Hugh HerbertFilmography

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

Actors: Betty Grable, Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee, Olga San Juan, Sterling Holloway

Synopsis: Preston Sturges' final American film was generally conceded to be a disaster in 1949; even star Betty Grable publicly bad-mouthed the finished product. When seen today, Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, while no classic, seems a lot better than it did five decades ago. Grable plays a western Read More

On Our Merry Way

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Fred MacMurray, James Stewart, Hugh Herbert, Dorothy Lamour

Synopsis: Also known as A Miracle Can Happen, On Our Merry Way is a multipart comedy linked by inquiring reporter Burgess Meredith. It is Meredith's job to interview several people, asking them what effect children have had on their lives. First he checks with two itinerant musicians (James Stewart and Henry Fonda Read More

So This Is New York

Actors: Henry Morgan, Rudy Vallee, Bill Goodwin, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: Radio humorist Henry Morgan made his film debut in So This is New York. Based on The Big Town, a collection of stories by Ring Lardner, the film traces country bumpkin Morgan's progress as he uses an inheritance to take a trip with his wife (Virginia Grey) and sister-in-law (Dona Drake) to the New Read More

A Song Is Born

Actors: Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Benny Goodman, Hugh Herbert, Steve Cochran

Synopsis: A Song is Born is a musical remake of the 1941 comedy Ball of Fire, with the same producer (Sam Goldwyn) and director (Howard Hawks) at the helm. It will be recalled that the original film, co-scripted by Billy Wilder, was an amusing spin on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," wherein seven Read More

The Girl from Manhattan

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, George Montgomery, Charles Laughton, Ernest Truex, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: The Girl From Manhattan is a minor but watchable variation on the old "mortgage-on-the-farm" plot device. The girl of the title is Carol Maynard (Dorothy Lamour), who after several years in the Big Apple returns to her home town, where her uncle, boarding-house manager Homer Purdy (Ernest Truex) Read More

Blondie in the Dough

Synopsis: Blondie opens a bakery in her home to help fill the family cookie jar in this entry in the long-running domestic comedy series based on the popular comic strip. Her tasty cookies become so popular that a cookie magnate makes her an offer that is difficult to refuse. Unfortunately, this creates all Read More

One Way to Love

Actors: Willard Parker, Marguerite Chapman, Chester Morris, Janis Carter, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: In this comedy, a Chicago team of radio scriptwriters must split up when he takes a job with his bride-to-be's father, and the other must write commercial jingles. Their agent then appears and tells them they have a $1,000 per week assignment in Tinseltown provided they work together. They accept Read More

Kismet

Actors: Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, James Craig, Edward Arnold, Florence Bates, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: Oriental Dream is the TV title for the 1944 Technicolor version of Kismet. Ronald Colman plays Hadji, "king of beggars" in the days of the Arabian Nights. Posing as a prince, Colman woos Marlene Dietrich, the favorite wife of the evil Wazir (Edward Arnold). Meanwhile, Colman's daughter Joy Ann Page Read More

Ever Since Venus

Actors: Ina Ray Hutton, Hugh Herbert, Ann Savage, Billy Gilbert, Glenda Farrell

Synopsis: The exciting world of the cosmetic industry provides the basis of this lively low-budget musical comedy that centers on the attempts of a young inventor to market a new kind of nonstaining lipstick at the American Beauty Association Show. When a make-up magnate learns of the revolutionary Read More

Music for Millions

Actors: Margaret O'Brien, Jimmy Durante, June Allyson, Marsha Hunt

Synopsis: Musical producer Joe Pasternak moved from Universal to MGM in the early 1940s, taking his pet director Henry Koster (the two men had teamed to make a star of Deanna Durbin) with him. The Pasternak/Koster collaboration Music for Millions features child star Margaret O'Brien as a Durbin-like Miss 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

It's a Great Life

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Hugh Herbert, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: When the profits of their various film series began slumping in the mid-1940s, Columbia Pictures tried to broaden the appeal of these films by disguing the fact that they were indeed series entries. Thus it was that Columbia's 12th "Blondie" picture was shipped out as It's a Great Life. The comic Read More

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Kaaren Verne, Lionel Atwill, William Post, Jr.

