Irving BaconFilmography

The Dick Van Dyke Show: Young Man With a Shoehorn

Actors: Lou Jacobi, Milton Frome, Jane Dulo, Amzie Strickland, LaRue Farlow

Synopsis: When Rob (Dick Van Dyke), Buddy (Morey Amsterdam), and Sally (Rose Marie) each receive an unexpected 1,200 dollars, the intrepid trio decide to invest in a growing business. The most attractive prospect would seem to be the bargain shoe store owned by Buddy's Uncle Lou (Lou Jacobi). Unfortunately Read More

Maverick: A Flock of Trouble

Synopsis: Bret (James Garner) feels mighty lucky when he thinks he's won some prize cattle in a poker game. Imagine his dismay when discovers that his "prize" is actually a large flock of sheep--and that he is now smack in the middle of a violent range war. While looking for someone willing to buy the Read More

Maverick: The Sheriff of Duck 'n' Shoot

Synopsis: A kick from an angry horse knocks out the town bully, but it is Bret Maverick who is given credit for the blow--and that's how Bret becomes the new sheriff of Duck 'N' Shoot. His contract calls for him to stay on the job for six months, but the locals give odds that Bret won't last the week. Read More

Ambush at Cimarron Pass

Actors: Scott Brady, Margia Dean, Baynes Barron, William Vaughan, Ken Mayer, Clint Eastwood

Synopsis: Despite the glut of TV westerns in 1958, 20th Century-Fox's Regal Films subsidiary continued grinding out profitable sagebrushers. In Ambush at Cimarron Pass, cavalry sergeant Scott Brady is ordered to escort a prisoner through treacherous Indian territory. A diehard Union sympathizer, Brady is Read More

Fort Massacre

Actors: Joel McCrea, Forrest Tucker, Susan Cabot, John Russell, Anthony Caruso

Synopsis: In this western, an embittered cavalry sergeant must take over his regiment after their commanding officer is killed during an ambush. To save them, he leads the troop through Apache territory because it is the quickest way to reach the fort. The members of the regiment do not trust their new Read More

Maverick: Shady Deal at Sunny Acres

Synopsis: In one of Maverick's all-time greatest episodes, Bret (James Garner) is cheated out of $15,000 by "respectable" banker John Bates (John Dehner). Since Bret is unable to reclaim the money through legal means, his brother Bart (Jack Kelly) devises an elaborate sting operation to beat Bates at his Read More

Leave It to Beaver: Captain Jack

Actors: Edgar Buchanan, Irving Bacon, Connie Gilchrist, Penny Carpenter

Synopsis: Boy, are Beaver (Jerry Mathers) and Wally (Tony Dow) in for it! Answering a mail-order ad, the boys have purchased a baby alligator without telling mom and dad. Now the gator has gotten sick -- and even worse, it's growing bigger and bigger every day. In their efforts to hide the gator in the Read More

Dakota Incident

Actors: Dale Robertson, Linda Darnell, John Lund, Ward Bond, Regis Toomey

Synopsis: Some good performances overcome the scripted cliches in Dakota Incident. In the tradition of Stagecoach, the film offers a disparate group of travellers whose lives are imperiled when their coach heads deep into Indian territory. Linda Darnell plays Amy Clarke, the requisite you-know-what with a Read More

Hidden Guns

Actors: Bruce Bennett, Richard Arlen, John Carradine, Faron Young, Lloyd Corrigan

Synopsis: Hidden Guns is not so much a western as a suspense melodrama. Bruce Bennett plays Stragg, a mean-spirited cardsharp with friends in high places. Though he has ordered the killing of a rival, Stragg is able to escape prosecution by greasing a few local palms. It is up to heretofore ineffectual Read More

At Gunpoint

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, Walter Brennan, Tommy Rettig, Skip Homeier

Synopsis: One of the best of the High Noon derivations, At Gunpoint is the story of reluctant hero Fred MacMurray. When a band of gunmen invade a small frontier town, storekeeper MacMurray fires off a lucky shot and kills the leader. Hailed as a hero, MacMurray realizes deep down that he's a coward. When Read More

Run for Cover

Actors: James Cagney, John Derek, Viveca Lindfors, Jean Hersholt, Ernest Borgnine, Grant Withers

Synopsis: In his first western since 1939's The Oklahoma Kid, James Cagney is a pillar of integrity in the Pine-Thomas production Run for Cover. Cagney plays Matt Dow, who at the beginning of the film has been released from prison after serving six years for a crime he didn't commit. Heading westward, Matt Read More

I Love Lucy: Ethel's Home Town

Actors: Irving Bacon, Chick Chandler, Dick Reeves

Synopsis: On the last leg of their trip from New York to Hollywood, the Ricardos and the Mertzes pull into Albuquerque, the home town of Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance). The four travelers are effusively welcomed by Ethel's father, Will Potter (Irving Bacon), who has arranged a gala reception for Alquerque's Read More

Duffy of San Quentin

Actors: Louis Hayward, Joanne Dru, Paul Kelly, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready

Synopsis: Duffy of San Quentin is an Allied Artists low-budgeter based on the life of the warden who first introduced reforms in the infamous California penal institution. Appalled by conditions in San Quentin, the grey-haired Duffy inaugurates a series of improvements. He also sets up an honor system Read More

Black Horse Canyon

Actors: Joel McCrea, Mari Blanchard, Race Gentry, Murvyn Vye, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Black Horse Canyon was adapted from The Wild Horse, a novel by Lee Savage Jr. Joel McCrea stars as novice rancher Del Rockwell, who takes it upon himself to capture a magnificent wild black stallion who has been spiriting mares away from other ranchers. Rockwell hopes to use the stallion for stud Read More

Ma and Pa Kettle at Home

Actors: Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, Alan Mowbray, Alice Kelley, Brett Halsey

Synopsis: This sixth in the "Ma and Pa Kettle" series produced by Universal stars (as usual) Marjorie Main as Ma and Percy Kilbride as Pa. After a whirlwind international tour, the contest-winning rustics and their fifteen children return to their old farm. The eldest Kettle son (Brett Halsey) has a chance Read More

The Glenn Miller Story

Actors: James Stewart, June Allyson, Charles Drake, George Tobias, Henry Morgan

Synopsis: The Glenn Miller Story traces Miller's rise from pit-orchestra trombone player to leader of the most successful big band of his era. June Allyson is on hand as Miller's wife, Helen, who learns the value of patience when Glenn spends his wedding night jamming with Gene Krupa and Louis Armstrong. Read More

A Star is Born

Actors: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tommy Noonan

Synopsis: The 1954 musical remake of A Star is Born could have been titled A Star is Reborn, in that it represented the triumphal return to the screen of Judy Garland after a four-year absence. The remake adheres closely to the plotline of the 1937 original: An alcoholic film star, on his last Read More

Sweethearts on Parade

Actors: Ray Middleton, Lucille Norman, Eileen Christy, Bill Shirley

Synopsis: Ray Middleton and Bill Shirley, Republic Pictures' answer to Hope and Crosby, star in Sweethearts on Parade. Middleton and Shirley play Cam Ellerby and Bill Gamble, the featured singers in a travelling medicine show. While stopping over in a small town, Cam renews his acquaintance with his former Read More

Fort Ti

Actors: George Montgomery, Joan Vohs, James Seay, Irving Bacon, Ben A. Astar

Synopsis: Future horror-film entrepreneur William Castle warmed the director's chair for Fort Ti. Set in the 18th century, the film recounts the exploits of Rogers' Rangers, a band of adventurers devoted to seeking out a "northwest passage" through Canada. At this juncture, however, Major Rogers (Howard Petrie Read More

Devil's Canyon

Actors: Virginia Mayo, Dale Robertson, Stephen McNally, Arthur Hunnicutt, Robert Keith

Synopsis: RKO Radio's second 3D production, Devil's Canyon is a combination western and jail-break picture. The scene is Arizona Territorial Prison, wherein 500 desperate men are incarcerated. The inmates become even more desperate when female outlaw Abby Nixon (Virginia Mayo) is likewise locked up. As the Read More

Kansas Pacific

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Eve Miller, Barton MacLane, Harry Shannon, Tom Fadden

Synopsis: Walter Wanger's first production for Allied Artists, Kansas Pacific is more slick and polished than the usual budget western. Set just before the Civil War, the film concerts Kansas Pacific railroad's westward expansion, a project stymied by the sabotage activities of Southern sympathizers. Read More

O. Henry's Full House

Actors: Charles Laughton, Marilyn Monroe, David Wayne, Richard Widmark, Dale Robertson, Anne Baxter, Fred Allen

Synopsis: This anthology film assembles five respected directors and a top-notch cast to bring a handful of stories by the great American author O. Henry to the screen. In The Cop and the Anthem, a tramp named Soapy (Charles Laughton) tries to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in jail Read More

I Love Lucy: The Marriage License

Actors: Irving Bacon, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Because of a minor error on their wedding license, Lucy (Lucille Ball) is convinced that she is no longer legally married to Ricky (Desi Arnaz). Taking advantage of the situation, Lucy insists that Ricky court her all over again, and that he drop to his knees to propose marriage in the most Read More

Rose of Cimarron

Actors: Jack Buetel, Mala Powers, Bill Williams, Jim Davis, Dick Curtis

Synopsis: The eponymous Rose is played by Mala Powers, a white girl raised by Cherokee Indians after her family was massacred. Powers considers herself a Native American and regards all whites as her enemies. Her feelings are justified to an extent when outlaws kill her Indian parents. Realizing she can't Read More

Room for One More

Actors: Cary Grant, Betsy Drake, George Winslow, Randy Stuart, Iris Mann, John Ridgely, Clifford Tatum, Jr., Lurene Tuttle

Synopsis: Based on the autobiography by George and Anna Rose, Room for One More is a warm-hearted vehicle for husband-and-wife actors Cary Grant and Betsy Drake. Though she already has three children of her own, New Jersey housewife Anna Rose (Drake) adopts several kids born into less fortunate Read More

Honeychile

Actors: Judy Canova, Eddie Foy, Jr., Walter Catlett, Claire Carleton

Synopsis: After a lengthy absence from the screen, Judy Canova returned in the raucous musical Honeychile. The plot had been utilized in several previous Republic films, but was good for yet another go-round here. Canova plays Judy, a would-be songwriter who sends one of her tunes to a big-city composer. Read More

Here Comes the Groom

Actors: Bing Crosby, Jane Wyman, Alexis Smith, Franchot Tone, James Barton

Synopsis: Here Comes the Groom was the second collaboration between director Frank Capra and star Bing Crosby. Though not as "socially relevant" as previous Capra productions, the film is a thoroughly likeable yarn about a happy-go-lucky newspaperman named Pete (Bing Crosby). In order to legally adopt a Read More

Katie Did It

Actors: Ann Blyth, Mark Stevens, Cecil Kellaway, Jesse White, Harold Vermilyea

Synopsis: Katherine "Katie" Standish (Ann Blyth) has been raised in a restrictive small town by her prudish Aunt Priscilla (Elizabeth Patterson). When Katie heads to New York to help out her improvident Uncle Nathaniel (Cecil Kellaway), she experiences an emotional and romantic awakening. The catalyst for Read More

Desert of Lost Men

Actors: Allan Lane, Mary Ellen Kay, Irving Bacon, Roy Barcroft, Ross Elliott

Synopsis: Allan "Rocky" Lane is cleverly cast as Allan "Rocky" Lane in the Republic western Desert of Lost Men. The story finds Lane going undercover to trap the leader of an outlaw gang. His scheme is complicated by the fact that heroine Nan Webster (Mary Ellen Kay) is the daughter of a doctor who is Read More

Cause for Alarm

Actors: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling, Margalo Gillmore, Brad Mora

Synopsis: While a man recuperates from a heart-attack, he obsesses with the thought that his wife and his doctor are having an affair, so decides to write a letter to the D.A. accusing the two of trying to kill him. After his wife mails the letter for him, he tells her of its contents which provokes his Read More

Never a Dull Moment

Actors: Irene Dunne, Fred MacMurray, William Demarest, Andy Devine

Synopsis: In this 1951 comedy Irene Dunne stars as Kay, a Manhattan-based songwriter who marries widowed rodeo cowboy Chris (Fred MacMurray). In the tradition of The Egg and I, Kay suffers a great deal of culture shock when she moves into Chris' western ranch. When she isn't being bedeviled by her new Read More

Born to Be Bad

Actors: Joan Fontaine, Robert Ryan, Zachary Scott, Joan Leslie, Mel Ferrer

Synopsis: One of the most oft-revived of the pre-Technicolor Nicholas Ray efforts, Born to Be Bad offers us the spectacle of Joan Fontaine portraying a character described as "a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Peg O' My Heart". For the benefit of her wealthy husband Zachary Scott and his family, Fontaine Read More

Emergency Wedding

Actors: Larry Parks, Barbara Hale, Willard Parker, Una Merkel, Alan Reed, Sr.

