Gavin Gordon Filmography

The Beverly Hillbillies: The Soup Contest

Synopsis: Worried that Elly May will never land a husband if she doesn't learn how to cook, Granny hatches a clever scheme. Entering a national soup-cooking contest, Granny signs Elly's name to the application. Her reasoning: By the time a prospective husband discovers that Elly doesn't do her own cooking Read More

Green Acres: The Best Laid Plans

Actors: Eleanor Audley, Gavin Gordon, Guy Wilkerson

Synopsis: One of a steady stream of eccentric visitors to Hooterville interferes with Oliver (Eddie Albert)'s Herculean efforts to work his farm. More trouble ensues when rumors spread that Lisa (Eva Gabor) has left Oliver and returned to New York (actually, she's only gone on a shopping excursion). And Read More

The Patsy

Actors: Jerry Lewis, Ina Balin, Everett Sloane, Phil Harris, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: Toward the end of Jerry Lewis's Paramount studio period, Lewis slapped together this bitter comedy about Hollywood phoniness and fame that has to be the most rancid portrait of the Hollywood star system in the Rat Pack era this side of Clifford Odets. When a famous entertainer suddenly is killed Read More

The Nutty Professor

Actors: Jerry Lewis, Stella Stevens, Del Moore, Kathleen Freeman, Howard Morris, Med Flory

Synopsis: Professor Julius F. Kelp (Jerry Lewis) is an addle-brained, absent-minded chemistry instructor always incurring the wrath of the university administration by continually blowing up the classroom laboratory. The shy guy has his eyes on the student body of Stella (Stella Stevens). When a Read More

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Actors: Elvis Presley, Stella Stevens, Jeremy Slate, Laurel Goodwin, Benson Fong

Synopsis: One of Elvis Presley's biggest moneymakers, Girls Girls Girls casts ol' swivel-hips as a tuna-boat fisherman working out of Hawaii. Elvis chases after all the wrong girls, while ignoring the girls who genuinely care for him. Here, as Ross Carpenter, Presley has two main love interests: sexy Read More

Pocketful of Miracles

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

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

One Step Beyond: One Step Beyond

Synopsis: This fact-based episode is set in 1912, just before Grace Farley (Barbara Lord) is to embark on her honeymoon with new husband Eric (a pre-Avengers Patrick Macnee). Although she lives in a land-locked area, and despite the fact that the couple will be honeymooning in Switzerland, Grace has a Read More

The Bat

Actors: Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Gavin Gordon, John Sutton, Lenita Lane

Synopsis: This fourth film version of the Mary Roberts Rinehart-Avery Hopwood stage chestnut The Bat is so old-fashioned in its execution that one might suspect it was intended as "camp" (though that phrase wasn't in common usage in 1959). Agnes Moorehead plays mystery novelist Cornelia Van Gorder, whose Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Substitute Face

Synopsis: While enjoying a leisurely ocean cruise in the company of secretary Della (Barbara Hale), Perry (Raymond Burr) is approached by passenger Anna Houser (Lurene Tuttle), who is worried about the wellbeing of her husband Carl (Theodore Newton). Not long afterward, Carl is seen jumping off the ship, an Read More

The Matchmaker

Actors: Shirley Booth, Anthony Perkins, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Ford, Robert Morse

Synopsis: Thornton Wilder's 1938 stage play The Merchant of Yonkers was based on an old British stage farce by John Oxenford (which in turn served as the basis of an Austrian farce by Johann Nestroy). Merchant of Yonkers was a bomb, but Wilder was quite fond of the piece, so he revised it as the Read More

Johnny Tremain

Actors: Hal Stalmaster, Luana Patten, Jeff York, Sebastian Cabot, Richard Beymer

Synopsis: This Walt Disney filmization of Esther Forbes' Revolutionary-War novel Johnny Tremain was appropriately released on July 4, 1957. New Disney discovery Hal Stalmaster plays the title character, an apprentice silversmith in 1773 Boston. An on-the-job injury prevents Johnny from finding a job, but he Read More

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Perfect Crime

Synopsis: Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this delightfully macabre episode stars Vincent Price as Charles Courtney, a brilliant and pompous detective who takes pride in the fact that he has never made a wrong decision in his career. Courtney has celebrated this winning streak with a well-stocked trophy room Read More

Chicago Confidential

Actors: Brian Keith, Beverly Garland, Dick Foran, Beverly Tyler, Elisha Cook, Jr., Paul Langton, Douglas Kennedy, Jack Lambert, Phyllis Coates

Synopsis: Chicago Confidential may not have been the best of the late-1950s "expose" films, but it certainly boasted one of the most impressive casts. Based on the factual best-seller by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, the film stars Brian Keith as a State Attorney who vows to bring corrupt Chicago union Read More

