Jerome CowanFilmography

The Comic

Actors: Dick Van Dyke, Michele Lee, Mickey Rooney, Cornel Wilde, Nina Wayne

Synopsis: In The Comic, Dick Van Dyke plays Billy Bright, silent-era film comedian. The opening scene is at his funeral in which his sidekick Cockeye (Mickey Rooney) honors his partner's last request by hitting the preacher in the face with a pie. Van Dyke's voice then narrates the life story of the comic Read More

The Gnome-Mobile

Actors: Walter Brennan, Tom Lowell, Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice, Ed Wynn, Richard Deacon

Synopsis: The Gnome-Mobile was Walt Disney's first all-out fantasy since Mary Poppins. Walter Brennan stars in a dual role, as kindly lumber tycoon D. J. Mulrooney and the irascible (and much tinier) 943-year-old gnome Knobby. Mulrooney likes Knobby and his fellow gnomes, but the feeling isn't reciprocal Read More

Penelope

Actors: Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Jonathan Winters

Synopsis: Can armed robbery help save a marriage? These and other questions about modern relationships are pondered in this comedy. Penelope Elcott (Natalie Wood) married James (Ian Bannen) after a very brief courtship, and as his star has begun to rise in the banking business, he spends less and less time Read More

The Munsters: Herman's Lawsuit

Synopsis: Accidentally striking the Munster Koach, female motorist Mrs. Kingsley (Dorothy Green) takes one look at Herman (Fred Gwynne) and assumes that he's been horribly disfigured in the "accident". The guilt-ridden woman sends an insurance man to the Munster Mansion, hoping to settle out of court for Read More

The Lucy Show: Lucy and Art Linkletter

Actors: Art Linkletter, Doris Singleton, Jerome Cowan, Roy Rowan, Sid Gould

Synopsis: As a contestant on Art Linkletter's TV show (which looks a lot like People Are Funny), Lucy is offered a 200-dollar prize if she can refrain from talking for 24 hours. To make certain Lucy keeps her end of the bargain, Linkletter chooses a lady from the audience, one Helen Cosgrove (Doris Singleton Read More

Frankie and Johnny

Actors: Elvis Presley, Donna Douglas, Harry Morgan, Sue Ane Langdon, Nancy Kovack

Synopsis: Not a remake of the 1934 Helen Morgan vehicle of the same title, Frankie and Johnny stars Elvis Presley as Johnny, a Mississippi gambler, and Beverly Hillbillies regular Donna Douglas as his girl friend Frankie. In keeping with the old ballad, the romance of Frankie and Johnny is threatened by the Read More

The Tycoon [TV Series]

Actors: Walter Brennan, Monty Margetts, Jerome Cowan, Van Williams, Janet Lake

The Patsy

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

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

Bonanza: The Saga of Muley Jones

Actors: Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Bruce Yarnell

Synopsis: Bruce Yarnell makes his first appearance as the Cartwrights' cousin Muley from Missouri. "Blessed" with a singing voice that can literally shatter glass, Muley manages to make life difficult for his rich relations-and also inadvetently louses up negotiations with a neighboring Indian tribe. The Read More

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home

Actors: Peter Ustinov, Shirley MacLaine, Richard Crenna, Jim Backus, Scott Brady

Synopsis: Politics and sports clash in this occasionally funny spoof centered around a downed U2 pilot and an extravagant oil sheik. John Goldfarb (Richard Crenna), a former football player, now pilot, sent on a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union, is lost and crash-lands in the Middle Eastern Read More

My Favorite Martian: The Atom Misers

Synopsis: Hoping to use a home-built cyclotron to create a fusion of silicone and cobalt in order to reactive his spaceship, Martin (Ray Walston) enlists the aid of 13-year-old scientific genius Donald Mumford (Flip Mark). Martin also comes to Donald's aid in the boy's ongoing war of egos with his jealous Read More

Black Zoo

Actors: Michael Gough, Jeanne Cooper, Rod Lauren, Virginia Grey, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: This violent, gore-filled, effective horror tale by director Robert Gordon is about a totally wacko private zoo keeper, Michael Conrad (Michael Gough) whose literal worship of the animals he tends -- especially the cat species -- starkly contrasts with his cold-blooded disregard for human life. Read More