Synopsis: 1950's Emergency Wedding is a remake of 1940's You Belong to Me. The later film stars Larry Parks, who'd had a bit role in the original. Parks plays wealthy Peter Kirk, a playboy, while Barbara Hale co-stars as female doctor Helen Hunt. When Peter marries Helen, it is a "given" that he'll stay Read More

Wabash Avenue

Actors: Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Phil Harris, James Barton, Reginald Gardiner

Synopsis: Betty Grable's Wabash Avenue is an agreeable remake of Grable's 1943 hit Coney Island. The locale is changed from New York to Chicago, but the plot remains basically the same. Once again, the star is cast as a honky-tonk singer, Ruby Summers, who is groomed for classier show-business endeavors by Read More

Riding High

Actors: Bing Crosby, Coleen Gray, Charles Bickford, Frances Gifford, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: Anxious to remain active in the 1950s, director Frank Capra wanted to prove to Paramount Pictures that he could deliver an "A" picture on a modest budget. To that end, Capra bought the rights of his 1934 film Broadway Bill from Columbia, and remade it under the title Riding High. He then hired Read More

It's a Great Feeling

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Bill Goodwin, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's future partner I.A.L. Diamond concocted the storyline for this Dennis Morgan/Jack Carson/Doris Day tunefest. Morgan and Carson, Warner Bros.' answer to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, appear as themselves. Attempting to line up a director for their next picture, the boys find themselves Read More

Down Memory Lane

Actors: Steve Allen, Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Donald Novis, Gloria Swanson, Mabel Normand

Synopsis: Down Memory Lane is a pastiche film comprised of old comedy footage from the Mack Sennett studios. The vintage clips are tied together by a thin continuity wherein TV host Steve Allen hopes to boost his ratings by screening excerpts from Sennett's silent and talkie two-reel comedies. Among the Read More

Sons of New Mexico

Actors: Gene Autry, Gail Davis, Robert Armstrong, Dick Jones, Frankie Darro

Synopsis: Not quite as memorable as his previous Riders in the Sky, Gene Autry's Sons of New Mexico is still well up to the star's standard. This time, Gene tries to reform Randy Pryor, a would-be juvenile delinquent, played by Autry-protégé Dick Jones (who later starred in the Autry-produced TV series Range Rider Read More

The Big Cat

Actors: Lon McCallister, Peggy Ann Garner, Preston S. Foster, Forrest Tucker

Synopsis: A frequent cable-TV attraction since lapsing into public domain in 1976, The Big Cat is an excellent outdoor drama, beautifully lensed in Technicolor (though most current prints are printed in a washed-out 2-color process). Set in Utah in the darkest days of the Depression, the film stars Lon McCallister Read More

Dear Wife

Actors: William Holden, Joan Caulfield, Billy De Wolfe, Mona Freeman, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: A sequel to 1947's Dear Ruth, this movie has William Holden and Joan Caulfield portraying a young married couple with some definite in-law problems. When Caulfield's younger sister gets Holden to run for the State senate, a whole new kettle of worms is opened--his opponent is his Father-in-law. In Read More

Dynamite

Actors: William Gargan, Virginia Welles, Richard Crane, Irving Bacon, Mary Newton

Synopsis: Dynamite is a 1949 effort from the Pine-Thomas production mill. William Gargan and Richard Crane star as Gunner and Johnny, troubleshooters for dynamite contractor Hard Rock Mason Frank Ferguson. Though forced to work as a team on the job, Gunner and Johnny fall out when romance enters the picture Read More

Woman in Hiding

Actors: Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Stephen McNally, John Litel, Taylor Holmes

Synopsis: So far as the rest of the world is concerned, Deborah Chandler Clark (Ida Lupino) is dead, killed in a freak auto accident. But Deborah is alive, if not too well. Having discovered a horrible truth about her new husband (Stephen McNally), Deborah had intended to commit suicide. Now she is the Read More

Manhandled

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden, Dan Duryea, Irene Hervey, Phillip Reed

Synopsis: Produced by Paramount's Pine-Thomas unit, Manhandled is a no-nonsense film noir with a well-chosen cast. Small-time hoodlum Karl Benson (Dan Duryea) uses and abuses several innocent people in his efforts to get ahead. Among Benson's victims is Merl Kramer (Dorothy Lamour), who doesn't find out Read More

The Green Promise

Actors: Marguerite Chapman, Walter Brennan, Robert Paige, Natalie Wood, Ted Donaldson

Synopsis: A mule-stubborn farmer is determined to avoid modern technology and nearly destroys what is left of his family in this moving drama. The farmer is saddled with raising his four kids alone and insists on being ruler of the roost in every way. He steadfastly refuses any talk of modern technology Read More

John Loves Mary

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Patricia Neal, Jack Carson, Wayne Morris, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: John Lawrence (Ronald Reagan) is a returning GI. Mary McKinley (Patricia Neal in her film debut) is the girl he left behind. But their reunion will have to wait: John has returned with cockney war bride Lilly Herbish (Virginia Field) in tow. It seems that John married Lilly as a favor to get her Read More

Night Unto Night

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Viveca Lindfors, Broderick Crawford, Rosemary de Camp, Osa Massen

Synopsis: Filmed in 1947, Warner Bros. Night Unto Night wasn't released until 1949. Based on a novel by Philip Wylie, the film stars Ronald Reagan as John, a young scientist suffering from epilepsy (In 1951, Reagan would play another epileptic, baseball star Grover Cleveland Alexander, in The Winning Team). Viveca Lindfors 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

Adventures in Silverado

Synopsis: Stagecoach driver Bishop needs to capture the infamous bandit known as "The Monk" for his hooded attire. If Bishop can't bring the outlaw to justice, a crime will rest on his name. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Moonrise

Actors: Dane Clark, Gail Russell, Ethel Barrymore, Allyn Joslyn, Rex Ingram

Synopsis: All of his life, Danny Hawkins (Dane Clark) has been taunted and mistreated by most of the people around him, enduring innumerable beatings and other humiliations as a boy because his father was a murderer who died on the gallows. He finds it not much better as an adult, living with his aunt in Read More

State of the Union

Actors: Florence Auer, Spencer Tracy, Irving Bacon, Katharine Hepburn, Van Johnson, Art Baker, Angela Lansbury, Adolphe Menjou, Tom Fadden

Synopsis: Frank Capra's only MGM film, State of the Union was adapted by Anthony Veiller and Myles Connolly from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. Spencer Tracy plays an aircraft tycoon who is coerced into seeking the Republican Presidential nomination by predatory Read More

Good Sam

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ann Sheridan, Ray Collins, Edmund Lowe, Joan Lorring

Synopsis: Small-town department store manager Sam Clayton (Gary Cooper) is a born "Good Samaritan", which in his case translates as "sucker." Much to the dismay of his wife Lu (Anne Sheridan), who'd like to save up enough cash for a new house, Sam habitually gives his money away to one "deserving" soul or Read More

Rocky

Synopsis: In this children's move, a teenager and his loyal dog wander the wild West. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Family Honeymoon

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, William Daniels, Rita Johnson, Gigi Perreau, Jimmy Hunt

Synopsis: In this family farce, an older couple falls in love and decide to marry and embark upon a peaceful honeymoon without the bride's three bratty children. Unfortunately, the way things work out, the whole family ends up tagging along. The little darlings are less than pleased that their widowed Read More

Dear Ruth

Actors: Joan Caulfield, William Holden, Edward Arnold, Mary Philips, Mona Freeman

Synopsis: Adapted from the popular stage play of the same name, Dear Ruth features Mona Freeman as teenaged Miriam Watkins, who can't keep her nose out of other people's affairs. Fired up by patriotism, Miriam inaugurates a warm pen-pal relationship with an overseas air force officer (William Holden) Read More

Saddle Pals

Actors: Lynne Roberts, Sterling Holloway, Irving Bacon, Damian O'Flynn

Synopsis: Saddle Pals hits a new low for Gene Autry's postwar Republic westerns, containing literally no action at all. Autry is drawn into the plot when he's given power of attorney in a property settlement involving his old pal (Sterling Holloway) and a gang of land swindlers. The pal then goes on an Read More

Albuquerque

Actors: Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, George "Gabby" Hayes, Lon Chaney, Jr., Russell Hayden

Synopsis: Randolph Scott puts in time with Paramount's Pine-Thomas unit in the big-budget western Albuquerque. Scott is cast as Cole Armin, the nephew of tyrannical town boss John Armin (George Cleveland). Defying his grasping uncle, Cole sides with a small wagon-train line which the elder Armin hopes to Read More

The High Wall

Actors: Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall, Dorothy Patrick, H.B. Warner, Warner Anderson

Synopsis: Former army pilot Robert Taylor is accused, on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence, of his wife's murder. Suffering from periodic blackouts, Taylor isn't so certain of his innocence himself. When offered a brain operation, Taylor refuses, knowing that if he is proven sane he will be Read More

Monsieur Verdoux

Actors: Charles Chaplin, Ada-May, Marjorie Bennett, Isobel Elsom, Audrey Betz, Marilyn Nash, Virginia Brissac

Synopsis: "Von Clausewitz said that war is the logical extension of diplomacy; Monsieur Verdoux feels that murder is the logical extension of business." With his controversial "comedy of murders" Monsieur Verdoux, Charles Chaplin makes his final, definitive break with the Little Tramp character that had Read More

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

Actors: Irving Bacon, Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, William Bakewell, Shirley Temple, Ian Bernard, Rudy Vallee, Veda Ann Borg, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Judge Myrna Loy decides that the best way to curb the excesses of playboyish art teacher Cary Grant is to force him to do what he does best--romance a willing young lady. In this instance, the girl is Loy's own sister, played by a blossoming Shirley Temple. Aware that Temple has a serious crush on Grant 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

My Brother Talks to Horses

Actors: Peter Lawford, Beverly Tyler, Edward Arnold, Charlie Ruggles

Synopsis: In later years, director Fred Zinneman seldom referred to My Brother Talks to Horses as one of his career highpoints. Even so, this leisurely period comedy has its moments, most of them delivered by precocious Jackie "Butch" Jenkins as the title character. Living with his family in Baltimore Read More

Wake up and Dream

Actors: John Payne, June Haver, John Ireland, Connie Marshall, Clem Bevans, Charlotte Greenwood

Synopsis: In this adventure, a young woman travels across Europe in search of her brother who was listed as missing in action during WW II. He had earlier told her that should he ever disappear, he could be found on a certain tiny island. She and her brother's girl friend head off and meet a strange old Read More

Night Train to Memphis

Actors: Allan Lane, Roy Acuff, Adele Mara, Irving Bacon, Joseph Crehan

Synopsis: Country-western star Roy Acuff heads the cast of the modest Republic musical Night Train to Memphis. Taking time off from his musical duties, Acuff tries to patch up a feud between a family of hillbillies and a railroad company. Complicating matters is the fact that Roy's brother Don (Allan Lane) Read More

Under Western Skies

Actors: Martha O'Driscoll, Leo Carrillo, Leon Errol, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: One of the last of Universal's "pocket" musicals, Under Western Skies packs a surplus of entertainment value into its brief 57 minutes. Martha O'Driscoll plays Katie, the daughter of travelling showman Willie (Leon Errol). While playing an engagement in a wild-and-wooly Arizona town, Katie runs Read More

Roughly Speaking

Actors: Ray Collins, Kathleen Lockhart, Ann E. Todd, Andy Clyde, Rosalind Russell, Robert Hutton

