Hugh SothernFilmography

The Fighting Devil Dogs

Synopsis: In this serial action film, a group of criminals, led by a costumed villain named the Lightning, are in possession of a dangerous device. A pair of marines set out to find the weapon and foil the crooks. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

The Man With Two Lives

Actors: Edward Norris, Frederick Burton, Addison Richards, Edward Keane

Synopsis: Long forgotten, Monogram's Man With Two Lives has recently resurfaced on the videocassette market, proving itself a most intriguing second-echelon "mad doctor" melodrama. Nearly killed in a car accident, Edward Norris is given a new lease on life when a dedicated (but slightly addled) scientist Read More

Tennessee Johnson

Actors: Van Heflin, Ruth Hussey, Lionel Barrymore, Marjorie Main, Regis Toomey

Synopsis: The tumultuous presidency of 17th-president Andrew Johnson is chronicled in this biopic. The story begins with Johnson's boyhood and covers his early life. During the Civil War, Johnson stays a staunch Unionist and upon Lincoln's reelection in 1864, becomes his Vice President. After Lincoln's Read More

They Died With Their Boots On

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy, Regis Toomey, Charles Grapewin, Gene Lockhart, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Though history is distorted almost beyond recognition in Warner Bros.' They Died With Their Boots On, audiences in 1941 ate it up like cotton candy. In the gospel according to Warners, General George Armstrong Custer (Errol Flynn) is neither an arrogant fool nor a rabid Indian hater. Instead, he Read More

Bad Men of Missouri

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jane Wyman, Wayne Morris, Arthur Kennedy, Victor Jory

Synopsis: Rather than play famous outlaw Cole Younger in this film, Warner Bros. contract star Humphrey Bogart chose suspension. Ronald Reagan was considered, and so were James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and George Raft, but, happily, the role eventually went to the more age-appropriate Dennis Morgan, a Read More

The Mad Doctor

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew, John Howard, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: Basil Rathbone is the batty physician of the title, a sophisticated gentleman who woos and weds several of his wealthy women patients. Unfortunately the ladies have a bad habit of dying prematurely, with the above-suspicion doctor diagnosing these deaths as the result of disease. Given the film's Read More

A Dispatch from Reuters

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Edna Best, Eddie Albert, Albert Basserman, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: As part of his new contract with Warner Bros., Edward G. Robinson agreed to appear in the gangster comedy Brother Orchid on the condition that the studio permit him to play the leading role in the lavish biopic A Dispatch from Reuters. Robinson is cast as Baron Paul Julius Reiter, who in 1833 Read More

The Man from Dakota

Actors: Wallace Beery, John Howard, Dolores Del Rio, Donald Meek, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: Wallace Beery trots out his "lovable lout" act for the zillionth time in Man From Dakota. Beery plays a Union army sergeant who, along with his superior officer (John Howard), is captured and incarcerated in a Confederate prison. Upon escaping, Beery and Howard cross the path of Dolores Del Rio Read More

Diamond Frontier

Actors: Victor McLaglen, John Loder, Anne Nagel, Philip Dorn, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: Characterized by some critics as a "South African western", Diamond Frontier stars Victor McLaglen as ruthless diamond hunter Regan. The villain's reign of terror as he searches for the precious gems is checked by Charles Clayton (John Loder), freshly escaped from a brutal penal colony. A wild Read More

Legion of the Lawless

Actors: George O'Brien, Virginia Vale, Herbert Heywood, Norman Willis, Hugh Sothern

Synopsis: George O'Brien's first 1940 western release, Legion of the Lawless uses its frontier trappings for a plea against vigilante justice-specifically, lynching. A group of masked night riders terrorize the homesteaders in the 19th century village of Iveston, all the while insisting that they're merely Read More

The House of the Seven Gables

Actors: George Sanders, Margaret Lindsay, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, Dick Foran

Synopsis: This fine adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale about a cursed family opens with a title card that reveals how the Pyncheon family stole, cheated, lied, and murdered their way to wealth. But within the hearts of the family's bloodline lay fear of the curse of Matthew Maule, a man they Read More