Critic's Choice

Actors: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Maxwell, Rip Torn, Jesse Royce Landis

Synopsis: Ira Levin wrote the stage comedy Critic's Choice as a good-natured retort to a comment made by critic Walter Kerr. In his essay How Not to Write a Play, Kerr noted that the worst possible scenario would involve a drama critic forced to review a play written by his wife (we should mention that Read More

Pocketful of Miracles

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

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

All in a Night's Work

Actors: Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Cliff Robertson, Norma Crane

Synopsis: Tony Ryder (Dean Martin) thinks that Katie Robbins (Shirley MacLaine) was the mistress of a recently deceased millionaire. On this fragile plot peg hangs the rest of All in a Night's Work. The millionaire died with a smile on his face, and Tony, who stands to inherit the dead man's publishing Read More

Private Property

Actors: Corey Allen, Warren Oates, Kate Manx, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: An unusual psychological drama for its time, Private Property by director Leslie Stevens revolves around a different kind of triangle. Ann (Kate Manx) is a frustrated housewife whose complaint is almost universal: her husband takes her for granted. Duke (Corey Allen) is a petty thug with a Read More

Visit to a Small Planet

Actors: Jerry Lewis, Joan Blackman, Fred Clark, John Williams

Synopsis: When a space alien's fascination with Earthlings gets the better of him, he breaks one of his planet's laws and speeds off to visit the blue planet. Once there the alien (Jerry Lewis) encounters a nice family who kindly take him in. The father is a news commentator. Ironically, just prior to Read More

Have Rocket, Will Travel

Actors: Curly Joe DeRita, Jerome Cowan, Anna-Lisa

Synopsis: Joe De Rita makes his debut as the third Stooge in this rollicking slapstick comedy that has the three bunglers accidentally locking themselves into a rocket ship and blasting off to Venus. Once on the second planet they find fantastic life forms, including a verbose unicorn. They also find Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Artful Dodger

Synopsis: The much-despised Allan Sheridan (William J. Campbell) is going to need the $162,000 he is due to inherit: deeply in debt to several people, Sheridan had better pay up in a hurry if he doesn't want his list of enemies to increase. As it turns out, one enemy is more than enough to bludgeon Sheridan Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Lost Last Act

Synopsis: Theatrical "angel" (and former gangster!) Frank Brooks (Stacy Harris) is charged with the murder of playwright Ernest Royce (Jerome Cowan), who has been killed in the same manner as the main character in one of his unproduced plays. It turns out that Royce has based his play on the real-life Read More

The Twilight Zone: The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine

Actors: Ida Lupino, Martin Balsam, Ted de Corsia, Alice Frost, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Ida Lupino stars as Barbara Jean Trenton, a 1930s movie queen who refuses to admit that she's grown too old to play romantic roles. As her loyal agent Danny Weiss (Martin Balsam) looks on with a mixture of pity and disgust, Barbara insists upon sitting in her Hollywood mansion watching her old Read More

Goodyear TV Playhouse: The Gene Austin Story

The System

Actors: Frank Lovejoy, Joan Weldon, Paul Picerni, Don Beddoe, Frank Richards

Synopsis: The System was one of several "exposé" films inspired by the Kefauver crime committee. The title refers to the manner in which a major gambling syndicate can so insinuate itself in "respectable" business circles that it becomes virtually impossible for justice to prevail. Big-city syndicate head Read More

The Magnificent Adventure

Criminal Lawyer

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Jane Wyatt, Carl Benton Reid, Mary Castle, Robert Shayne

Synopsis: Though made in 1951, Criminal Lawyer has the feel of a 1930s film, right down to the casting of Pat O'Brien in the lead. The star plays attorney James Regan, whose unethical methods have earned him the disdain of the American Bar Association. Eventually, Regan is even disgusted with himself, and Read More

Disc Jockey

Actors: Ginny Simms, Tom Drake, Jane Nigh, Michael O'Shea, Lenny Kent

Synopsis: Evidently Monogram had high hopes for the modestly produced Disc Jockey, else why would the studio release the film through its "prestige" subsidiary Allied Artists? Songstress Ginny Simms stars as Vickie Peters, an unknown selected for stardom by radio deejay Mike Richards (Michael O'Shea). It is Read More