Synopsis: This odd combination of roughneck comedy and serious domestic drama was adapted by Louise Randall Pierson from her own autobiographical novel. Rosalind Russell is cast as young Louise Randall, the headstrong daughter of a New England merchant. Inheriting her father's business, Louise intends to Read More

Patrick the Great

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Peggy Ryan, Frances Dee, Donald Cook, Eve Arden

Synopsis: Donald Cook plays a fading actor whose son, Donald O'Connor, has just started his own theatrical career. It transpires that both Cook and O'Connor are up for the same part in a Broadway show, and the son is the winner. This results in jealousy from the father--and confusion from the audience, in Read More

Spellbound

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Jean Acker, Rhonda Fleming, Leo G. Carroll, Donald Curtis, Norman Lloyd, Regis Toomey

Synopsis: As Alfred Hitchcock's classic psychothriller opens, the staff of a posh mental asylum eagerly awaits the arrival of the new director. When the man in question shows up, it turns out to be handsome psychiatrist John Ballantine (Gregory Peck). But something's wrong, here: Ballantine seems much too Read More

Out of This World

Actors: Eddie Bracken, Veronica Lake, Diana Lynn, Cass Daley, Parkyakarkus [Harry Einstein]

Synopsis: In this musical, a messenger boy does a remarkable imitation of Bing Crosby and finds himself surrounded by luscious little bobby-soxers. One woman is so impressed by his Crosbiesque crooning that she takes him New York and convinces investors to bank on him. Unfortunately, she accidentally sells Read More

Guest Wife

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: This screwball comedy stars Claudette Colbert as Mary, the wife of bumbling but likeable banker Chris (Dick Foran). Foreign correspondent Joe (Don Ameche) Chris' best friend, is in danger of losing his job because he's not married (his boss insists that all his employees be married-and remember Read More

Hitchhike to Happiness

Actors: Al Pearce, Dale Evans, Brad Taylor, William Frawley, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: In this drama, an aspiring playwright gets a job in a New York City restaurant favored by celebrities in hopes of getting a break. Unfortunately, most of them believe that the waiter lacks the talent to make it big. Only an aspiring songwriter, and a former waitress who has become a famous Read More

Weekend at the Waldorf

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: Weekend at the Waldorf is an unabashed remake of MGM's 1932 Oscar-winner Grand Hotel: in fact, at several points in the story, the cast makes pointed references to the earlier film. The posh Waldorf Hotel in the heart of New York is the setting for several plots and subplots. Ginger Rogers plays Read More

Heavenly Days

Actors: Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, Eugene Pallette, Gordon Oliver, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: Heavenly Days was the last of three RKO Radio film vehicles for the popular radio duo of Fibber McGee and Molly (aka Jim and Marion Jordan). Unlike their first two films, which were cacophonous, plotless musical farces, this one actually has a coherent storyline and not a little "heart appeal." Read More

The Thin Man Goes Home

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Gloria de Haven, Lucile Watson, Anne Revere, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: This fifth entry in MGM's off-and-on "Thin Man" series maintains the high production and story values of the first four. Per the title, retired private detective Nick Charles (William Powell) pays a visit to his home town of Sycamore Springs, with wife Nora (Myrna Loy) in tow. Poor Nick is Read More

Knickerbocker Holiday

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Charles Coburn, Constance Dowling, Shelley Winters, Ernest Cossart, Johnnie Davis, Percy Kilbride

Synopsis: The wild and woolly early days of New York -- when it was still known as New Amsterdam -- provide the backdrop for this period musical-comedy. In 1650, Peter Stuyvesant (Charles Coburn) arrives in New Amsterdam to assume his duties as governor. Stuyvesant is hardly the fun-loving type, and one of Read More

A Wing and a Prayer

Actors: Don Ameche, Dana Andrews, William Eythe, Charles Bickford, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Former president Ronald Reagan may have genuinely believed that he was referring to a real-life act of selfless wartime bravery whenever repeating his "We'll bring this one down together" anecdote. In fact, he was merely quoting a scene from the above-average World War 2 drama A Wing and a Prayer. Read More

Her Primitive Man

Actors: Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige, Robert Benchley, Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick

Synopsis: In this crazy comedy, a casino worker writes a book about headhunters and finds himself the target of the leader of an anthropological society who is determined to prove that the book is phony. The writer tricks the woman into going on a head-hunting expedition to prove his claims. He dresses up Read More

Since You Went Away

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Monty Woolley, Agnes Moorehead

Synopsis: David O. Selznick's first production since 1940's Rebecca, Since You Went Away, based on Margaret Buell Wilder's bestselling novel, is a long but rewarding paean to the World War 2 "home front". Claudette Colbert plays the wife of a businessman who, though well past draft age, volunteered to serve Read More

A Guy Named Joe

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Ward Bond, James Gleason, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: Opening in England during the middle of World War II, A Guy Named Joe tells the story of Pete Sandidge (Spencer Tracy), a tough, devil-may-care bomber pilot who's amassed an enviable record in combat, mostly by taking chances that give his C.O. (James Gleason) the shakes, much as he and the top Read More

Weekend Pass

Actors: Martha O'Driscoll, Noah Beery, Jr., George Barbier, Andrew Tombes, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Although coming in at an odd running time -- 40 minutes -- this interesting, low-budget drama looks at the adventures, or rather misadventures of a sailor (Paul von Schreiber) with a weekend leave in Los Angeles. The seaman is a country boy unused to the ways of big city women and so he gets his Read More

Chip off the Old Block

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Peggy Ryan, Ann Blyth, Helen Vinson, Helen Broderick

Synopsis: A musical comedy star whose career is just starting to take off returns home from military school. En route, he meets a pretty girl whom he begins to woo. Unfortunately his hometown girl friend is waiting for him at the station and typical romantic mayhem ensues amidst many lively songs and Read More

Pin-Up Girl

Actors: Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye, Joe E. Brown, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Despite the film's title, Pin-Up Girl offers surprisingly few glimpses of the famed Betty Grable "gams." This lively Technicolor musical casts Gable as Lorrie Jones, secretary at a USO canteen frequented by handsome servicemen. Falling in love with war hero Tommy Dooley (John Harvey), Lorrie Read More

The Story of Dr. Wassell

Actors: Gary Cooper, Laraine Day, Signe Hasso, Dennis O'Keefe, Carol Thurston

Synopsis: The genesis of The Story of Dr. Wassell is said to have been a story told by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to director Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper stars as Corydon M. Wassell, a real-life country doctor from Arkansas who worked as a medical missionary in China in the years prior to WWII. Read More

Casanova Brown

Actors: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Anita Louise, Patricia Collinge

Synopsis: When he finds out his ex-wife has just had his child and plans to give her up for adoption, a timid English instructor dashes to the child's rescue and attempts to care for her in a hotel room. Before too long, however, his new fiancee and his ex confront him and he must decide what he will do. Read More

Dixie Dugan

Actors: James Ellison, Charlotte Greenwood, Charlie Ruggles, Lois Andrews, Helene Reynolds

Synopsis: Lois Andrews, best known in 1943 as the ex-wife of comedian Georgie Jessel, plays the title character in this cinemadaptation of Joseph P. McEvoy's popular comic strip Dixie Dugan. Swept up in the war effort, Dixie gets a job as secretary to government official Roger Hudson (James Ellison). Though Read More

The Desperadoes

Actors: Randolph Scott, Glenn Ford, Claire Trevor, Evelyn Keyes, Edgar Buchanan

Synopsis: In this Western drama, Steve Upton (Randolph Scott) is the sheriff of a Utah community in 1860. Upton's best friend, Cheyenne Rogers (Glenn Ford), was once an outlaw, but under Steve's guidance, he's gone straight and tries to earn an honest living. However, while Cheyenne is in town to pay Upton Read More

The Good Fellows

Actors: Cecil Kellaway, Mabel Paige, Helen Walker, James Brown, Diana Hale

Synopsis: For reasons unknown, Paramount Pictures decided to dust off the 1926 George S. Kaufman-Herman Mankiewicz stage comedy The Good Fellows for its 1942-43 release schedule. Cecil Kellaway plays Jim Hilton, a small-town family man who neglects his wife and kids, preferring the company of his lodge 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

Johnny Come Lately

Actors: James Cagney, Grace George, Marjorie Main, Hattie McDaniel, Marjorie Lord, Edward McNamara

Synopsis: For his first independently-produced starring effort, James Cagney chose the sentimental drama Johnny Come Lately. Cagney plays itinerant newspaperman Tom Richards, who wanders into a small corruption-ridden town. Striking up a friendship with elderly Vinnie McLeod (Grace George in her only movie Read More

Hers to Hold

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Joseph Cotten, Charles Winninger, Evelyn Ankers, Gus Schilling

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin is all grown up in Hers to Hold, the unofficial sequel to her "Three Smart Girls" films of the 1930s. Durbin plays Penelope Craig, the starry-eyed daughter of wealthy Judson and Dorothy Craig (Charles Winninger, Nella Walker). Developing a crush on much-older playboy Bill Morley Read More

Gung Ho!

Actors: Randolph Scott, Grace McDonald, Noah Beery, Jr., Alan Curtis, J. Carrol Naish, Robert Mitchum

Synopsis: Accepted in 1943 as standard wartime propaganda, Gung Ho can be seen today as an outrageous exercise in raging machismo. Randolph Scott plays Thorwald, a marine colonel assigned to assemble a crack squadron of fearless jungle fighters for the all-important raid on Japanese-held Makim Island (which Read More

Footlight Glamour

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Ann Savage, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: Footlight Glamour is one of two "Blondie" series entries in which Blondie's name isn't included in the credits. Otherwise, the film adheres strictly to formula, with Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) getting into a mess and Dagwood's wife Blondie (Penny Singleton) getting him out of it. This time Read More

Follow the Band

Actors: Eddie Quillan, Mary Beth Hughes, Leon Errol, Anne Rooney, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: In this musical drama, a Vermont farm lad goes to the Big Apple to become a member of the National Dairy Association. He happens to bring with him his beloved trombone. Soon, with the help of bandleader Skinnay Ennis, the boy gets a job in a nightclub and subsequently becomes a popular radio star. Read More

The Amazing Mrs. Holliday

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Edmond O'Brien, Barry Fitzgerald, Arthur Treacher, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: Making her first film appearance since 1941, Deanna Durbin plays the title role in The Amazing Mrs. Holliday. Truth to tell, however, there is no Mrs. Holliday: it's the guise assumed by idealistic missionary Ruth (Durbin) to sneak a group of Chinese war orphans into the US. With the help of Read More

So's Your Uncle

Actors: Billie Burke, Donald Woods, Elyse Knox, Frank Jenks

Synopsis: In this tuneful comedy, a would-be actor and playwright is deeply in debt, and to keep away from his creditors, begins pretending to be his aged uncle. Unfortunately he ends up getting hit by a limousine. The rich woman inside takes the wounded "codger" home to her manhungry old aunt. The actor Read More

This Is the Army

Actors: George Murphy, Joan Leslie, Ronald Reagan, George Tobias, Alan Hale, Charles Butterworth, Julie Oshins

Synopsis: The splashy, star-studded This is the Army is based on the Irving Berlin Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was a reworking of Berlin's WW1 "barracks musical" Yip Yip Yaphank. In both instances, the cast was largely comprised of genuine servicemen, many of them either recently Read More

Two Weeks to Live

Actors: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff, Franklin Pangborn, Kay Linaker, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: The title of this "Lum 'N' Abner" comedy isn't explained until the film is half over. Chester Lauck and Norris Goff repeat their radio characterizations of Lum and Abner, proprietors of the Jot-Em-Down Store in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. This time, the boys journey to Chicago, where Abner hopes to Read More

Shadow of a Doubt

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, MacDonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge

Synopsis: Teresa Wright plays Charlie, a small-town high-schooler who enjoys a symbiotic relationship with her favorite uncle, also named Charlie (Joseph Cotten). When young Charlie "wills" that old Charlie pay a visit to her family, her wish comes true. Uncle Charlie is his usual charming self, but he Read More

What a Woman!