Young Buffalo Bill

Actors: Roy Rogers, George "Gabby" Hayes, Pauline Moore, Hugh Sothern

Synopsis: Young Buffalo Bill was one of a brief series of Roy Rogers "historical westerns" of the early 1940s. Per the title, Rogers plays the youthful Bill Cody, here depicted as an assistant land surveyor in old New Mexico. The villains plot to get their hands on valuable mineral deposits in the region Read More

Northwest Passage

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Ruth Hussey, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis:
Kenneth Roberts' fact-based novel Northwest Passage would seem too raw and explicit a book to be considered for an MGM film adaptation-much less one in Technicolor. Amazingly, MGM retained many of the grim episodes from the Roberts' novel, though - thanks to the Hays Code - most are discussed Read More

Juarez

Actors: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, John Garfield

Synopsis: Juarez was originally designed to concentrate almost exclusively on the tragedy of Hapsburg Emperor Maximillian, whose attempts to establish a puppet government in Mexico on behalf of Napoleon III ended in disaster and death. But when Paul Muni decided that he wanted to play Read More

Wall Street Cowboy

Actors: Roy Rogers, George "Gabby" Hayes, Raymond Hatton, Ann Baldwin, Pierre Watkin

Synopsis: Despite its tantalizing title, Wall Street Cowboy must rank as one of the lesser Roy Rogers films. The story is set in motion by a crooked cartel of stock marketeers who hope to swindle Rogers out of his ranch. It seems that his property is rich with the valuable mineral molybdenum, which the Read More

The Oklahoma Kid

Actors: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Rosemary Lane, Donald Crisp, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: James Cagney stars in the humorous Western The Oklahoma Kid, set during the land rush of 1893. John Kincaid (Hugh Sothern) and his son, Ned (Harvey Stephens), try to settle on a plot of land, but they are met by the villainous Whip McCord (Humphrey Bogart) and his band of miscreants. McCord runs a Read More

$1,000 a Touchdown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye, Eric Blore, Susan Hayward, John Hartley

Synopsis: This film should have been a press agent's dream: Hollywood's two greatest "big mouths," Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye, together in the same picture. Brown and Raye play a show business couple who inherit a near-bankrupt college. They decide to build up the school's scraggly football team in hopes Read More

The Torpedo of Doom

Actors: Lee Powell, Herman Brix, Eleanor Stewart, Montagu Love, Hugh Sothern

Synopsis: The United States Marine Corps. became the focus of this typical Republic Pictures serial directed by two of the best in the business, William Witney and John English. The villain was yet another cloaked figure -- this time an inventor whose contribution to mankind was a weapon capable of Read More

The Buccaneer

Actors: Fredric March, Franziska Gaal, Akim Tamiroff, Margot Grahame, Walter Brennan

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's The Buccaneer stars Fredric March, complete with curly hair, pencil moustache and florid "Sacre Bleu!" French accent, as 18th century pirate Jean Lafitte. Operating out of a "buccaneer's haven" of the coast of New Orleans, Lafitte plunders all passing ships for their wealth, but Read More

Border G-Man

Actors: George O'Brien, Laraine Johnson, Ray Whitley, John Miljan, Edgar Dearing

Synopsis: Virile George O'Brien straddles the "western" and "crime-flick" genres in RKO Radio's Border G-Men. The plot gets under way when the FBI learns that ammunition and men are being smuggled out of the US and into Mexico in violation of the neutrality act. Federal agent O'Brien is dispatched to Texas Read More

Flight to Fame

Actors: Charles Farrell, Hugh Sothern, Alex D'Arcy, Jason Robards, Sr.

Synopsis: Once one of Hollywood's "top ten" screen attractions, Charles Farrell had slipped somewhat by the end of the 1930s, and obliging to accept roles in such B productions as Columbia's Flight to Fame. Farrell plays air force captain Lawrence, a Billy Mitchell type who finds himself constantly at odds Read More

Dangerous to Know

Synopsis: In this drama, a gangster finds the woman of his dreams, but before he can have her he must frame her fiance. Meanwhile the Asian lover he dumped plots her revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More