Ben Jordan (Richard Dix). Ben Read More

Monsieur Beaucaire

Actors: Rudolph Valentino, Bebe Daniels, Lois Wilson, Doris Kenyon, Lowell Sherman

Synopsis: The still photographs of this costume picture, showing Rudolph Valentino wearing foppish 18th century finery, are actually misleading when it comes to Monsieur Beaucaire's actual content. For much of the film, Valentino actually views his wardrobe -- and his matinee idol persona -- with sly humor. Read More

Boomerang Bill

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Marguerite Marsh, Margaret Seddon, Frank Shannon, Matthew Betts

Synopsis: Although Lionel Barrymore was miscast as a gunman, he overcame this drawback by giving the role of Boomerang Bill an intensely human quality. The story opens with a young man about to leave the world of the straight and narrow. A detective approaches him and points out a broken-down soul Read More

The Prisoner of Zenda

Synopsis: In 1912, film pioneers Edwin S. Porter, Adolph Zukor and David Frohman formed the Famous Players film corporation for the express purpose of immortalizing on celluloid the greatest performances of Broadway's finest actors. The new company's first production was Anthony Hope's Ruritanian Read More