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Brian Aherne, Willard Parker, Alan Dinehart, Edward Fielding

Synopsis: In his book on "screwball" comedies, the late William K. Everson described What a Woman as "indistinguishable from a dozen other big-business comedies, but a pleasant and zany time-killer." Once again, Rosalind Russell is cast as a high-pressure female executive, in this instance liteary agent Read More

A Stranger in Town

Actors: Frank Morgan, Richard Carlson, Jean Rogers, Porter Hall, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: All but forgotten today, A Stranger in Town serves as an excellent showcase for the dramatic talents of Frank Morgan. The star plays Supreme Court justice John Josephus Grant, who decides to take a break from his hectic schedule by going on a hunting vacation. Travelling incognito, Grant stops Read More

Action in the North Atlantic

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey, Ruth Gordon, Alan Hale, Julie Bishop

Synopsis: Action in the North Atlantic is solid wartime propaganda with a rather endearing inner lining of left-wing politics, courtesy (no doubt) of scenarist John Howard Lawson, who based his screenplay on a novel by maritime specialist Guy Gilpatric. While running war goods to America's Russian allies, a Read More

King of the Cowboys

Actors: Roy Rogers, Smiley Burnette, Peggy Moran, Gerald Mohr

Synopsis: The budget for this fine Roy Rogers Western was doubled and the title changed from Starlight on the Trail to the more descriptive King of the Cowboys, mainly due to Rogers' great reception on a personal appearance tour in the fall of 1942. Republic had lost Gene Autry to the war effort and this Read More

Girl Crazy

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, June Allyson, Nancy Walker, Gil Stratton, Robert E. Strickland, Rags Ragland

Synopsis: This second film version of the George and Ira Gershwin's Broadway hit Girl Crazy stars reigning MGM musical prince and princess Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The 1932 version of Girl Crazy de-emphasized the main plot, building up the comic subplot involving a timorous temporary sheriff and a Read More

War of the Wildcats

Actors: John Wayne, Martha Scott, Albert Dekker, George "Gabby" Hayes, Marjorie Rambeau

Synopsis: In Old Oklahoma is better known today by its reissue title, War of the Wildcats. John Wayne heads the cast as oil man Dan Somers, who carries on a bitter feud with his crooked rival Hunk Gardner (Albert Dekker). Furthering the animosity between the two men is schoolteacher-turned-novelist Read More

Blondie's Blessed Event

Synopsis: An historical entry in Columbia's Blondie series, Blondie's Blessed Event recreates the moment in Chic Young's original comic strip wherein Blondie and Dagwood were blessed with baby daughter Cookie. The first portion of the film involves the tribulations of Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) as he Read More

Thru Different Eyes

Actors: Frank Craven, Mary Howard, June Walker, Donald Woods, Vivian Blaine

Synopsis: Thru Different Eyes is a remake of the 1929 film of the same name. The original was hailed for its creative use of sound and subjective photography; the remake is a standard crime melodrama, elevated slightly by an engaging narrative gimick. In trying to explain how the American judicial system Read More

Holiday Inn

Actors: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Virginia Dale, Marjorie Reynolds, Walter Abel

Synopsis: Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire star in Holiday Inn as a popular nightclub song-and-dance team. When his heart is broken by his girlfriend, Crosby decides to retire from the hustle-bustle of big city showbiz. He purchases a rustic New England farm and converts it to an inn, which he opens to the Read More

The Bashful Bachelor

Actors: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff, Grady Sutton, Oscar O'Shea

Synopsis: The Bashful Bachelor was the second of six 1940s B films inspired by the popular radio series Lum 'N' Abner. The two principal characters are the proprietors of the Jot 'Em Down Store in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Lum (Chester Lauck) endeavors to impress a marriageable middle-aged lady (ZaSu Pitts) by Read More

The Daring Young Man

Synopsis: In this war comedy, an army reject becomes a war hero by rounding up a ring of Nazi spies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Young America

Actors: Jane Withers, Jane Darwell, William Tracy, Ben Carter

Synopsis: Young America is not so much a Jane Withers vehicle as a 73-minute advertisement for the 4-H clubs of America. Cast against type, Withers plays a spoiled-brat urban girl who is shipped off by her exasperated parents to work on a 4-H farm. At first, she manages to alienate every one of her youthful Read More

Happy Go Lucky

Actors: Mary Martin, Dick Powell, Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Rudy Vallee

Synopsis: In this lighthearted musical comedy, Marjory Stuart (Mary Martin) is a girl who works in the hatcheck room at a Manhattan nightclub and dreams of being a rich socialite herself. Toward that end, Marjory wants to land a rich husband, so she saves up her money and takes a cruise to the Caribbean Read More

The Great Man's Lady

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy, Thurston Hall, Lloyd Corrigan

Synopsis: This rambling historical drama covers 109 years in the life of one woman. Encased in convincing old-age makeup, Barbara Stanwyck reminisces on her experiences in the American West. As a young woman, she is squired by gambler Brian Donlevy, but her heart belongs to dreamer Joel McCrea. She chooses Read More

Footlight Serenade

Actors: John Payne, Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Jane Wyman, Phil Silvers, James Gleason

Synopsis: Victor Mature plays an arrogant champion boxer who opts for an acting career on Broadway. He falls in love with his costar Betty Grable, who's secretly married to actor John Payne. Unwilling to make public her marriage lest it adversely affect her career, Grable is unsuccessful in fending off Read More

Juke Girl

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan, Richard Whorf, Gene Lockhart, Betty Brewer

Synopsis: Director Curtis Bernhardt hadn't wanted to make Juke Girl, but he was under contract to Warner Bros. and had to tow the line lest he find himself drawing Unemployment. One of Bernhardt's gripes against the film is that it starred Ronald Reagan, whom he considered an "unimportant" screen Read More

Lady in a Jam

Actors: Irene Dunne, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Irene Dunne plays a flibbetygibbet socialite who inherits a farm in Arizona. She can't seem to manage either her money or her private life, thus seeks advice from outside sources. Irene falls in love with fledgling Manhattan psychiatrist Patric Knowles, and marries him in the hope that he'll solve Read More

Freckles Comes Home

Actors: Johnny Downs, Gale Storm, Mantan Moreland, Bradley Page, Betty Blythe

Synopsis: The bucolic, down-home novels and short stories of Gene Stratton-Porter had been fodder for Monogram's screenwriting staff ever since the early 1930s. This cinemazation of Stratton-Porter's Freckles Comes Home stars Johnny Downs as the title character, who returns from college to his sedentary Read More

Sweetheart of the Fleet

Actors: Joan Davis, Jinx Falkenburg, Joan Woodbury, Blanche Stewart, Elvia Allman

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, an agent for an advertising agency begins trying to push a new "Blind Date" service and so engages two popular USO singers to perform for the Navy. He hides the young women and keeps their looks a secret because the two singers are terribly unattractive. To keep the sailors Read More

Get Hep to Love

Actors: Gloria Jean, Donald O'Connor, Jane Frazee, Robert Paige, Peggy Ryan, Tim Ryan

Synopsis: A bit higher-budgeted than most of Universal's "pocket" musicals, Get Hep to Love runs a full 79 mintues rather than the standard hard-and-fast hour. Gloria Jean plays child musical prodigy Doris Stanley, who is overworked and exploited by her avaricious Aunt Addie (Nana Bryant). Escaping her Read More

Star Spangled Rhythm

Actors: Victor Moore, Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, Anne Revere, Walter Abel

Synopsis: Star-Spangled Rhythm is a typical wartime all-star musical-comedy melange, this time from Paramount Pictures. The slender plot involves the efforts by humble studio doorman Pop Webster (Victor Moore) to pass himself off as a big-shot Paramount executive for the benefit of his sailor son Jimmy (Eddie Bracken Read More

Give Out, Sisters

Actors: The Andrews Sisters, Grace McDonald, Dan Dailey, Charles Butterworth, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: The Andrews Sisters headline this musical. They play the lead act at a popular nightclub. The trouble begins when they hire a few students from a financially foundering dance school for their newest production. One of the dancers, a rich young socialite, desperately wants to be in it too, but her Read More

The Spoilers

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Margaret Lindsay, Richard Barthelmess, William Farnum, Harry Carey

Synopsis: The fourth of five movie versions of the rugged Rex Beach novel of the same name, 1942's The Spoilers stars Marlene Dietrich, John Wayne, and Randolph Scott. The plot, involving the cheating of Alaskan gold rush prospectors by a crooked gold commissioner, requires that Scott play a villain Read More

Blondie for Victory

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Majelle White

Synopsis: Anxious to do her bit for the war effort, Blondie (Penny Singleton) joins the Housewives of America, a home defense league. Husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) soon finds that Blondie is neglecting her responsibilities at home in favor of her war work; also disgruntled are Dagwood's chauvinistic boss Read More

Between Us Girls

Actors: Diana Barrymore, Robert Cummings, Kay Francis, John Boles, Andy Devine

Synopsis: Universal and producer/director Henry Koster had plans to make Diana Barrymore, the daughter of John Barrymore, into another Deanna Durbin with Between Us Girls, an ambitious sub-screwball comedy that undoubtedly owed some aspects of its existence to The Major And The Minor (in addition to Read More

Pardon My Sarong

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Virginia Bruce, Lionel Atwill, Robert Paige

Synopsis: One of the most often revived of Abbott & Costello's early-1940s films, Pardon My Sarong casts Bud and Lou as Chicago bus drivers Algy Shaw and Wellington Pflug. At the behest of millionaire playboy Tommy Layton (Robert Paige), Algy and Wellington hijack their own bus and speed off to California Read More

Jennie

Actors: Virginia Gilmore, William Henry, George Montgomery, Ludwig Stossel, Dorris Bowdon

Synopsis: Virginia Gilmore stars as Jennie, the daughter-in-law of German-born shoe manufacturer Ludwig Stossel. The stubborn manufacturer refuses to grow with the time, continuing to run his business and his household with outmoded and oppressive "old country" methods. Jennie counters this attitude by Read More

A Girl, a Guy and A Gob

Actors: George Murphy, Edmond O'Brien, Henry Travers, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: The girl is stenographer Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball); the guy is her boss, stuffy young shipping magnate Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien); and the gob is a brash sailor known as Coffee Cup (George Murphy). Not surprisingly, the plot involves the efforts by the self-effacing Stephen and the Read More

Million Dollar Baby

Actors: Priscilla Lane, Jeffrey Lynn, Ronald Reagan, May Robson, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: In this upbeat drama, a lovely European heiress is disturbed to discover from her lawyer that her father made his fortune by cheating his own partner. This precipitates her hasty return to the US where she meets the partner's granddaughter. The heiress then moves into the girl's boarding house and Read More

The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance

Actors: June Storey, Warren William, Henry Wilcoxon, Eric Blore, Thurston Hall

Synopsis: The title of this series entry may strike some as a tad redundant: After all, isn't crook-turned-sleuth Michael Lanyard, aka the Lone Wolf, always taking a chance? On this occasion, Lanyard (Warren William) and his trusty valet Jamison (Eric Blore) are framed on a murder charge. The actual Read More

Accent on Love

Synopsis: In this sentimental drama, a real estate executive tires of his privileged life working for his wealthy father-in-law and decides to leave his job and family to become a WPA ditch digger. While laboring, he meets a lovely immigrant, with whom he falls in love. He then begins working to help the Read More

Barnacle Bill

Actors: Wallace Beery, Marjorie Main, Leo Carrillo, Virginia Weidler, Donald Meek

Synopsis: MGM tried to recapture the magic of the Wallace Beery/Marie Dressler films of the 1930s with Barnacle Bill. Beery is teamed with Marjorie Main, a Dressler "type" who had a roughneck style all her own. In the film, grumbly old fisherman Beery spends most of his screen time avoiding Main, who Read More

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

Actors: W.C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Margaret Dumont, Leon Errol, Susan Miller, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: W.C. Fields heads to Esoteric studios to pitch a story idea to producer Franklin Pangborn. The producer wants to make a conventional romantic musical starring Fields' niece, teen-aged soprano Gloria Jean, but "The Great Man" has other ideas. As Pangborn sits in dumbfounded silence, Fields unravels Read More