Synopsis: The second of Universal's "modernized" Sherlock Holmes films pits the Great Detective (Basil Rathbone, of course) against that "Napoleon of Crime," Professor Moriarty (Lionel Atwill). Surpassing his previous skullduggery, Moriarty has now aligned himself with the Nazis and has dedicated himself to Read More

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

Actors: Fay Bainter, Carolyn Lee, Hugh Herbert, Vera Vague, John Archer

Synopsis: So far as W.C. Fields fans are concerned, Ann Hegan Rice's sentimental 1901 novel Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was definitively filmed in 1934. After seven reels' worth of a lachrymose plot about the impoverished Mrs. Wiggs (Pauline Lord) holding her large family together while her husband was Read More

There's One Born Every Minute

Synopsis: A nine-year-old Elizabeth Taylor made her film debut in this lively comedy. She plays the spoiled-brat daughter of a pudding manufacturer who has been entered into the town's mayoral race by some of the local businessmen. They have chosen him because they think he is easy to manipulate. As a sales Read More

You're Telling Me

Synopsis: In this comedy, a slightly addled young advertising executive works for his father's radio-advertising agency. His first job is to hire a famous big-game hunter for an upcoming show. Unfortunately, the man he chooses proves to be a fake and mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Don't Get Personal

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Mischa Auer, Jane Frazee, Anne Gwynne, Robert Paige

Synopsis: Three different Universal pictures made between 1922 and 1941 bore the catchall title Don't Get Personal. The 1941 film stars Hugh Herbert as a ditzy pickle manufacturer whose favorite radio program stars Jane Frazee and Robert Paige. The couple plays a bickering husband and wife on the air, and Read More

Hellzapoppin'

Actors: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Martha Raye, Hugh Herbert, Mischa Auer, Jane Frazee

Synopsis: Hellzapoppin' is the film version of the "anything goes" Broadway hit starring Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. The original production was part musical comedy, part "blackout" revue, with wild sight gags, zany props, audience participation sequences, dirty jokes, and never-ending gunshots. There was Read More

Hello Sucker

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Tom Brown, Peggy Moran, Lewis Howard, June Storey

Synopsis: The comic effusions of Hugh "woo woo" Herbert helps to keep this otherwise forgettable farce afloat. It all begins when Bob Wade (Tom Brown) and Rosalie Brown (Peggy Moran), are conned into buying a run-down vaudeville agency. Upon taking charge of the failing enterprise, they find they have a Read More

Badlands of Dakota

Actors: Robert Stack, Ann Rutherford, Richard Dix, Frances Farmer, Broderick Crawford

Synopsis: Up-and-coming Universal leading man Robert Stack made his western-movie debut in Badlands of Dakota. Set in the Dakotas during the days of the Great Gold Boom, the story finds brothers Jim and Bob Holliday (Stack and Broderick Crawford) dukeing it out over the affections of pretty Anne Grayson Read More

The Black Cat

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Bela Lugosi, Gale Sondergaard

Synopsis: 1941's The Black Cat is neither a remake of the 1934 Karloff-Lugosi film of the same name, nor does it bear the slightest relation to the same-named Edgar Allan Poe story (as if the 1934 picture did!) The fact that the heroes are played by Hugh Herbert and Broderick Crawford is indication enough Read More

Meet the Chump

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Lewis Howard, Jeanne Kelly, Anne Nagel, Kathryn Adams

Synopsis: Meet the Chump is an hour's worth of nonsense ideally suited to the talents of Hugh "Woo Woo" Herbert. The star plays Hugh Mansfield, the bumbling trustee of the estate of his nephew John Mansfield (Lewis Howard), who will come into a fortune when he reaches his 25th birthday. As John's natal day 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

A Little Bit of Heaven

Actors: Gloria Jean, Robert Stack, Hugh Herbert, C. Aubrey Smith, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: Teenaged soprano Gloria Jean plays the Little-Miss-Fixit heroine in Universal's Little Bit of Heaven. The most precocious member of an impoverished 10th Avenue family, little Midge (Gloria Jean) makes an impulsive appearance on a "man in the street" radio interview show. Catapulted to stardom Read More

La Conga Nights

Actors: Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: In this comedy, actor Hugh Herbert plays six different roles. Only one of the roles is a man. The story centers around a dizzy music lover, who has grown rich through real estate deals. Also figuring in the story are a cab driver/performer, and a down-on-her-luck, aspiring singer. They meet when Read More