The Ten Commandments

Actors: James Coburn, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo

Synopsis: Based on the Holy Scriptures, with additional dialogue by several other hands, The Ten Commandments was the last film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The story relates the life of Moses, from the time he was discovered in the bullrushes as an infant by the pharoah's daughter, to his long, hard Read More

The Vagabond King

Actors: Vincent Price, Kathryn Grayson, Oreste, Rita Moreno, Cedric Hardwicke, Walter Hampden

Synopsis: The Rudolf Friml operetta The Vagabond King was first filmed in 1930, with Dennis King in the lead. On both sides of this adaptation, audiences were treated to non-singing versions of the story, bearing titles like The Beloved Rogue and If I Were King. In all instances, the plot remained the same Read More

Pardners

Actors: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Lori Nelson, Jeff Morrow, John Baragrey, Jackie Loughery

Synopsis: This Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis romp is liberally based on the 1936 Bing Crosby film Rhythm on the Range. Set around 1910, the film stars Lewis as the pampered son of female tycoon Agnes Moorehead. Yearning to return to the Wild West where his father was a famed peacekeeper, Lewis purchases a prize Read More

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Crack of Doom

Synopsis: "I waited there with a dead head sitting on a dead spine waiting for the crack of doom." This is how young businessman Mason Bridges (Robert Horton) describes his predicament when he is forced to participate in a high-stakes poker game with wealthy client Sam Klinker (Robert Middleton). Though Read More

High Society

Actors: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bernard Gorcey, Amanda Blake, Dayton Lummis

Synopsis: This Bowery Boys opus gets under way when Sach (Huntz Hall) is informed that he is heir to a fortune. Sach and his buddy Slip (Leo Gorcey) head to the mansion of the late Terwilliger Debussy Jones to sign the necessary legal papers. Here they discover that the rightful heir is young Terwilliger Read More

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Our Cook's a Treasure

Synopsis: As a gift to his young wife Ethel (Janet Ward), real estate agent Ralph Montgomery (Everett Sloane) hires a cook named Mrs. Sutton (Beulah Bondi). Before long, however, Ralph has reason to regret this act of extravagance, as evidence begins to pile up suggesting that Mrs. Sutton is the same woman Read More

Knock on Wood

Actors: Danny Kaye, Mai Zetterling, Torin Thatcher, David Burns, Leon Askin

Synopsis: With the exception of the brilliant The Court Jester, Knock on Wood must rank as the best of Danny Kaye's movie vehicles. Capitalizing on the star's recent successful engagement in London, the film casts Kaye as a neurotic American ventriloquist performing in England and Europe. In a parody of the Read More

White Christmas

Actors: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: White Christmas, Paramount's belated follow-up to the 1942 hit Holiday Inn, was the studio's first VistaVision production. A veritable warehouse full of oldie-but-goodie Irving Berlin tunes are woven into the film's simplistic plotline, along with a handful of new songs, of which "What Can You Do 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

Key Man

Synopsis: In this romantic drama, a secret love affair becomes the cause of a series of mysterious mishaps involving a philandering wife's hapless husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Philo Vance's Gamble

Actors: Alan Curtis, Terry Austin, Frank Jenks, Tala Birell, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: The second of PRC's trio of "Philo Vance" mysteries, Philo Vance's Gamble stars Alan Curtis as S. S. Van Dine's erudite amateur sleuth. The plot is set in motion when a valuable emerald is smuggled into the U.S. The gem promptly disappears, resulting in two murders. Following the trail of clues Read More

Three on a Ticket

Actors: Hugh Beaumont, Cheryl Walker, Paul Bryar, Ralph Dunn, Louise Currie

Synopsis: Three on a Ticket was the fourth entry in PRC's "Michael Shayne" series, and arguably the best of the batch. Hugh Beaumont, still ten years away from Leave It to Beaver, stars as Brett Halliday's red-headed private eye Michael Shayne, who this time out is assigned to locate a fortune in stolen Read More

Notorious

Actors: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin

Synopsis: Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an Read More

Centennial Summer

Actors: Louis Austin, Jeanne Crain, Cornel Wilde, Rodney Bell, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Clancy Cooper, Constance Bennett

Synopsis: Otto Preminger directed this romantic musical (something of a change of pace for the rather serious-minded director) set in Philadephia in 1876. The upcoming Centennial Exposition is the talk of the town, and sisters Julia (Jeanne Crain) and Edith (Linda Darnell) find themselves romantic rivals Read More

Turf Boy

Actors: Buzz Henry, James Seay, Doris Day, William Halligan, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: By PRC Studios standards, Mr. Celebrity is decidedly an "all-star" picture. The title character is a prize race horse, jointly owned by veterinarian Jim Kane (James Seay) and his orphaned nephew Danny Mason (Buzzy Henry). When not tending to ailing nags, Kane struggles to prevent Danny's snobbish Read More