Henry Aldrich for President

Actors: Charles Smith, June Preisser, Mary Anderson, Martha O'Driscoll

Synopsis: Henry Aldrich for President was the second of Paramount's "Henry Aldrich" series to star Jimmy Lydon in the teenaged title role. This time Henry is pitted against an arrogant jock for the presidency of the Centerville High School student council. Henry's chances don't seem bright, especially since Read More

It Started With Eve

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Charles Laughton, Robert Cummings, Guy Kibbee, Margaret Tallichet

Synopsis: A man trying to make his dying father happy makes his love life very complicated indeed in this musical comedy starring Deanna Durbin. Jonathan Reynolds Jr. (Robert Cummings) is the playboy son of multi-millionaire business magnate Jonathan Reynolds, Sr. (Charles Laughton). Junior has told his Read More

Great Guns

Actors: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Sheila Ryan, Dick Nelson, Edmund MacDonald

Synopsis: In their first 20th Century-Fox vehicle, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are cast respectively as the butler and chauffeur of wealthy young Dan Forrester (Dick Nelson). Tired of being pampered and coddled by his overprotective aunts (Mae Marsh, Ethel Gryffies), Dan is delighted when he is drafted Read More

Moon over Her Shoulder

Actors: Lynn Bari, John Sutton, Dan Dailey, Alan Mowbray, Leonard Carey

Synopsis: In this comedy, a popular radio marriage counselor tends to ignore his own advice and his wife to boot. One day, a handsome fellow sees the wife while on his boat and casually invites her to spend the day with him. She does, and they end up falling in love. This naturally disturbs her husband, who 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

Caught in the Draft

Actors: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Lynne Overman, Eddie Bracken, Clarence Kolb

Synopsis: Bob Hope plays a famous movie star who does his best to avoid the pre-war draft, but ends up in uniform all the same. Hope marries Dorothy Lamour, the daughter of Army colonel Clarence Kolb, in hopes that this union will help him sidestep military service. Stuck in boot camp, Hope is a class-A Read More

The Wild Man of Borneo

Actors: Frank Morgan, Mary Howard, Marjorie Main, Billie Burke, Donald Meek

Synopsis: In this comedy drama, a medicine show con-man pretends to be a wealthy man to impress his long-lost daughter who is slated to inherit a vast fortune. Unfortunately, she turns out to be someone else's daughter. Later he finds his own and discovers that she has less money than he does. They decide Read More

Too Many Blondes

Actors: Rudy Vallee, Helen Parrish, Lon Chaney, Jr., Jerome Cowan, Shemp Howard

Synopsis: One wonders if the title Too Many Blondes was inspired by the well-publicized romantic peccadilloes of the film's star, Rudy Vallee. The plot centers on a husband-wife radio team, Dick (Vallee) and Virginia (Helen Parrish). When Dick is caught in an innocent but compromising situation with brassy Read More

Tobacco Road

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Erskine Caldwell's once-scandalous novel Tobacco Road resulted in an equally steamy stage play by Jack Kirkland, which became one of the longest-running productions in Broadway history. This story of indigence and amorality amongst inbred "poor whites" (based on people Caldwell had known while Read More

Skylark

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland, Brian Aherne, Binnie Barnes, Walter Abel

Synopsis: Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland, stars of the 1940 hit Arise, My Love, were immediately reteamed for Skylark. Adapted from the play by Samson Rafaelson, the film stars Colbert as the wife of a neglectful businessman Milland (her role had been played on Broadway by Gertrude Lawrence). Brian Aherne Read More

Meet John Doe

Actors: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington

Synopsis: The first of director Frank Capra's independent productions (in partnership with Robert Riskin), Meet John Doe begins with the end of reporter Ann Mitchell's (Barbara Stanwyck) job. Fired as part of a downsizing move, she ends her last column with an imaginary letter written by "John Doe." Angered Read More

Western Union

Actors: Robert Young, Randolph Scott, Dean Jagger, Virginia Gilmore, Barton MacLane, John Carradine

Synopsis: 20th Century-Fox's Western Union was loosely based on a story by Zane Grey. The basic historical facts behind the connecting of telegraph wires between Omaha and Salt Lake City serve as a backdrop for a fictional story straight out of Manhattan Melodrama. Randolph Scott and Barton MacLane are cast Read More

Remember the Day

Actors: Claudette Colbert, John Payne, John Shepperd, Ann E. Todd, Anne Revere, Douglas Croft

Synopsis: A nostalgic and patriotic film from director Henry King similar to such later films as The Corn Is Green (1945). Claudette Colbert, stars as Nora Trinell, an aging schoolteacher awaiting a meeting with presidential candidate Dewey Roberts (Shepperd Strudwick). As Nora waits, she reflects on the Read More

She Couldn't Say No

Actors: Roger Pryor, Eve Arden, Cliff Edwards, Clem Bevans, Vera Lewis

Synopsis: Eve Arden played her first bonafide film-starring role in the 1941 Warner Bros. "B"-picture She Couldn't Say No. A brilliant lawyer, Alice Hinsdale (Arden) is obliged to act as secretary to her legal-eagle fiancé Wallace Turnbull (Roger Pryor) because he can't abide the notion that his wife might Read More

Ride on Vaquero

Actors: Cesar Romero, Mary Beth Hughes, Lynne Roberts, Chris-Pin Martin, Robert Lowery

Synopsis: Cesar Romero plays the Cisco Kid, who may be a bandit but is no kidnapper. This being the case, Cisco and his pal Pancho (Chris-Pin Martin) offer to help round up a vicious frontier kidnapping ring. The leaders turn out to be several solid citizens of a western town, but Cisco knows a rat when he Read More

Blondie Goes Latin

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Ruth Terry, Tito Guizar

Synopsis: Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) is invited by his boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) to accompany Dithers on an ocean cruise to South America. Dagwood's whole family comes along, including wife Blondie (Penny Singleton), son Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) and Daisy the dog and her pups. Just before Read More

Blondie in Society

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

Synopsis: Blondie in Society is another delightful excursion into comic insanity for Blondie (Penny Singleton), Dagwood (Arthur Lake) and Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms). The trouble begins when Dagwood brings home a huge Great Dane as a favor to an old friend. It turns out that the gigantic hound is a Read More

Cadet Girl

Actors: Carole Landis, George Montgomery, William Tracy, Janis Carter

Synopsis: America had not officially gone to war in November of 1941, but try telling that to the producers of the "preparedness" drama Cadet Girl. The title character is nightclub songstress Gene Baxter (Carole Landis), but the weight of the film rests on the shoulders of West Point cadet Tex Mallory (George Montgomery Read More

Michael Shayne, Private Detective

Actors: Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Joan Valerie, Walter Abel, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Brett Halliday's flippant Irish-American private eye Michael Shayne was first brought to the screen by 20th Century-Fox in 1940, with Lloyd Nolan cast to perfection as Shayne. In dire financial straits as usual, Mike allows himself to be hired by his millionaire pal Brighton (Clarence Kolb) to Read More

Blondie Has Servant Trouble

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Danny Mummert, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: Few of Columbia's "Blondie" films went as far off the beaten path as the bizarre Blondie Has Servant Trouble. Things get under way when Blondie Bumstead (Penny Singleton) demands that her husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) request a raise from his boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale), so that Blondie can Read More

The Doctor Takes a Wife

Actors: Loretta Young, Ray Milland, Reginald Gardiner, Gail Patrick, Edmund Gwenn

Synopsis: Fiercely independent authoress June Cameron (Loretta Young) has no time for men in her life. Chauvinistic medical college professor Timothy Sterling (Ray Milland) has no use for women. So guess who is mistaken for June's husband, and guess who is forced by circumstances to pretend that she's Read More

Sailor's Lady

Actors: Nancy Kelly, Jon Hall, Joan Davis, Dana Andrews, Mary Nash

Synopsis: The sailor in this entertaining 20th Century-Fox programmer is Danny Malone (Jon Hall), while the lady is Sally Gilroy (Claire Trevor). Danny's impending marriage to Sally is put on the back burner when she is put in charge of an orphaned baby (Bruce Hampton, playing a girl!) During naval Read More

Edison, The Man

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Rita Johnson, Lynne Overman, Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: In 1940, MGM turned out two films on the life of Thomas Alva Edison.The first, Young Tom Edison, starred Mickey Rooney and trotted out all the old Edison folklore, including the now-discredited incident in which Tom loses his hearing by being yanked onto a train by his ears. Edison the Man Read More

Dreaming Out Loud

Actors: Chester Lauck, Frances Langford, Frank Craven, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Dreaming Out Loud represented the film debut of radio favorites Lum 'N' Abner, aka Chester Lauck and Norris Goff. Proprietors of the Jot-Em-Down Store in Pine Ridge, AR, our heroes are currently preoccupied by their efforts to construct a mobile hospital unit in their community. In time-honored Read More

Invisible Stripes

Actors: George Raft, Jane Bryan, William Holden, Humphrey Bogart, Flora Robson

Synopsis: Invisible Stripes is a cookie-cutter Warners prison drama which rounds up the usual suspects. George Raft and Humphrey Bogart are top-billed, and as is often the case in such a circumstance, it is Raft who is given the larger (albeit less interesting) role. Raft plays Cliff Taylor, an ex-convict Read More

The Grapes of Wrath

Actors: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charles Grapewin, Doris Bowden

Synopsis: The adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of dirt-poor Dust Bowl migrants by 4-time Oscar-winning director John Ford starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who opens the movie returning to his Oklahoma home after serving jail time for manslaughter. En route, Tom Read More

The Howards of Virginia

Actors: Cary Grant, Martha Scott, Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Marshal, Richard Carlson

Synopsis: Hollywood films about the Revolutionary War almost invariably lost money at the box office, and The Howards of Virginia was no exception, despite the presence of Cary Grant in the lead. Most of the story takes place in the colonial capital city of Williamsburg, Virginia, where Matt Howard (Cary Read More

Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Ruth Gordon, Otto Kruger, Donald Crisp, Maria Ouspenskaya

Synopsis: Edward G. Robinson portrays real-life German medical researcher Paul Erlich, the man who discovered and perfected "Formula 606," the cure for syphilis. The world at large would prefer to treat the disease as though it does not exist, so Erlich spends most of his life underfunded and frustrated. A Read More

Lillian Russell

Actors: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Edward Arnold, Warren William

Synopsis: Lillian Russell is the sanitized musical biopic of the legendary (and much-married) 19th century musical comedy star. Discovered in 1880 by bandleader Tony Pastor (Leo Carrillo), Lillian Russell (Alice Faye) wastes no time rising to fame and fortune on the Broadway stage. Along the way, she Read More

You Can't Fool Your Wife

Actors: Lucille Ball, James Ellison, Robert Coote, Virginia Vale, Emma Dunn

Synopsis: In the RKO programmer You Can't Fool Your Wife, Lucille Ball gets mixed up in a storyline that would have been right at home on her future TV series I Love Lucy. Feeling neglected by her husband Andrew (James Ellison), drab housewife Clara Hinklin (Ball) walks out on him, much to the delight of Read More

Manhattan Heartbeat

Actors: Robert Sterling, Virginia Gilmore, Joan Davis, Edmund MacDonald, Don Beddoe

Synopsis: Manhattan Heartbeat is a somewhat toned-down remake of the pre-Production Code melodrama Bad Girl (1931). Newlyweds Johnny (Robert Sterling) and Dottie (Virginia Gilmore) have troubles living within their budget, thanks to Dottie's spendthrift habits. An airplane mechanic, Johnny begins accepting Read More

Love, Honor and Oh Baby!