The Fat Man

Actors: Jack Smart, Julie London, Rock Hudson, Clinton Sundberg, Jayne Meadows

Synopsis: The popular radio detective series The Fat Man was brought to the screen in 1951, with the series' original star J. Scott Smart retained in the title role. Smart plays porcine sleuth Brad Runyon, who tackles the mystery surrounding the murder of a Los Angeles dentist. With the assistance of Read More

The Fuller Brush Girl

Actors: Lucille Ball, Eddie Albert, Carl Benton Reid, Gale Robbins, Jeff Donnell

Synopsis: Hot on the heels of such Red Skelton slapstick comedies as The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man came The Fuller Brush Girl, starring Lucille Ball in a fascinating dry run for her wacky "Lucy Ricardo" TV character. Unable to hold a job because of her tendency to get into trouble, Sally Read More

The West Point Story

Actors: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson

Synopsis: James Cagney delivers a vibrant performance as a down-on-his-luck Broadway musical director in The West Point Story, featuring songs by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. Cagney plays out-of-work director Elwin "Bix" Bixby, who reluctantly accepts a job from producer Harry Eberhart (Roland Winters) to Read More

Dallas

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey, Leif Erickson, Barbara Payton

Synopsis: With Dallas, Gary Cooper revived his long-dormant association with westerns. Cooper plays ex-Confederate officer Blayde Hollister, who rides into Dallas in search of the men who killed his family and stole his land. Because he is considered to be an outlaw by the authorities, Hollister is Read More

Young Man With a Horn

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Hoagy Carmichael, Juano Hernandez

Synopsis: The life of tragic jazz great Bix Beiderbecke is given the "a clef" treatment in Warner Bros. Young Man With a Horn. Kirk Douglas plays the Beiderbecke character, here named Rick Martin. An ace trumpter player, Martin is one of the few white musicians to flourish in the black-dominated jazz scene Read More

Peggy

Actors: Diana Lynn, Charles Coburn, Charlotte Greenwood, Barbara Lawrence, Charles Drake

Synopsis: Peggy Brookfield (Diana Lynn) is one of many aspirants for the position of Queen of the annual Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, Calfornia. Also competing is Peggy's sister Susan (Barbara Lawrence). Both girls make the trek from Ohio to Pasadena in the company of their father (Charles Coburn), a Read More

When You're Smiling

Actors: Jerome Courtland, Frankie Laine, Lola Albright, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: When You're Smiling is distinguished by the presence of several top recording artists of 1950. The wafer-thin plotline concerns the misadventures of Texan Gerald Durham (Jerome Courtland), who arrives in the Big City to learn the ropes of the music business. Durham not only ends up with a Read More

Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey

Actors: Leon Errol, Joe Kirkwood, Jr., Robert Coogan, Jerome Cowan, Joe Besser

Synopsis: In Ham Fisher's original Joe Palooka comic strip, Joe's pal Humphrey Pennyworth was a blimp of a man. In Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey, Mr. Pennyworth is played by Robert Coogan, a slim, athletic chap who was then starring as TV's Captain Video. At least Joe Kirkwood Jr. was closer to Fisher's visual Read More

Blondie's Big Deal

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Marjorie Kent, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Blondie's Big Deal was the 24th entry in Columbia's popular "Blondie" series. Since the actors were getting a bit too long-in-tooth to be thoroughly convincing in their characterizations, Big Deal is for the most part played on a farcical level. This time around, Dagwood (Arthur Lake) invents a Read More

Blondie Hits the Jackpot

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Marjorie Kent, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: The "Blondie" series reaches Number 25 with Blondie Hits the Jackpot. Fired for messing up an important contract, Dagwood (Arthur Lake) takes a job as a manual laborer for a construction firm. He is rescued from penury when Blondie (Penny Singleton) wins a radio contest. Of slender interest is the Read More

Always Leave Them Laughing

Actors: Milton Berle, Virginia Mayo, Ruth Roman, Bert Lahr, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Milton Berle was enjoying the first flush of his television success when his musical-comedy movie vehicle Always Leave Them Laughing hit the screens. Though his character name is Kip Cooper, Uncle Miltie more or less plays himself: an ambitious comedian who rises to fame by stealing other Read More

Scene of the Crime

Actors: Van Johnson, Arlene Dahl, Gloria de Haven, Norman Lloyd, Tom Drake, Leon Ames