Private Affairs

Actors: Nancy Kelly, Hugh Herbert, Roland Young, Robert Cummings, Montagu Love

Synopsis: Roland Young and Hugh Herbert make an unorthodox but amusing comedy team in the Universal programmer Private Affairs. Disowned by his wealthy family, Amos Bullerton (Young) ekes out a living as a chalk-board proprietor in a Wall Street brokerage. With the help of his erstwhile friend, cab-driver 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

Slightly Tempted

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Peggy Moran, Johnny Downs, Gertrude Michael, George E. Stone

Synopsis: Woo-woo Hugh Herbert is the star of Universal's Slightly Tempted. Herbert plays a kleptomaniac who promises to go straight for the sake of his daughter Peggy Moran. But old habits die hard, and soon Herbert is lifting valuables at the home of wealthy widow Elisabeth Risdon. Fortunately, the old Read More

The Family Next Door

Synopsis: Hugh Herbert is the head of The Family Next Door; he's a plumber of modest means and questionable skills. The rest of Herbert's family would love to climb the social ladder and improve their lot, but their dreams are always compromised by papa's ineptitude. In time-honored fashion, Hugh saves the Read More

Little Accident

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Florence Rice, Richard Carlson, Ernest Truex, Joy Hodges

Synopsis: A remake of a 1930 Universal film, Little Accident was the third starring vehicle for androgynous juvenile star Baby Sandy. Hugh Herbert stars as Herbert Pearson, self-styled infant specialist on a big-city newspaper. When father Tabby Morgan (Ernest Truex) abandons his bundle of joy (Baby Sandy) Read More

Eternally Yours

Actors: Loretta Young, David Niven, Billie Burke, Hugh Herbert, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Anita's (Loretta Young) life seems to be progressing nicely. She's engaged to Don Barnes (Broderick Crawford), a wealthy man that will give her all the stability and comfort a woman could desire. But then she meets a magician with the unlikely name of The Great Arturo (David Niven), who performs a Read More

The Lady's from Kentucky

Actors: George Raft, Ellen Drew, Hugh Herbert, ZaSu Pitts, Louise Beavers

Synopsis: The "Lady" of the title is horse-farm owner Penelope Hollis (Ellen Drew), but during the first half of this film, bookie Marty Black (George Raft) only has eyes for Penelope's prize two-year-old. After losing his gambling joint, Marty finds himself with half ownership of the horse as his sole Read More

Dad for a Day

Actors: George "Spanky" McFarland, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas, Mickey Gubitosi, Leonard Landy

Synopsis: If not for the lachrymose presence of Our Gang member Robert Blake (still in his whiny, squeaky-voiced stage), the one-reel Dad for a Day might have been one of the series' better MGM entries. While planning to participate in the annual Fathers and Sons Day Picnic, the Our Gang kids are reminded Read More

Gold Diggers in Paris

Actors: Rudy Vallee, Rosemary Lane, Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins, Gloria Dickson

Synopsis: The last and least of Warner Bros.' Gold Diggers musicals, Gold Diggers in Paris at least has the novelty of a Gallic setting. The stars this time are Rudy Vallee, Rosemary Lane, and Warners musical perennial Hugh Herbert. There aren't really any "gold diggers" (i.e. young ladies on the prowl for Read More

The Great Waltz

Actors: Luise Rainer, Fernand Gravey, Milza Korjus, Hugh Herbert, Lionel Atwill, Curt Bois

Synopsis: The Great Waltz was the first of two films bearing the same title which told the life story of Austrian "Waltz King" Johann Strauss. European singing sensation Fernard Gravet stars as Strauss, while MGM's two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer is top-billed as Poldi Vogelhuber. Poldi is the wife of 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

Men Are Such Fools

Actors: Wayne Morris, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: The romantic hills and valleys of an advertising agency secretary provide the basis of this comedy drama. Unlike her soon-to-be-married roommate, the secretary is determined to remain single and forge a strong career. She does have a suitor, but he is not ambitious enough for her and she keeps her Read More