Synopsis: In this drama, a despondent fellow contemplates suicide after he is abandoned by his last girlfriend. To ensure that his poor sister will receive maximum benefits from his life insurance policy, he hires a hitman to assassinate him. Unfortunately, he meets a new girl and changes his mind. Read More

The Man Who Wouldn't Talk

Actors: Lloyd Nolan, Jean Rogers, Richard Clarke, Onslow Stevens, Eric Blore

Synopsis: The Valiant, a stage play by Holworthy Hall and Robert M. Middlemass, starred Paul Muni in the 1929 film version. The play was filmed a second time in 1940 as The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, this time with Lloyd Nolan in the lead. Nolan is peripherally involved in a crime; he accidentally kills the Read More

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

His Girl Friday

Actors: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Helen Mack, Porter Hall, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: The second screen version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, His Girl Friday changed hard-driving newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson from a man to a woman, transforming the story into a scintillating battle of the sexes. Rosalind Russell plays Hildy, about to foresake journalism Read More

Broadway Melody of 1940

Actors: Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan, Ian Hunter

Synopsis: MGM's third follow-up to its landmark Broadway Melody is short on story, but that's okay, since the plot is merely a clothesline upon which to hang sleek and opulent musical production numbers by Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell -- particularly a breathless and eye-popping gloriously Read More

Young People

Actors: Shirley Temple, Jack Oakie, Charlotte Greenwood, Arleen Whelan, George Montgomery

Synopsis: "Over the hill" at the tender age of 12, Shirley Temple closed out her 20th Century-Fox contract with the musical seriocomedy Young People. After years of trodding the boards in vaudeville, Wendy Ballantine (Temple) and her adoptive parents Joe (Jack Oakie) and Kit (Charlotte Greenwood retire) to Read More

Blondie on a Budget

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Rita Hayworth

Synopsis: This is the celebrated Blondie episode that costars Rita Hayworth, who in 1940 was still just another Columbia contract actress. Hayworth plays an old flame of Dagwood Bumstead's (Arthur Lake), who moves into the Bumstead household when wife Blondie (Penny Singleton) advertises for a boarder. Read More

Blondie Plays Cupid

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

Synopsis: The Bumstead family-Blondie (Penny Singleton), Dagwood (Arthur Lake) and Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms)-embark on a long-delayed vacation in this series entry. While en route to their out-of-town relatives, the Bumsteads are forced to make an emergency stopover in a small town, where they get mixed Read More

Gold Rush Maisie

Actors: Ann Sothern, Lee Bowman, George "Slim" Summerville, Virginia Weidler, Mary Nash

Synopsis: This third installment in MGM's "Maisie" series finds eternally stranded showgirl Maisie Revere (Ann Sothern) stuck in a deserted mining camp. Here she links up with Davises, an impoverished migrant family which hopes to strike gold somewhere in the neighboring hills. Their efforts are resisted by Read More

Stardust

Actors: Linda Darnell, John Payne, Roland Young, Charlotte Greenwood, William Gargan

Synopsis: 17-year-old Linda Darnell received her first big break in the appropriately titled 20th Century-Fox production Star Dust. Discovered by talent scout Thomas Brooke (Roland Young), teenager Carolyn Sayre (Darnell) is brought to Hollywood, where she is turned down for a contract because she is Read More

Brother Rat and a Baby

Actors: Eddie Albert, Wayne Morris, Priscilla Lane, Jane Wyman, Larry Williams

Synopsis: This comedy is the sequel of Brother Rat. The film begins with the three original protagonists after their graduation from the Virginia Military Institute. One of them has just applied for a job as the academy's baseball coach and the others come to assist him. Mayhem ensues; especially after the Read More

Hollywood Cavalcade

Actors: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, J. Edward Bromberg, Alan Curtis, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: Hollywood Cavalcade was a fictionalized history of silent films and the growth of the movie industry. Don Ameche portrays a character based on equal portions of Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith, while Alice Faye's silent star is an amalgam of Mabel Normand and Gloria Swanson. Ameche breaks into Read More

The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt

Actors: Ida Lupino, Warren William, Rita Hayworth, Robert Wilcox, Virginia Weidler, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: Regarded as the best of Columbia's "Lone Wolf" B-picture series, The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt stars Warren William as Michael Lanyard, a onetime criminal known as the Lone Wolf. He is determined to remain reformed for the sake of his daughter (Virginia Weidler), but a gang of foreign spies abducts 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

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

Second Fiddle

Actors: Tyrone Power, Rudy Vallee, Edna May Oliver, Mary Healy

Synopsis: Sonja Henie, the Norwegian skating star, reportedly played second fiddle to no one at Fox in the late '30s, and this backstage musical extravaganza is all Henie. Taking a leaf from producer David O. Selznick, Consolidated Pictures send public relation expert Tyrone Power in search of an unknown to Read More

Bachelor Mother

Actors: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson, E.E. Clive

Synopsis: Ginger Rogers slipped off her dancing shoes to play one of her best comic roles as Polly Parish, a salesgirl at a large department store. Single and with no steady beau, Polly leads a quiet life until she discovers a baby left at her doorstep. While puzzled by this development, Polly feels for the Read More

They Made Me a Criminal

Actors: John Garfield, Gloria Dickson, Bobby Jordan, Claude Rains, Ann Sheridan, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop

Synopsis: They Made Me a Criminal opens in New York, depicting the latest victory in the ring for Johnny Bradfield (John Garfield), a young boxer who seems headed for a championship. When a reporter finds Bradfield drunk and carousing with women, and learns that the squeaky-clean image that he has Read More

Blondie Brings up Baby

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Danny Mummert

Synopsis: Columbia's new "Blondie" series continued its winning streak with its fourth entry, Blondie Brings Up Baby. So much happens within the film's 67 minutes that it's best to boil things down to the central storyline. Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms), the six-year-old son of Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead (Penny Singleton Read More

Tail Spin

Actors: Alice Faye, Constance Bennett, Joan Davis, Charles Farrell, Jane Wyman

Synopsis: The exploits of female pilots are followed in this high-flying drama. These women are extremely competitive and will stop at nothing to win their cross-country races. The story centers on one such determined pilot who is forced to leave the race circuit after her plane crashes. To become Read More

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

Actors: Ivan Lebedeff, W.C. Fields, Edgar Bergen, Constance Moore

Synopsis: In his starring film for Universal Pictures, W.C. Fields plays circus manager and all-around flim flam man Larson E. Whipsnade. When he's not trying to fleece the customers or elude the sheriff, Whipsnade busys himself trying to break up the romance between his daughter Vicky (Constance Moore) and Read More

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

Blondie Meets the Boss

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: This second entry in Columbia's new "Blondie" series is every bit as delightful as the first. When Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) heads off for a long-awaited fishing trip, his loving wife Blondie (Penny Singleton) assumes Dag's duties at the offices of J. C. Dithers (Jonathan Hale). 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

Blondie Takes a Vacation

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Danny Mummert

Synopsis: This third entry in Columbia's "Blondie" series retains the freshness and laugh quotient of the first two, which is more than can be said for the series' later offerings. Taking a well-deserved rest, the Bumstead family-Dagwood (Arthur Lake), Blondie (Penny Singleton), Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) Read More

Lucky Night

Actors: Myrna Loy, Robert Taylor, Henry O'Neill, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: An heiress gets a crash course in the simple life when she marries a penniless man in this comedy. Calvin Jordan (Henry O'Neill) is the prosperous owner of a successful steel mill, and the apple of his eye is his daughter Cora (Myrna Loy). Cora stands to inherit Calvin's firm, and he's taken it Read More

Too Busy to Work

Actors: Jed Prouty, Spring Byington, Ken Howell, George Ernest, June Carlson

Synopsis: Too Busy to Work is not a remake of the 1932 Will Rogers film of the same name-but it is a partial remake of Rogers' 1935 vehicle Doubting Thomas. This standard entry in the "Jones Family" series finds the Jones women trying to convince Pa Jones (Jed Prouty) that he's spending too much time at Read More

Rio

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Victor McLaglen, Sigrid Gurie, Robert Cummings, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: Though running a mere 75 minutes, Rio has enough plot for ten movies. Basil Rathbone and Sigrid Gurie, previously teamed in The Adventures of Marco Polo, head the cast as crooked French financier Paul Reynard and his wife Irene. Sentenced to a ten-year term in a French penal colony for bank fraud Read More

I Stole a Million

Actors: George Raft, Claire Trevor, Dick Foran, Henry Armetta, Victor Jory

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a grizzled cabbie is scammed out of his life savings by a fake finance company. He tries to no avail to get police assistance. Finally he becomes a wanted criminal and escapes to California where he meets the girl who will become his wife. She helps him go straight by helping 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

Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence

Actors: Jean Rogers, Raymond Walburn, Marjorie Rambeau, Glenn Ford, Nicholas Conte

Synopsis: In his feature film debut, Glenn Ford plays a department-store clerk who saves up enough money to buy a small patch of land in Arizona. Unable to afford a car, Ford hitchhikes to his new home, and along the way teams up with a transient (Richard Conte) and an illegal alien (Jean Rogers). The girl Read More

The Gracie Allen Murder Case

Actors: Gracie Allen, Warren William, Ellen Drew, Kent Taylor, Jed Prouty

Synopsis: A longtime fan of comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen, "Philo Vance" creator S. S. Van Dyne wrote a tailor-made screenplay for the team, which emerged on-screen as The Gracie Allen Murder Case. The Paramount studio executives decided to dispense with the services of George Burns, leaving Read More

The Texans

Actors: Joan Bennett, Randolph Scott, May Robson, Walter Brennan, Robert Cummings

Synopsis: In the rough-and-tumble world of post-Civil War Texas, ex-Confederate soldier Kirk Jordan (Randolph Scott) crosses paths with ranch owner Ivy Preston (Joan Bennett). Although a loyal Southerner, Jordan can't get past the waste and tragedy of the four years that have just ended, but Ivy is eager to Read More

Midnight Intruder

Actors: Louis Hayward, Eric Linden, J.C. Nugent, Barbara Read, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: In this comedy, two racetrack gamblers lose all their dough by betting on a long shot. Now they must hitchhike to the next racetrack. En route they take cover in an apparently abandoned mansion. There they find some clothing, which they put on. Unfortunately, in that garb, they are mistaken by the 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

Strange Faces

Actors: Frank Jenks, Dorothea Kent, Andy Devine, Leon Ames, Mary Treen

Synopsis: After several years' faithful service in supporting parts, Frank Jenks and Dorothea Kent were promoted to leading roles in Universal's Strange Faces. Even so, it is fourth-billed Leon Ames who dominates the film, in the dual role of a notorious gangster and a respectable small-town citizen. Taking Read More

Mr. Moto's Gamble

Actors: Peter Lorre, Keye Luke, Dick Baldwin, Lynn Bari, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: In this mystery programmer, a prizefighter dies in the midst of a match, but evidence suggests that it was a dose of poison that killed him rather than the violence of the bout. Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre), a detective who also teaches sleuthing to others, is called in to find out who killed the boxer Read More

Man-Proof

Actors: Myrna Loy, Franchot Tone, Rosalind Russell, Walter Pidgeon, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: Based upon the book The Four Marys, by Fanny Heaslip Lea, Man-Proof involves members of the smart and sophisticated set of Manhattan, circa 1938. Mimi Swift (Myrna Loy), the daughter of a successful romance novelist, is having no luck in getting the man she loves. Although she has made her Read More

Tip-Off Girls

Actors: Lloyd Nolan, Mary Carlisle, J. Carrol Naish, Harvey Stephens, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: Tip-Off Girls is a worthwhile entry in Paramount's "FBI" series, based on the various writings of
J. Edgar Hoover. The title refers to a group of pretty young women who are ordered by their gangster bosses to pick up tips on incoming merchandise shipments, thereby expediting a sophisticated Read More

The Mad Miss Manton

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Wealthy socialite Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is taking her pooches for a walk in the dead of the night when she stumbles upon a dead body and a car fleeing the scene of the crime. She alerts the police but the corpse has disappeared by the time they arrive, and the lieutenant, knowing of her Read More

There Goes My Heart

Actors: Fredric March, Virginia Bruce, Patsy Kelly, Alan Mowbray, Nancy Carroll

Synopsis: Heiress Virginia Bruce tries to prove her worth by taking a job as a shopgirl in the store owned by her family. The pampered young lady is given a crash course in pragmatism by her worldly roommates Patsy Kelly and Nancy Carroll. Reporter Fredric March learns of Bruce's ruse and plans to tell all Read More

A Letter of Introduction

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Andrea Leeds, Edgar Bergen, George Murphy, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: A master blend of high comedy and tense emotional drama, A Letter of Introduction reteams Adolphe Menjou, Andrea Leeds, and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, who'd previously costarred in the negligible Goldwyn Follies. Menjou plays John Mannering, a Barrymoresque actor who years earlier had Read More