Synopsis: The Dore Schary regime at MGM brought a much-needed dose of stark realism to the venerable studio. Van Johnson sheds his boy-next-door image to play L.A. plainclothes lieutenant Mike Conovan. Determined to bring a cop killer to justice, Conovan will let no man stand in his way -- not even his Read More

The Girl From Jones Beach

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Virginia Mayo, Eddie Bracken, Dona Drake, Henry Travers

Synopsis: Ronald Reagan plays a George Petty-type magazine illustrator who creates a "perfect girl" from a composite of the features of several models. While relaxing at the beach, Reagan meets a lovely young schoolteacher (Virginia Mayo) who is the living image of his imaginary girl. Sensing a terrific Read More

The Fountainhead

Actors: Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith, Henry Hull, Robert Douglas

Synopsis: The hero of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), a fiercely independent architect obviously patterned after Frank Lloyd Wright. Rather than compromise his ideals, Roark takes menial work as a quarryman to finance his projects. He falls in love with heiress Dominique (Patricia Neal Read More

Blondie's Reward

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Marjorie Kent

Synopsis: The long-running "Blondie" series was slowly heading into the homestretch when Blondie's Reward came out in 1948. After bungling a real-estate transaction, Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) is demoted to office boy by his flustered boss Radcliffe (Jerome Cowan). Nor does Dagwood improve the situation Read More

June Bride

Actors: Bette Davis, Robert Montgomery, Fay Bainter, Betty Lynn, Tom Tully, Barbara Bates

Synopsis: June Bride is based on Feature for June, a play by Eileen Tighe and Graeme Lorimer. Bette Davis plays the businesslike editor of a fashionable woman's magazine, who plans a feature on a "typical" midwestern marriage. She assigns her aide (and former fiance) Robert Montgomery to cover the story, a Read More

Blondie's Secret

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Marjorie Kent, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: This 23rd entry in the "Blondie" film series stars, as ever, Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake as Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead respectively. It all begins as Dagwood prepares for a long-delayed vacation with the family. His boss Mr. Radcliffe (Jerome Cowan) has promised the Bumsteads that there'll Read More

Wallflower

Actors: Robert Hutton, Joyce Reynolds, Janis Paige, Edward Arnold, Barbara Brown

Synopsis: In this comedy, two stepsisters fight for the love of the same man. One of the sisters is good-looking and vivacious. She is also an utter fluffhead. Her sister is pragmatic and plain, but in the end, she gets the man. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Arthur Takes Over

Actors: Lois Collier, Richard Crane, Ann E. Todd, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Pity poor James Clark (Richard Crane). Wed to the lovely Margaret (Lois Collier), Arthur is forced to keep the marriage a secret from Margaret's social-climbing mother (Barbara Brown)-which, of course, results in separate sleeping quarters. Coming to the rescue is Margaret's kid brother Arthur (Skip Homeier Read More

So This Is New York

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

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

Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce, William Demarest, Richard Webb

Synopsis: A man who dreams of seeing the future discovers the horrible burden that it can carry in this film noir suspense story. Suicidal Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) is prevented from killing herself by her fiancée Elliot Carson (John Lund). When they consult psychic John Triton (Edward G. Robinson Read More

Blondie's Holiday

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Marjorie Kent, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: This 20th entry in Columbia's long-running "Blondie" series finds poor Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) in financial trouble once again. Unable to obtain a raise from boss Radcliffe (Jerome Cowan), Dagwood begins "playing the ponies" at the race track, which gets him in trouble with the Law-not to Read More

Miracle on 34th Street

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Natalie Wood, Harry Antrim, Jerome Cowan, William Forrest, Herbert Heyes, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle, a bearded old gent who is the living image of Santa Claus. Serving as a last-minute replacement for the drunken Santa who was to have led Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Kringle is offered a job as a Macy's toy-department Santa. Supervisor Maureen O'Hara soon begins Read More

Cry Wolf

Actors: Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Basehart, Geraldine Brooks, Jerome Cowan, John Ridgely

Synopsis: The tense psychological drama Cry Wolf offers a fascinating if not altogether successful change of pace for action star Errol Flynn. Most of the story takes place at a remote and forbidding mansion, where Sandra Marshall (Barbara Stanwyck), the widow of the house's owner, arrives to take charge. Read More