Hollywood Hotel

Actors: Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Johnnie Davis, Ted Healy, Alan Mowbray, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: In this lighthearted musical comedy from legendary director Busby Berkeley, Henry Bowers (Dick Powell) is a saxophonist in a jazz band who wins a talent contest. His prize is a ten-week contract with a movie studio, Miracle Pictures (whose slogan is "If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle"). One Read More

Sh! The Octopus

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins, Marcia Ralston, John Eldredge, George Rosener

Synopsis: Sh! The Octopus is a low-budget remake of Ralph Spence's oft-filmed stage melodrama The Gorilla. The old-dark-house setting of the original has been changed to a lonely lighthouse, while Spence's marauding gorilla has metamorphosed into a giant special-effects octopus. Detectives Kelly (Hugh Herbert Read More

Mind Your Own Business

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Alice Brady, Lyle Talbot, Ben Baker, Jack LaRue

Synopsis: In this drama, a Boy Scout leader hosts a local gossip show. Trouble ensues when he predicts a politician's murder just before it occurs. He is arrested by the DA, but before getting to jail, he is abducted by irate gangsters--the real killers. Fortunately, his loyal Scout troop rallies to his 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

The Perfect Specimen

Actors: Errol Flynn, Joan Blondell, Hugh Herbert, Edward Everett Horton, Dick Foran

Synopsis: Based on a popular novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, this screwball comedy stars Errol Flynn in the title-role, the heir to an industrial fortune kept hidden from the world by his imperious grandmother (May Robson). Intrigued by the secrecy, peppy Joan Blondell literally crashes the estate to Read More

The Singing Marine

Actors: Dick Powell, Doris Weston, Lee Dixon, Hugh Herbert, Jane Darwell

Synopsis: It was from this military musical that the US Marine Corps got it's signature anthem, "The Song of the Marines." The story chronicles the exploits of a young recruit who wins a radio contest and becomes an overnight singing sensation. Unfortunately, the sudden fame has caused a bad case of ego Read More

That Man's Here Again

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Mary Maguire, Tom Brown, Joseph King, Teddy Hart

Synopsis: "That Man" is Hugh (woo-woo) Herbert, here cast as lovable eccentric Thomas J. Jesse. Befriending apartment-house elevator operator Jimmy Whalen (Tom Brown), Jesse makes it his mission in life to smooth the course of true love for Jimmy and pretty Australian lass Nancy Lee (Mary Maguire). The plot Read More

Top of the Town

Actors: George Murphy, Hugh Herbert, Gregory Ratoff, Ella Logan, Gertrude Niesen

Synopsis: In this musical set in swingin' Manhattan, an heiress plans a ballet in the famous Moonbeam ballroom located atop a 100-story skyscraper. Unfortunately, the attending audience is quite bored until someone starts the place swinging. Musical numbers include: "Blame It on the Rhumba," "Where Are Read More

Sing Me a Love Song

Actors: James Melton, Patricia Ellis, ZaSu Pitts, Ann Sheridan, Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: For a change of pace, Warner Bros. contract tenor James Melton sings no opera in Sing Me A Love Song -- nor does he sing anything particularly memorable, either. Melton stars as Jerry Haines, a young man-about-town who takes an entry-level job in his dad's department store. Jerry wants no special Read More

Love Begins at Twenty

Actors: Warren Hull, Patricia Ellis, Hugh Herbert, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dorothy Vaughan

Synopsis: In 1929, Bette Davis made her Broadway debut in the now-forgotten stage play Broken Dishes. But Davis did not appear in the 1931 film version Too Young to Marry, nor was she in the 1935 remake Love Begins at 20, even though it was filmed by her home studio of Warner Bros. Patricia Ellis essays the Read More

We Went to College

Actors: Charles Butterworth, Walter Abel, Hugh Herbert, Una Merkel, Edith Atwater

Synopsis: We Went to College is a perceptive spoof of alumni "homecoming" reunions. Hugh Herbert plays a daffy economics professor, who invites old grads Glenn Harvey (Charles Butterworth), Phil Talbot (Walter Abel) and Senator Budger (Walter Catlett), among many others, to attend the annual homecoming Read More