Hard to Get

Actors: Olivia de Havilland, Dick Powell, Charles Winninger, Melville Cooper, Allen Jenkins, Bonita Granville

Synopsis: Dick Powell had already played the poor guy who falls for rich gal in Happiness Ahead (34); Hard to Get is a far superior film in this vein, and with better songs to boot. The wealthy lady in this film is Olivia de Havilland, who at this point in her career specialized in spoiled heiresses. Dick Powell Read More

City Girl

Actors: Phyllis Brooks, Ricardo Cortez, Robert Wilcox, Douglas Fowley, Chick Chandler

Synopsis: In this tearful crime melodrama, a waitress becomes so taken with her dream of living in posh luxury and comfort that she leaves her honest boyfriend the district attorney to take up with a notorious gangster who lavishes her with stolen furs and fabulous diamonds. She has no idea that the crook Read More

The Cowboy and the Lady

Actors: Gary Cooper, Merle Oberon, Patsy Kelly, Walter Brennan, Fuzzy Knight

Synopsis: After an eccentric young woman (Merle Oberon) is left on her father's estate to keep her from spoiling his Presidential bid, she attends a rodeo and falls in love with a cowboy (Gary Cooper). They marry soon after, and must confront the furious father. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

The First Hundred Years

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Binnie Barnes, Alan Dinehart, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: Fifteen thousand dollars may have been a fortune back in 1938, but to high-powered literary agent Lynn Conway (Virginia Bruce), it's next to nothing. Unfortunately, Lynn is married to chauvinistic Massachusetts shipbuilder David Conway (Robert Montgomery), who stubbornly insists that she quit her Read More

Professor Beware

Actors: Phyllis Welch, Raymond Walburn, Lionel Stander, William Frawley

Synopsis: Harold Lloyd plays a professor of Egyptology, frightened by the notion that he has fallen under an ancient Egyptian curse. Lloyd has the opportunity to join an archeological expedition to search for a missing tablet that will determine his fate, but he has to travel from Los Angeles to New York Read More

The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor, Humphrey Bogart, Allen Jenkins, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Edward G. Robinson shines in a fine comic role as Dr. Clitterhouse, a brilliant psychiatrist doing research into the criminal mind. The good doctor wants to gain a clearer understanding of how a thief feels when he's in the midst of a robbery, so strictly for academic purposes he tries to crack a Read More

Sweethearts

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Florence Rice

Synopsis: Contrary to popular belief, the Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald Technicolor confection Sweethearts is not based on the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta of the same name (though most of Herbert's songs remain intact), but a Dorothy Parker-Alan Campbell brainstorm about a popular Broadway singing duo Read More

Spawn of the North

Actors: George Raft, Henry Fonda, Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff, John Barrymore

Synopsis: The visual wizardry in this period action picture about Alaskan fishermen won a special honorary Oscar in the years before special effects got its own category. Henry Fonda stars as Jim Kimmerlee, a salmon fisherman in Alaska who has become at odds with a childhood friend, Tyler Dawson (George Read More

The Chaser

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Ann Morriss, Nat Pendleton, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: A sleazy lawyer gains clients by showing up at terrible accidents. His boss is determined to stop him so he hires a pretty girl to cozy up and coerce the truth out of the ambulance-chaser. Unfortunately, the boss doesn't count on the romance factor and sure enough, love blossoms between the girl Read More

Sing You Sinners

Actors: Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Ellen Drew, Donald O'Connor, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Chronic gambler Joe Beebe (Bing Crosby) is a source of great consternation for his loving mother (Elizabeth Patterson), who wishes that Joe would follow the example of his responsible, strait-laced brother David (Fred MacMurray). Meanwhile, the youngest member of the Beebe clan, 13-year-old Mike Read More

Racket Busters

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, George Brent, Gloria Dickson, Allen Jenkins, Walter Abel

Synopsis: In this gangster movie set in the Big Apple, a crime lord strong arms teamsters into paying him protection money. One young trucker with a very pregnant wife, stands up to the thug. His partner also refuses to pay in the hopes that they will help the other truck drivers. Naturally this enrages the Read More

Blondie

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Gene Lockhart, Ann Doran

Synopsis: When Columbia Pictures secured the movie rights to Chic Young's popular comic strip Blondie, the studio executives probably never imagined that the ensuing "Blondie" series would last for 12 years and 28 episodes! Part of the series' charm was Columbia's wisdom in casting the ideal actors for the Read More

Exposed

Actors: Glenda Farrell, Otto Kruger, Herbert Mundin, David Oliver, Lorraine Krueger

Synopsis: Glenda Farrell plays still another fast-talking girl reporter in Universal's Exposed. Willing to sell her soul for a story, newspaper sob sister Click Stewart (Farrell) is presently on the trail of DA William Reardon (Otto Kruger), a "Judge Crater" type who disappeared without a trace several Read More

Kentucky Moonshine

Actors: The Ritz Brothers [Al, Jimmy, Harry], Tony Martin, Marjorie Weaver, George "Slim" Summerville, John Carradine

Synopsis: Those zany Ritz Brothers are at it again--good news or bad, depending on one's feelings toward the team. This time they're a trio of Manhattan entertainers who can't get anywhere because hillbilly acts are "in" with radio and theatrical producers. Also left out in the cold by the new fad is singer Marjorie Weaver Read More

The Sisters

Actors: Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Anita Louise, Ian Hunter, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: The 1938 filmization of Myron Brinig's novel The Sisters stars Bette Davis, Jane Bryan and Anita Louise as Louise, Grace and Helen Elliot. The daughters of turn-of-the-century druggist Henry Travers and his wife Beulah Bondi, the Elliot girls all meet their future husbands at a 1904 ball in honor 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

Arizona Wildcat

Actors: Jane Withers, Leo Carrillo, Pauline Moore, William Henry, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: In this sunny western, a mischievous young girl living in the Arizona territory during the 1870s, causes all kinds of trouble while trying to prove that her foster-daddy did not steal a gold shipment. Later, the step-dad, a former outlaw, re-gathers his gang to find the real culprit -- a shady Read More

The Plainsman

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Ellison, Charles Bickford, Helen Burgess

Synopsis: One is immediately aware that The Plainsman is a Cecil B. DeMille production in the opening scene, wherein President Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.), on the verge of signing crucial legislation which will determine the future of the American West, is dragged away from his Cabinet by a scolding Read More

Big Town Girl

Actors: Claire Trevor, Donald Woods, Alan Dinehart, Alan Baxter, Murray Alper

Synopsis: Big Town Girl is 20th-Century Fox's spin on Paramount's Carole Lombard vehicle The Princess Comes Across. Whereas Lombard played a Brooklyn girl posing as a Swedish princess, Big Town Girl's Claire Trevor plays a department store song plugger who becomes a radio singing sensation by posing as the Read More

Sing and Be Happy

Actors: Tony Martin, Leah Ray, Joan Davis, Helen Westley

Synopsis: A strong-willed young man creates a rift with his father when turns down a safe position in the family business and becomes a traveling musician. Eventually he returns to his father's ad agency to settle down, but he proves to be a trouble maker. When he falls in love with the daughter of his Read More

The Big Broadcast of 1938

Actors: W.C. Fields, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Shirley Ross, Lynne Overman, Bob Hope

Synopsis: Paramount's final "Big Broadcast" musical had perhaps the least exciting musical lineup of the series (Tito Guizar, The Shep Fields Orchestra, and opera singer Kirsten Flagstad are hardly household names today), but a slightly stronger storyline than the others, as well as a top-notch comic cast. Read More

Angel's Holiday

Actors: Jane Withers, Robert Kent, Joan Davis, Sally Blane, Harold Huber

Synopsis: Lively June (Jane Withers), teen-aged daughter of mystery writer Waldo Everett (Jon Qualen), who calls her "Angel," becomes involved in intrigue centering on movie star Pauline Kaye (Sally Blane) and her companion Stivers (Joan Davis). Reporter Nick Moore (Robert Kent), once sweet on Pauline, is Read More

Every Day's a Holiday

Actors: Mae West, Edmund Lowe, Charles Butterworth, Charles Winninger, Walter Catlett, Lloyd Nolan

Synopsis: Paramount spent a record one million dollars on its 1937 Mae West vehicle Every Day's a Holiday. La West portrays a turn-of-century confidence trickster who poses as a famous French chanteuse to avoid arrest. In this guise, she manages to expose crooked police chief Lloyd Nolan and smooths the Read More

Topper

Actors: Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Billie Burke, Roland Young, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: By 1937, producer Hal Roach was hoping to wean himself away from the Laurel & Hardy-Our Gang slapstick on which he had built his studio's reputation by delving into the "screwball comedy" genre. Roach selected the racy Thorne Smith fantasy novel Topper for adaptation, and the result was one of the Read More

Internes Can't Take Money

Actors: Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck, Lloyd Nolan, Stanley Ridges, Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton

Synopsis: Pulp fiction writer Max Brand's 1936 creation Dr. Kildare made his screen debut in the amiable person of Joel McCrea in this well-received Paramount production. Aided by Janet (Barbara Stanwyck, young Dr. Kildare saves the life of gangster boss Hanlon (Lloyd Nolan), who awards the intern $1,000 Read More

Vogues of 1938

Actors: Warner Baxter, Joan Bennett, Helen Vinson, Mischa Auer, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: An early Technicolor musical that concentrates on the fashions of the late 1930s, this film was reissued under the title All This and Glamour Too. The top models of the era, including several who are advertising household products, are in the cast. The plot centers around a chic boutique, whose Read More

The Seventh Heaven

Actors: Simone Simon, James Stewart, Jean Hersholt, Gregory Ratoff, Gale Sondergaard

Synopsis: This romantic tearjerker was the second film based on the popular 1922 stage play. James Stewart stars as Chico, a lowly Paris sewer worker who has abandoned his faith in God and any hope for a brighter future or romance when his prayers go unanswered. Chico meets Diane (Simone Simon), a Read More

True Confession

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, John Barrymore, Una Merkel, Porter Hall

Synopsis: Carole Lombard stars as Helen Bartlett, a compulsive liar who always tips the audience to an oncoming whopper by sticking her tongue in her cheek. Helen is married to a Kenneth Bartlett, a scrupulously honest lawyer whose integrity has always held him back professionally. Hoping to help Kenneth Read More

A Star Is Born

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine

Synopsis: A Star is Born came into being when producer David O. Selznick decided to tell a "true behind-the-scenes" story of Hollywood. The truth, of course, was filtered a bit for box-office purposes, although Selznick and an army of screenwriters based much of their script on actual people and events. Janet Gaynor Read More

It's Love I'm After

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Patric Knowles, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Bette Davis and Leslie Howard play an egotistical Broadway acting team famous for their romantic scenes. In truth, Davis and Howard are crazy about each other, but they spend so much time bickering that they never get around to marriage. The relationship is complicated by young heiress Olivia De Havilland Read More

The Big City

Actors: Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy, Charles Grapewin, Janet Beecher, Eddie Quillan

Synopsis: The Big City is an improbable urban melodrama which takes place during a "taxi war" between honest independent cabdrivers and graft-ridden taxi monopolies. Looking for a scapegoat for a recent gangland bombing, crooked city officials deport the foreign wife (Luise Rainer) of rabble-rousing cabbie Spencer Tracy Read More

Exclusive

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Frances Farmer, Charlie Ruggles, Lloyd Nolan, Fay Holden

Synopsis: Frances Farmer plays the daughter of an honest and ethical newspaper publisher (Charlie Ruggles). She wants to become a reporter herself, but when her Dad refuses to give her an easy break, Frances goes to work for a rival "tell all" tabloid. Her irresponsible reporting causes a highly respected Read More

There Goes My Girl

Actors: Gene Raymond, Ann Sothern, Gordon Jones, Richard Lane, Frank Jenks

Synopsis: In this comedy, the shady editor of a newspaper does all he can to keep his best reporter from marrying a journalist from a rival paper. In spite of the editor, the wedding day finally comes. The happy couple is at the alter when suddenly the woman gets news of a big scoop. Without a backward Read More