Blondie's Big Moment

Synopsis: Blondie decides she wants to be a star and nearly turns her household upside down in this entry in the long-running domestic comedy series. Dagwood has mixed emotions about his wife's theatrical aspirations and eventually he decides to get her to quit. Disaster ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Read More

Blondie in the Dough

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

Driftwood

Actors: James Bell, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, Natalie Wood, Hobart Cavanaugh, Howland Chamberlain

Synopsis: Allan Dwan directs the family-oriented drama Driftwood, starring nine-year-old Natalie Wood. Orphan Jenny Hollingsworth (Wood) is found in a rural small town in Nevada that is ravaged by Rocky Mountain fever. She meets the local doctor, Steve Webster (Dean Jagger), who is working on a research Read More

The Unfaithful

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden

Synopsis: Though not readily apparent at first, The Unfaithful is a remake of the 1940 Bette Davis vehicle The Letter, which in turn was adapted from the play by W. Somerset Maugham. The locale of the Maugham original has been shifted from the jungles of Malaya to the cozy confines of a middle-sized Read More

Blondie's Anniversary

Synopsis: Blondie's Anniversary invades territory already mapped out by Columbia's two-reel Hugh Herbert comedies. Blondie (Penny Singleton) finds a valuable watch that has been hidden by hubby Dagwood (Arthur Lake). She assumes that it's a surprise wedding gift, but the truth is that Dagwood has been Read More

Riff Raff

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Walter Slezak, Anne Jeffreys, Percy Kilbride, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: No relation to the 1935 Jean Harlow-Spencer Tracy vehicle of the same name, RKO Radio's Riff-Raff is an action-packed vehicle for aging but still virile Pat O'Brien. At large in Panama, American private eye Dan (O'Brien) hopes to get his hands on a valuable map showing priceless oil concessions. Read More

Dangerous Years

Actors: Billy Halop, Ann E. Todd, Jerome Cowan, Anabel Shaw, Richard Gaines

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a young juvenile delinquent convinces other teens to join his gang. The gang raids a warehouse and there he ends up killing the school's most beloved teacher. The boy is tried. In court the D.A.'s adopted daughter stands up for the boy. Years before, when they were both orphans Read More

Murder in the Music Hall

Actors: Vera Ralston, William Marshall, Helen Walker, Nancy Kelly, William Gargan

Synopsis: Most of this Republic B-plus mystery yarn is set in a penthouse, next door to a music hall where a strange song-and-dance extravaganza is being staged. This production incorporates several ice-skating sequences--a good excuse as any for the presence of leading lady Vera Hruba Ralston, Republic's Read More

Deadline for Murder

Actors: Joan Blair, Larry Blake, Renee Carson, André Charlot, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: In this crime drama, two crooks dupe their friend, a professional gambler, into nipping some important government documents. The crooks then hope to sell the documents to a foreign country. The gambler gets the papers, but then realizes that he has been tricked. He enlists the aid of a detective Read More

My Reputation

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Eve Arden, Lucile Watson, Warner Anderson, John Ridgely

Synopsis: A woman struggling to rebuild her life becomes the victim of uncharitable rumors in this sudsy drama. After the recent death of her husband, and with her sons away at school, Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) is lonely and out of sorts -- and uninterested in the potential suitors her mother Read More

Deadline at Dawn

Actors: Susan Hayward, Paul Lukas, Bill Williams, Joseph Calleia, Osa Massen

Synopsis: Deadline at Dawn represented not only the sole film directorial effort of Broadway's Harold Clurman, but also the only cinematic collaboration between Clurman and his former Group Theatre associate, screenwriter Clifford Odets. While on shore leave in New York, sailor Alex (Bill Williams) is Read More

Mister Ace

The Kid from Brooklyn

Actors: Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen, Steve Cochran, Eve Arden

Synopsis: Danny Kaye's The Kid From Brooklyn is a virtual scene-for-scene remake of Harold Lloyd's The Milky Way (1936), with music and Technicolor added to the proceedings. Kaye is cast as timid milkman Burleigh Sullivan, who through a fluke knocks out prizefighting champion Speed McFarlane (Steve Read More