One Rainy Afternoon

Actors: Francis Lederer, Ida Lupino, Hugh Herbert, Roland Young, Erik Rhodes

Synopsis: A remake of the French comedy Monsieur Sans-Gene, One Rainy Afternoon gets under way when film-actor Phillippe Martin (Francis Lederer) heads to a darkened Parisian movie theater for a romantic rendezvous with his married sweetheart Yvonne (Countess Live de Margaret). But our hero sits in the Read More

Colleen

Actors: Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Jack Oakie, Joan Blondell, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: The titular colleen is Ruby Keeler, hired to manage a dress shop by wealthy Dick Powell. Keeler is the replacement for slatternly Joan Blondell, who'd been assigned the job by Powell's philandering father (Hugh Herbert). With Powell and Keeler at the helm, it's no time at all before the musical Read More

Sweet Adeline

Actors: Irene Dunne, Donald Woods, Hugh Herbert, Ned Sparks, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: The 1929 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein Broadway musical Sweet Adeline has generally been credited as the vanguard for the "Gay 90s" nostalgia fad of the early 1930s. By the time the film was adapted to the screen in 1935, that fad had pretty much played itself out, making the property seem more 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

Miss Pacific Fleet

Actors: Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Warren Hull

Synopsis: Based on Frederick Hazlett Brennan's play Battleship Gertie, Miss Pacific Fleet is short and snappy "gobs and gals" affair. At the urging of gold-digging showgirls Gloria Foy (Joan Blondell) and Mae O'Brien (Glenda Farrell), goofy promoter Augustus Frietag (Hugh Herbert) comes up with a "Miss Read More

We're in the Money

Actors: Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Hugh Herbert, Ross Alexander, Hobart Cavanaugh

Synopsis: Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, the female Laurel and Hardy of Warner Bros., share top billing in We're in the Money. This time Blondell and Farrell are cast respectively as Ginger and Dixie, intrepid process-servers for goofy lawyer Homer Bronson (Hugh Herbert). Things go from the ridiculous to Read More

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Actors: James Cagney, Ian Hunter, 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

The Traveling Saleslady

Actors: Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, William Gargan, Hugh Herbert, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: In this comedy, a toothpaste magnate's mischievous daughter, tired of her father's traditional ways of conducting business, joins forces with her father's rival and a crazy inventor. Together they create "Cocktail Toothpaste." The new concoction tastes like whiskey in the morning, a martini at Read More

To Beat the Band

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Helen Broderick, Roger Pryor, Fred Keating, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Hugh Herbert plays a middle-aged bumbler who is about to inherit a multimillion dollar estate. But there's a catch: Herbert must be married to a widow--any widow--within three days. Roger Pryor plays a suicidal young man who offers to marry young Phyllis Brooks, then kill himself and make Brooks a Read More

Easy to Love

Actors: Genevieve Tobin, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Astor, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: In this family drama, a happy marriage is threatened by suspicion and jealousy, and illicit affairs. The trouble begins when the wife catches her husband in the arms of a family friend. The wife exacts her revenge claiming that she had an affair with the other woman's husband. This is a lie. They Read More

Wonder Bar

Actors: Kay Francis, Dick Powell, Al Jolson, Dolores Del Rio, Ricardo Cortez

Synopsis: Based on Al Jolson's 1931 Broadway hit, Wonder Bar transposes the "Grand Hotel" formula to a lavish nightclub in Paris' Montmartre district. Presiding over the evening's entertainment is manager-emcee Al Wonder (Jolson), who after greeting his guests in a multitude of languages (a la Joel Grey in Cabaret Read More

Dames

Actors: Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, ZaSu Pitts, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: As the title song says, you go to those shows to see those beautiful dames--and there's dames aplenty in this 1934 Busby Berkeley extravaganza. The wisp of a plot is motivated by one Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert), a silly millionaire who spearheads a national anti-fun movement. Ounce's distant cousin Dick Powell 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

Kansas City Princess

Actors: Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Robert Armstrong, Hugh Herbert, Osgood Perkins

Synopsis: Kansas City Princess came at the tail end of the "gold-digger" movie cycle. The inevitable Joan Blondell plays Rosie, a saucy-eyed manicurist who takes it on the lam when she loses a diamond entrusted to her by her gangster boyfriend Dynamite (Robert Armstrong). With nary a dime between them Read More