I Killed That Man

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Joan Woodbury, Iris Adrian, George Pembroke, Herbert Rawlinson

Synopsis: Thanks to the canny production team of Maurice and Franklin King, I Killed That Man is superior to the general run of Monogram Studio films. Ricardo Cortez stars in this whodunit, set in a prison full of suspects. A confession is made, and that seems to be that--but is it? B-picture stalwarts Joan Woodbury Read More

Murder by Invitation

Actors: Wallace Ford, Marian Marsh, Sarah Padden, George Guhl, Wallis Clark

Synopsis: Stars-on-the-downslide Wallace Ford and Marian Marsh briefly rallied in the above-average Monogram melodrama Murder by Invitation. Ford is cast as usual as a wisecracking reporter, this time christened Bob White. Our hero is one of several acquaintances and relatives invited to an old dark house Read More

The Lone Star Vigilantes

Actors: Tex Ritter, Frank Mitchell, Virginia Carpenter, Luana Walters

Synopsis: It's Wild Bill Elliot as Wild Bill Hickok in the Columbia B-western Lone Star Vigilantes. This time out, Elliot is teamed with singing cowboy Tex Ritter, while comedy relief is provided by diminutive stuntman Frank Mitchell. Returning from Civil War duty, Hickok, Tex Martin (Ritter) and Cannonball Read More

Suspicion

Actors: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: Wealthy, sheltered Joan Fontaine is swept off her feet by charming ne'er-do-well Cary Grant. Though warned that Grant is little more than a fortune-hunter, Fontaine marries him anyway. She remains loyal to her irresponsible husband as he plows his way from one disreputable business scheme to Read More

Gangs, Inc.

Actors: Joan Woodbury, Jack LaRue, Linda Ware, John Archer, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: Paper Bullets (aka Crime Inc.) was the first production by former slot-machine entrepreneurs Maurice and Frank Kozinski, later and better known as the King Brothers. Written by former crime reporter Martin Mooney, the story focuses on the efforts by an undercover agent Bob Elliot (John Archer) to Read More

I See Ice

Actors: George Formby, Kay Walsh, Betty Stockfeld, Garry Marsh

Synopsis: Toothy, ukelele-plucking British comedian dominates the proceedings in I See Ice. The nonsensical story concerns the misadventures of a prop man (George Formby) for a travelling ice-skating troupe. Inventing a new sort of candid camera in his spare time, our hero gets into a passel of trouble when Read More

They Gave Him a Gun

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Gladys George, Franchot Tone, Edgar Dearing, Mary Treen

Synopsis: In this WW II era drama, a timid, pacifistic clerk is befriended by a gutsy circus barker while they are in the military. Tensions arise between the friends after they fall for the same woman. The circus man is captured by the Germans and shortly thereafter, the clerk marries the girl. In time Read More

Windjammer

Actors: George O'Brien, Constance Worth, William Hall, Brandon Evans, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: In this high-seas adventure, an assistant state's attorney must serve a subpoena upon a wealthy yacht owner. To do this the fellow must sign on as a crew member for a race across the Pacific to Hawaii. The yacht is filled with wealthy passengers. Trouble ensues when the craft is rammed by a gun Read More

The Toast of New York

Actors: Edward Arnold, Cary Grant, Frances Farmer, Jack Oakie, Donald Meek

Synopsis: Allegedly based on two factual works, Bouck White's The Book of Daniel Drew and Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons, RKO's The Toast of New York is a largely fanciful account of the career of 1870s financier "Jubilee Jim" Fisk. As played by Edward Arnold in his usual "tycoon" mode, Fisk was a 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

Ticket to Paradise

Actors: Roger Pryor, Wendy Barrie, Andrew Tombes, Luis Alberni

Synopsis: In this comedy, an amnesiac takes off with a young woman. This causes the woman's father to hire a detective to find them. Real mayhem ensues when a nightclub owner/gangster gets involved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Leavenworth Case

Actors: Donald Cook, Jean Rouverol, Norman Foster, Erin O'Brien-Moore, Maude Eburne

Synopsis: The second screen version of Anna Katherine Green's 1878 whodunit stars Donald Cook as Dr. Truman Hartnell, a dedicated physician who after declaring old Silas Leavenworth (Frank Sheridan) fit for fight is appalled to learn that the wealthy broker is found dead, an apparent suicide. But Silas, who Read More

Women Must Dress

Actors: Minna Gombell, Gavin Gordon, Hardie Albright, Suzanne Kaaren, Lenita Lane

Synopsis: A homely woman gets the best kind of revenge upon her philandering husband in this drama. Tired of his constant cheating, the woman puts on make up, takes their daughter, and starts a new, more modern life. She becomes an acclaimed dress designer while her daughter falls in love with a stodgy Read More