Flight to Nowhere

Synopsis: In this low-budget espionage adventure, an ex-FBI agent is convinced by an active agent to help him find a stolen map showing the location of invaluable uranium deposits located on a remote South Pacific island. Later the two, and a few others, end up in a hotel in Death Valley with the maps. Read More

Mr. Ace

Actors: George Raft, Sylvia Sidney, Stanley Ridges, Sara Haden, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: His movie career on a roll since the surprise success of 1946's Johnny Angel, George Raft was starred in the Benedict Bogeaus production Mister Ace. Raft plays Eddie Ace, the head man of a crooked political machine who intends to scuttle the gubernatorial campaign of female senator Margaret Read More

The Perfect Marriage

Actors: Loretta Young, David Niven, Eddie Albert, Charlie Ruggles, Virginia Field

Synopsis: If the Perfect Marriage in this romantic comedy were truly perfect, there wouldn't be any story, would there? Outwardly an ideal couple, Maggie and Dale Williams (Loretta Young, David Niven) have grown tired of one another after 10 years. Petty squabbles lead to major battles, exacerbated by the 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

Claudia and David

Actors: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Mary Astor, John Sutton, Harry Davenport, Gail Patrick

Synopsis: Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young reprise their roles from the film Claudia, which followed the titular young couple as they dealt with the trials of parenthood. Claudia, a bit wiser than she was in the first film but still charmingly naive and a bit nervous, is struggling with the responsibilities Read More

One Exciting Week

Actors: Al Pearce, Pinky Lee, Jerome Cowan, Shemp Howard, Arlene Harris

Synopsis: Radio comedian Al Pearce heads the cast of Republic's One Exciting Week. Pearce is cast as wartime hero Dan Flannery, who while en route to a homecoming celebration is waylaid by three crooks. Conked on the noggin, Flannery awakens with amnesia, and is convinced by the crooks that he's Public Read More

Blondie Knows Best

Actors: Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Marjorie Kent, Steven Geray

Synopsis: Blondie Knows Best was writer/director Edward Bernds' first entry in the long-running "Blondie" series, and arguably his funniest. The story contrives to have Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) pose as his boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) so that a big business deal can be consummated while Dithers Read More

A Night in Paradise

Actors: Merle Oberon, Turhan Bey, Thomas Gomez, Gale Sondergaard, Ray Collins

Synopsis: If Grecian storyteller Aesop really did exist, he was most likely a black slave. He wasn't an Austrian actor with an Egyptian name, but that's who played him in A Night in Paradise. Turhan Bey portrays the fable-spouting Aesop, who tries to escape his bondage by disguising himself as an old man. Read More

Getting Gertie's Garter

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Marie McDonald, Barry Sullivan, Binnie Barnes, J. Carrol Naish, Sheila Ryan

Synopsis: Getting Gertie's Garter is an updated adaptation of the venerable stage farce by Wilson Collison and Avery Hopwood. Dennis O'Keefe, newly married to lovely Sheila Ryan, is in a jam. O'Keefe's former girl friend, exotic dancer Marie McDonald, has in her possession an expensive, jeweled garter given 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

Fog Island

Actors: George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Jerome Cowan, Sharon Douglas, Veda Ann Borg

Synopsis: An early low-budget spin on Ten Little Indians, this cheap but entertaining PRC production features a wonderful cast of familiar B-movie faces, particularly George Zucco and Lionel Atwill. Zucco plays a man wrongfully imprisoned after being framed for his wife's murder by one of his colleagues. Read More

Jungle Captive

Actors: Otto Kruger, Amelita Ward, Phil Brown, Rondo Hatton

Synopsis: Universal concluded their shoestring "Ape Woman" trilogy (beginning with Captive Wild Woman and continuing with Jungle Woman) with this passable installment, though without the participation of the sultry Acquanetta. Vicky Lane assays the role of the human-ape creature -- who died at the end of Read More

Blonde Ransom

Actors: Donald Cook, Virginia Grey, Pinky Lee, Collette Lyons, George Barbier

Synopsis: Blonde Ransom revives a plot that dates back at least to Broadway's David Belasco era. Virginia Grey plays Vicki, the niece of irascible old scoundrel Uncle William (George Barbier). When Vicki's boyfriend Duke (Donald Cook), owner of a Broadway nightclub, needs $63000 in a hurry, Vicki fakes her Read More