Let's Make a Million

Actors: Edward Everett Horton, Charlotte Wynters, Porter Hall, J.M. Kerrigan, Margaret Seddon

Synopsis: In this comedy, a WWI veteran gets married after receiving his bonus money from the government. His meddlesome aunts then attempt to tell him how the tidy sum should be spent. He listens and reluctantly invests in oil. Trouble ensues when con men appear in town and attempt to sell every one phony 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

Three Cheers for Love

Actors: Eleanore Whitney, Robert Cummings, William Frawley, Roscoe Karns, John Halliday

Synopsis: In this musical, a young lady is sent to an East coast finishing school. She doesn't realize that it is a bogus school run by an unemployed stage troupe, her fellow students are chorus girls, and the faculty is comprised of the troupe's star act. The truth is soon revealed. Fortunately, it all Read More

Timothy's Quest

Actors: Dickie Moore, Virginia Weidler, Eleanore Whitney, Tom Keene, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1919, the Kate Douglas Wiggin novel Timothy's Quest was remade as a talkie in 1935. Dickie Moore plays Timothy Tarbox, a dewy-eyed orphan united in misery with his little sister Samantha (Virginia Weidler). The kids are taken in by maiden lady Vilda Cummins (Elizabeth Patterson Read More

Drift Fence

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Katherine de Mille, Tom Keene, Ben Baker

Synopsis: Although Larry "Buster" Crabbe earns top billing, the hero of Drift Fence is former Western star Tom Keene as Jim Travis, who, at a rodeo, meets city dweller Jim Traft (Benny Baker), who has come west to erect a fence that will prevent Clay Jackson (Stanley Andrews) from continuing his cattle Read More

Valiant Is the Word for Carrie

Actors: Gladys George, Arline Judge, John Howard, Dudley Digges, Harry Carey

Synopsis: Gladys George, a superlative actress often wasted in secondary roles, carries her starring assignment in Valiant is the Word for Carrie with singular brilliance. George plays the town trollop, who for the love of two orphaned children sets up a successful dry-cleaning business. Her past comes back Read More

Earthworm Tractors

Actors: Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Guy Kibbee, Dick Foran, Carolyn Hughes

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown was an ideal choice for the character of Alexander Botts, the brash, arrogant "natural born salesman" created for The Saturday Evening Post by William Hazlett Upton. As a representative for the Earthworm Tractor company, Botts tries to convince old-fashioned lumberman Guy Kibbee to Read More

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Nigel Bruce

Synopsis: Paramount's first outdoor Technicolor feature, Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the third film version of John Fox Jr.'s novel. Inspired by the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the story is set in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Outsider Fred MacMurray arrives to clear the path for a new railroad. Read More

Arizona Mahoney

Actors: Joe Cook, Robert Cummings, June Martel, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Marjorie Gateson

Synopsis: Fabled Broadway comedian Joe Cook, who hadn't been seen on screen since 1930's Rain or Shine, essayed the title role in 1937's Arizona Mahoney. As in his earlier film, the star plays a travelling circus entrepreneur, said "circus"consisting of an elephant, a goose, and a rusty old cannon. When Read More

Wives Never Know

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Adolphe Menjou, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: In this bedroom farce, a writer rails against marriage and touts the benefits of staying single. He then convinces his friend that only relationships based on struggle and strife are worth having. His friend is married so the writer suggests he start trouble by trying to make her jealous. The Read More

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglas Dumbrille, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in 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

San Francisco

Actors: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: The MGM historical "spectacular" San Francisco was allegedly based on a three-sentence synopsis, submitted verbally to producer B.F. Zeidman by studio troubleshooter Bob Hopkins. The story begins on the Barbary Coast on New Year's Eve, 1906, as rakish but likeable political boss Blackie Norton (Clark Gable Read More

The Big Broadcast of 1937

Actors: Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Martha Raye, Shirley Ross

Synopsis: The third film of Paramount's "Big Broadcast" series follows the pattern of the first two titles: negligible plot with plenty of memorable music and guest stars. Jack Carson (Jack Benny) owns the radio station this time out; he doesn't get along with the sponsors, and many are threatening to pull Read More

China Clipper

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Beverly Roberts, Ross Alexander, Humphrey Bogart, Marie Wilson

Synopsis: Based on the true story of Pan American Airlines, China Clipper was released only a year after the first transpacific flight in history. Pat O'Brien stars as Dave Logan, a man completely obsessed with starting the first commerical airline across the Pacific ocean. Engineer Dad Brunn (Henry B. Read More

Love on a Bet

Actors: Gene Raymond, Wendy Barrie, Helen Broderick, William Collier, Sr., Walter Johnson

Synopsis: Love on a Bet is a lightweight programmer from the "Get Rich Quick Wallingford" school of comedy. Gene Raymond stars as Michael, a fresh young sprout who needs $15,000 to produce a Broadway play. His rich uncle Carlton (William Collier Jr.) agrees to pony up the money, but only on the condition Read More

Hollywood Boulevard

Actors: John Halliday, Marsha Hunt, Robert Cummings, C. Henry Gordon, Frieda Inescort

Synopsis: Hollywood Boulevard is a trenchant look at the underside of Tinseltown. Though the nominal hero is a disillusioned screenwriter played by Robert Cummings (whose dialogue anticipates the lines spoken by William Holden in 1950's Sunset Boulevard), the focus of the story is John Halliday as a Read More

Petticoat Fever

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Reginald Owen, Otto Yamaoka, George Hassell

Synopsis: A romantic triangle heats up the Alaskan tundra in this romantic comedy. Bascom Dinsmore (Robert Montgomery) is a radio operator who is stationed at a remote outpost in the frozen plains of Alaska. Dinsmore gets very little in the way of companionship, particularly of the female variety, so he's Read More

Lady Be Careful

Actors: Lew Ayres, Mary Carlisle, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Ben Baker, Grant Withers

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1930 as True to the Navy, Kenyon Nicholson's old stage farce Sailor Beware returned to the screen in 1936 as Lady Be Careful. The plot remains substantially the same, as an amorous sailor named Dynamite (Lew Ayres) bets his pals that he can "thaw" icy beauty-contest winner Read More

Murder With Pictures

Actors: Lew Ayres, Gail Patrick, Joyce Compton, Paul Kelly, Onslow Stevens

Synopsis: Gail Patrick plays a young woman framed for murder. Luckily the newsman on the courtroom beat is ace photographer Lew Ayres. He senses Patrick is innocent (the fact that she's a knockout has something to do with this) and vows to track down the guilty party. The Least Likely Suspect spills the Read More

Hopalong Cassidy Returns

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, George "Gabby" Hayes, Gail Sheridan, Evelyn Brent

Synopsis: The seventh of the "Hopalong Cassidy" westerns, Hopalong Cassidy Returns stars, as always, William Boyd as the black-stetsoned hero. This one is a surprisingly sadistic item, in which a mysterious predator forces various ranchers off their land through rather direct means. In the opening scene, a Read More

Rhythm on the Range

Actors: Bing Crosby, Frances Farmer, Martha Raye, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Bing Crosby's only western (outside of the 1966 version of Stagecoach), Rhythm on the Range stars Crosby as a casual cowpoke on his way back to the Wide Open Spaces after an eastern visit. He meets a young train stowaway (Frances Farmer), whom he regards as a hoydenish vagabond until learning that Read More

It's a Great Life

Actors: Joe Morrison, Paul Kelly, Charles "Chic" Sale, Rosalind Keith, Baby Le Roy

Synopsis: It's a Great Life served as a vehicle for once-popular radio singer Joe Morrison (who can also be seen in W.C. Fields' It's the Old Fashioned Way). Morrison plays a young unemployed fellow who joins the Civilian Conservation Corps. Enjoying the twin euphoria of steady work and fresh air, Morrison Read More

Here Comes Cookie

Actors: George Burns, Gracie Allen, George Barbier, Betty Furness, Andrew Tombes

Synopsis: The classic comedians Burns and Allen are featured in this fast-paced farce that includes an assortment of corny vaudeville acts. The story centers around Gracie, the daughter of a wealthy business magnate. To prevent a gigolo, who is attempting to seduce his other daughter, from getting his Read More

The Murder Man

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Virginia Bruce, Lionel Atwill, Harvey Stephens, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy plays a hard-driving newsman with a special instinct for solving sensational murders before the police can. This earns him the grudging respect of his peers, but his editor always puts him in his place. Tracy spends most of his time solving cases and almost never sleeps at home. This Read More

Murder on a Honeymoon

Actors: Edna May Oliver, James Gleason, Lola Lane, Chick Chandler, George Meeker

Synopsis: Though it wasn't RKO Radio's final "Hildegarde Withers" mystery, Murder on a Honeymoon represented the final appearance of Edna May Oliver as Stuart Palmer's spinsterish schoolmarm sleuth. This entry was wittily adapted by Seton I. Miller and Robert Benchley from Palmer's Puzzle of the Pepper Read More

No Ransom

Actors: Leila Hyams, Phillips Holmes, Jack LaRue, Robert McWade, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: In this family comedy, the wealthy executive of a steel company must endure life with a strict, teetotaling wife, a wild daughter, and a deadbeat son. To gain some much needed attention, the lonesome fellow hires a hitman to kill him. Instead, the gunman kidnaps him to frighten the family into Read More

Powdersmoke Range

Actors: Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Tom Tyler, William Farnum

Synopsis: William Colt MacDonald's 1934 story based on the Three Mesqueteers characters was brought to the screen the following year by RKO, who billed it "the Barnum and Bailey of Westerns" and seems to have rounded up every Western star not under exclusive contract. The Western, in fact, could boast of no Read More

Millions in the Air

Actors: John Howard, Willie Howard, Robert Cummings, Inez Courtney

Synopsis: The title doesn't refer to mosquitoes but to the amount of money that could be earned in the radio business of the 1930s. Samuel S. Hinds plays a Major Bowes-type entrepreneur who sponsors a weekly radio amateur contest. Hinds' daughter Wendy Barrie has show-biz aspirations, but dad won't hear of Read More

The Virginia Judge

Actors: Walter "Judge" Kelly, Marsha Hunt, Stepin Fetchit, Johnny Downs, Robert Cummings

Synopsis: Vaudeville humorist Walter C. Kelley, who toured for years as "The Virginia Judge," repeated the characterization in this 1935 Paramount film. When not busy dispensing pearls of bucolic wisdom in the courtroom, Judge Davis (Kelly) of Tidewater, Virginia, tries to straighten out his hotheaded Read More

Going Highbrow

Actors: Guy Kibbee, ZaSu Pitts, Edward Everett Horton, Ross Alexander, June Martel

Synopsis: Consigned to the Warner Bros. "B" unit in the mid-1930s, director Robert Florey must have had a high old time trying to inject some visual dynamics into such unprepossessing projects as Going Highbrow. Guy Kibbee and ZaSu Pitts star as Mr. and Mrs. Matt Upshaw, a nouveau riche couple clearly Read More

Two Fisted

Actors: Lee Tracy, Roscoe Karns, Grace Bradley, Kent Taylor, Gail Patrick

Synopsis: Two Fisted is based on the James Gleason-Richard Taber stage play Is Zat So?, previously filmed under its original title in 1927. Lee Tracy stars as fast-lipped fight manager Hay Hurley, while Roscoe Karns co-stars as slow-witted pugilist Chick Moran. Flat broke, Hay and Chick take servant jobs in Read More

Manhattan Moon

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Dorothy Page, Henry Mollison, Hugh O'Connell, Luis Alberni

Synopsis: Manhattan Moon is predicated on the notion that French songstress Yvonne (Dorothy Page) is so busy with her career that she has to hire a look-alike, Toots Malloy (also Dorothy Page) to take her place at social functions. While posing as Yvonne, Toots makes the acquaintance of the singer's boss Read More

West of the Pecos

Actors: Richard Dix, Martha Sleeper, Samuel S. Hinds, Fred Kohler, Louise Beavers

Synopsis: RKO Radio's first official 1935 release was the Zane Grey adaptation West of the Pecos. Richard Dix stars as Pecos Smith, a strong, silent Westerner suspected of cattle rustling. He spends half of the film proving his innocence, and the other half trying to deal with the tempestuous Terrell (Martha Sleeper 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