Stranded

Actors: Kay Francis, George Brent, Patricia Ellis, Donald Woods, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: In this romance, a social worker employed by Traveler's Aid finally is able to show her love to a construction foreman responsible for building the Golden Gate Bridge. She has loved him for nine years and is delighted that they can finally be together. Unfortunately, both of them are so busy that Read More

Bordertown

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

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

Red Hot Tires

Actors: Lyle Talbot, Mary Astor, Roscoe Karns, Frankie Darro, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: In this action film, Wallace Storm, ace race car driver, gets into real trouble when he is accused of killing his partner over the love of a pretty girl. In court he is found guilty of tampering with his partner's car, causing it to crash during a race, and is sent to prison. While there, his good Read More

Love Me Forever

Actors: Grace Moore, Leo Carrillo, Michael Bartlett, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Grace Moore and Victor Schertzinger, the star-director combination responsible for the marvelous One Night of Love (1934), came up with another tune-filled winner in Love Me Forever. Once again voluntarily shedding her "diva" image, Moore plays Margaret Howard, a once-glamorous socialite who's hit Read More

The Bride of Frankenstein

Actors: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester, Ernst Thesiger, Dwight Frye

Synopsis: This greatest of all Frankenstein movies begins during a raging thunderstorm. Warm and cozy inside their palatial villa, Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Shelley's wife Mary (Elsa Lanchester) engage in morbidly sparkling conversation. The wicked Byron mockingly Read More

Grand Old Girl

Actors: May Robson, Mary Carlisle, Fred MacMurray, Alan Hale, Etienne Girardot

Synopsis: Like the contemporaneous Columbia feature Party Wire, RKO Radio's Grand Old Girl paints a surprisingly bleak and cynical portrait of "respectable" small-town America. After 38 years of faithful service as a schoolteacher, Laura Bayles (May Robson) is unceremoniously fired when she challenges local 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

The Scarlet Empress

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Sam Jaffe, Louise Dresser, Maria Sieber

Synopsis: Of the two 1934 film versions of the life of Russia's Catherine the Great, Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress was the most opulent and exotic. Marlene Dietrich plays the German-born Catherine, who is required to marry Russia's mad Grand Duke Peter (Sam Jaffe, decked out in a Harpo Marx Read More

I Was a Spy

Actors: Madeleine Carroll, Conrad Veidt, Edmund Gwenn, Herbert Marshall, Donald Calthrop, Gerald du Maurier

Synopsis: This story of espionage in World War I is based on a true story. Marthe McKenna (Madeleine Carroll) is a nurse from Belgium who uses her beauty and charm to serve her native land during the war. McKenna is able to ferret out secret information from German officers and pass it along to Allied Read More

Wake up and Dream

Actors: Russ Columbo, Roger Pryor, June Knight, Catherine Doucet, Henry Armetta

Synopsis: Wake Up and Dream was part of a concerted (and successful) effort to turn radio crooner Russ Columbo into a major movie star. The story is the old saw about a trio of vaudevillians, Paul (Columbo), Charley (Roger Pryor) and Toby (June Knight), who have a falling out when both Paul and Charley fall 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

Lone Cowboy

Actors: Jackie Cooper, Lila Lee, John Wray, Addison Richards, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: Adapted by director Paul Sloan from the novel by Will James, Lone Cowboy is an "outdoors" epic tailored to the talents of young Jackie Cooper. Actually the title character is not played by Cooper but by character actor Addison Richards, cast as a grizzled old rodeo rider named Dobe Jones. Placed Read More

Female

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Philip Faversham, Ruth Donnelly, Johnny Mack Brown

Synopsis: Ruth Chatterton tears up the screen in this fast-paced, lusty comedy. Alison Drake is an automobile magnate, a hard-nosed, hardboiled business woman making dozens of important decisions a day. In her private life, however, she is passionate and bold in her pursuit of male companionship, which she Read More

I Adore You

Synopsis: True love makes French buy the film company that owns the contract to his love, actress Margot Grahame. Grahame isn't the only one happy with this purchase; the company was in financial straits and everyone is please with the results. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Hard to Handle

Actors: James Cagney, Mary Brian, Ruth Donnelly, Allen Jenkins, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: Hard to Handle stars James Cagney as a fast-talking promoter who pounces upon every current fad and foible to make a quick buck. He promotes marathon dances (where spectators feel cheated because no one drops dead), crash diets, reducing creams and treasure contests, finagling his way into the Read More

Black Beauty

Actors: Esther Ralston, Alexander Kirkland, Hale Hamilton, Gavin Gordon, Don Alvarado

Synopsis: Before it became one of Hollywood's busiest B-picture mills, Monogram Pictures had a fondness for literary adaptations (The Moonstone, Jane Eyre etc.) Monogram's 1933 Black Beauty was, of course, based on