Fog over Frisco

Actors: Bette Davis, Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: Cited by film historian William K. Everson as one of the fastest-moving crime melodramas of the 1930s (if not the fastest) Fog Over Frisco still manages to leave viewers breathless. Top-billed Bette Davis plays giddy heiress Arlene Bradford, whose perverse fascination with gangsters gets her mixed Read More

The Merry Frinks

Actors: Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: In this odd-ball comedy, a self-sacrificing but eccentric mother attempts to guide her equally eccentric family. She has two sons and a daughter. One son is a communist and the other is a struggling prizefighter. Her daughter is trying to snag a married booking agent to help her break into radio. Read More

Harold Teen

Actors: Hal Le Roy, Rochelle Hudson, Patricia Ellis, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: First adapted for the screen in 1928, Carl Ed's popular comic strip Harold Teen was cinematized a second time in 1934. This time it's musical-comedy star Hal LeRoy as the titular high-schooler, with Rochelle Hudson as his sweetheart Lillums Lovell and Hobart Cavanaugh as sweet-shop owner Pop 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

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

Goldie Gets Along

Actors: Lili Damita, Charles Morton, Sam Hardy, Nat Pendleton, Lita Chevret

Synopsis: Goldie dreams of being a movie star. One day she decides to leave her New Jersey home and her boy friend to head for Hollywood. She eventually arrives, but not before having a close call with a crooked beauty contest promoter. Once in Tinseltown, the is surprised to discover that her old boyfriend Read More

Strictly Personal

Actors: Marjorie Rambeau, Edward Ellis, Dorothy Jordan, Eddie Quillan, Louis Calhern

College Coach

Actors: Dick Powell, Ann Dvorak, Pat O'Brien, Arthur Byron, Lyle Talbot

Synopsis: Those who only know Pat O'Brien from his later, slightly more avuncular roles may be surprised to see him pumping out almost as much energy as his friend (and sometime co-star) James Cagney, in the lead and title role of College Coach. As James Gore, the head football coach for Calvert College, he Read More

Diplomaniacs

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Marjorie White, Phyllis Barry, Louis Calhern

Synopsis: Two barbers from an Indian reservation (Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey) are sent as the delegates of the Adoop tribe to an international peace convention in Geneva. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Goodbye Again

Actors: Joan Blondell, Genevieve Tobin, Helen Chandler, Ruth Donnelly, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: Famous author Kenneth Bixby (Warren William) would like to jump-start his romance with ex-sweetheart Julie (Genevieve Tobin). There are, however, at least two people who'd prefer that Bixby stick to writing and stay away from Julie. One is Julie's husband Harvey Wilson (Hugh Herbert); the other is Read More

Bureau of Missing Persons

Actors: Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Pat O'Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Although claiming to be based on actual cases, this mild crime drama appears to have been derived more from a screenwriter's manual than a police blotter. Newly transferred from robbery to missing persons, glib Butch Saunders (Pat O'Brien) is like the proverbial bull in a china shop at first, but 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

From Headquarters

Actors: George Brent, Margaret Lindsay, Eugene Pallette, Hugh Herbert, Dorothy Burgess

Synopsis: In the tradition of Bureau of Missing Persons, Warner Bros's From Headquarters offers a methodical, semi-documentary look at modern law-enforcement methods. The story concentrates on the investigation of a single murder. The victim, seemingly respectable, was actually a vicious blackmailer, a fact Read More

She Had to Say Yes

Actors: Loretta Young, Regis Toomey

Synopsis: In this comedy, a hard-working secretary is often too busy taking prospective buyers out on the town to pay much attention to her fiancé. In the end, she drops the jealous fellow in favor of another who seems to be a better prospect. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Million Dollar Legs

Actors: Jack Oakie, W.C. Fields, Andy Clyde, Lyda Roberti, Susan Fleming

Synopsis: "Klopstokia: A Far-Away Country. Chief Exports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Imports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Inhabitants: Goats and Nuts." This introductory title ushers in Million Dollar Legs, one of the zaniest comedies ever to emerge from a major studio. W.C. Fields stars as the president of Read More

Faithless

Actors: Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Montgomery, Hugh Herbert, Maurice Murphy, Louise Closser Hale

Synopsis: Tallulah Bankhead plays a giddy 1920s heiress who spurns the affections of executive Robert Montgomery because he makes a "mere" $20,000 per year. Tallulah is impoverished by the Depression, as is Montgomery. She refuses again to marry him now that they are equals, preferring to maintain her Read More

The Lost Squadron

Actors: Richard Dix, Mary Astor, Erich Von Stroheim, Dorothy Jordan, Joel McCrea, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: Unable to find steady work after WWI, three former flying aces -- Gibson (Richard Dix), Woody (Robert Armstrong) and Red (Joel McCrea) -- hire themselves out as stunt flyers for the movies. They find themselves employed by tyrannical director Von Furst (Erich Von Stroheim, playing what amounts to 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

Friends and Lovers

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Lili Damita, Laurence Olivier, Erich Von Stroheim, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: The old bromide about joining the Foreign Legion to "forget," so often parodied by such comedians as Laurel and Hardy, was played straight in 1931's Friends and Lovers. A very young Laurence Olivier plays Lt. Nichols, who has retreated to the desert to get over his affair with Alva Sangrito (Lily Damita Read More

Laugh and Get Rich

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Edna May Oliver, Dorothy Lee, Robert Emmett Keane, John Harron

Synopsis: This Depression-era comedy takes place in the boarding house run by the indomitable Sarah Austin (Edna May Oliver). Sarah's indigent husband Joe (Hugh Herbert), spends most of his time cooking up pie-in-the-sky get-rich-quick schemes, few of which come to fruition. In time-honored "domestic Read More

The Sin Ship

Actors: Louis Wolheim, Mary Astor, Ian Keith, Hugh Herbert, Russell Powell

Synopsis: Talking pictures made a star out of veteran movie villain Louis Wolheim, perhaps because his voice revealed a heart and soul otherwise obscured by his ugly countenance. In Sin Ship, Wolheim plays a schooner captain who is forced to protect reluctant passenger Mary Astor from his sex-starved crew. Read More

Cracked Nuts

Actors: Edna May Oliver, Dorothy Lee, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey

Synopsis: Ostensibly a "team" vehicle for Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, Cracked Nuts is half over before Bert and Bob even get together! The first scenes belong to Wheeler, cast as spendthrift millionaire Wendell Graham, who is in love with Betty Harrington (Dorothy Lee). Betty's aunt Minnie (Edna May Oliver Read More

Danger Lights

Actors: Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: In this drama, an older railroad supervisor is engaged to a lovely young woman. Unfortunately, she falls in love with the handsome hobo her husband befriended and employed as an engineer. A rivalry ensues, but when a life is endangered the two team up and save the day. The film may be most Read More

Second Wife

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Lila Lee, Hugh Huntley, Mary Carr, Freddie Burke Frederick

Synopsis: The first of two film versions of Fulton Oursler's domestic-conflict yarn, Second Wife stars Lila Lee as the bride of Conrad Nagel. Lee's ex-beau Hugh Hunley insists that Nagel's heart is still with his first wife, who now has custody of Nagel's son. When her husband leaves for Switzerland to Read More

Hook, Line and Sinker

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Dorothy Lee, Jobyna Howland, Ralf Harolde

Synopsis: The comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey made their fourth film appearance of 1930 in the hectic comedy-melodrama Hook Line and Sinker. This time the boys are cast as itinerant insurance salesmen Wilbur Boswell and J. Addington Ganzy ("Not Pansy -- Ganzy, with a 'G'"!) After talking Read More

Caught in the Fog

Actors: May McAvoy, Conrad Nagel, Mack Swain, Charles Gerrard, Ruth Cherrington

Synopsis: This late silent effort from Warner Bros. stars Conrad Nagel and May McAvoy. Nagel plays a wealthy young sprout who makes an unannounced visit to his mother's houseboat. Here he confronts a gang of thieves, including the lovely McAvoy. Somewhat amused, Nagel offers no protest when the crooks Read More

Husbands for Rent

Actors: John Miljan, Katherine Perry, Arthur Hoyt

Synopsis: Personable Owen Moore starred in this romantic comedy from Warner Bros. featuring Dolores Costello. About to marry his uncle's pretty ward, Herbert Willis (Moore) finds his bride-to-be, Doris (Kathryn Perry), completely taken in by dashing newcomer Hugh Fraser (John Miljan). Herbert, meanwhile Read More