Behind City Lights

Actors: Lynne Roberts, Peter Cookson, Jerome Cowan, Esther Dale, William Terry

Synopsis: This Republic programmer stars Lynne Roberts as a country gal who is slickered by a couple of city-fied jewel thieves, played by Peter Cookson and Jerome Cowan. Roberts is set up for a patsy by these two rogues, and nearly ends up in jail-and later on, narrowly escapes being rubbed out by Read More

Divorce

Actors: Kay Francis, Helen Mack, Jerome Cowan, Craig Reynolds

Synopsis: Marital entanglements provide the basis for this drama. The trouble begins as a woman prepares to marry her fifth husband, and former high school sweetie. Unfortunately he is already married. His wife begins divorce proceedings and sues for custody of the children. The newly freed man and the Read More

The Crime Doctor's Courage

Actors: Warner Baxter, Hillary Brooke, Jerome Cowan, Robert Scott, Lloyd Corrigan

Synopsis: Warner Baxter makes his fourth appearance as Dr. Robert Ordway, criminal-turned-criminologist, in Crime Doctor's Courage. This time, Ordway investigates the murder of fortune-hunter Gordon Carson (Stephen Crane), not long after his marriage to wealthy Kathleen Carson (Hillary Brooke). It's just Read More

Guest in the House

Actors: Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, Aline MacMahon, Ruth Warrick, Scott McKay

Synopsis: A Guest in the House is an involving psychological melodrama, well directed and acted, concerning a young woman's obsessive love. Evelyn (Anne Baxter), an emotionally vulnerable and unstable woman, stays at the home of her doctor Dan Proctor (Scott McKay). There she meets and falls in love with Read More

G.I. Honeymoon

Actors: Gale Storm, Peter Cookson, Arline Judge, Frank Jenks, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, set during WW II, an newlywed army couple are unable to consummate their marriage, as on their wedding night the husband is called away to sentry duty. Later they try again, but as he has just completed a 37-mile hike, he finds himself too tired to work up any enthusiasm Read More

Crime by Night

Actors: Jane Wyman, Jerome Cowan, Faye Emerson, Charles Lang, Eleanor Parker

Synopsis: In this mystery, a detective and his secretary go on vacation and end up solving a murder. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Mr. Skeffington

Actors: Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, Richard Waring, George Coulouris, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: From a novel of the same name by "Elizabeth", the film begins in 1914, with Bette Davis cast as vain, flighty society woman Fanny Trellis. Informed by Jewish-American financier Job Skeffington (Claude Rains) that her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) has stolen money to pay his gambling debts, Fanny Read More

South of Dixie

Actors: Anne Gwynne, David Bruce, Jerome Cowan, Ella Mae Morse, Joe Sawyer

Synopsis: Universal's yearly quota of cheap, 60-minute musicals occasionally yielded such likeable diversions as South of Dixie. David Bruce stars as Danny, a popular composer of southern ballads. Striking while the iron is hot, Danny's partner Brains (Jerome Cowan) promotes a filmed biography of the Read More

Silver Spurs

Actors: Roy Rogers, Smiley Burnette, John Carradine, Phyllis Brooks

Synopsis: This Roy Rogers musical western gets off to a grim start when rancher Jerry Johnson (Jerome Cowan) is murdered by resort-hotel operator Lucky Miller (John Carradine). It's all part of Lucky's scheme to take financial advantage of a railroad right-of-way construction project. Conspiring with the Read More

Hi 'ya, Sailor

Actors: Donald Woods, Elyse Knox, Eddie Quillan, Frank Jenks, Phyllis Brooks

Synopsis: The musical quickie Hi'Ya Sailor was produced by Universal, the same studio responsible for Hi'Ya Chum, Hi, Buddy, Hi, Beautiful and Hi, Good Lookin'. Donald Woods plays Bob Jackson, a song-writing sailor who is taken to the cleaners by a crooked song-publishing racket. Left in the cold, Bob and Read More

The Crime Doctor's Strangest Case

Synopsis: This second entry in Columbia's "Crime Doctor" series once again stars Warner Baxter as Dr. Ordway, a former criminal turned criminologist. In this outing, Ordway is called in to analyze the dreams of elderly Patricia Cornwall (Virginia Brissac). It is hoped that this will provide a clue to the Read More

Sing a Jingle

Actors: Allan Jones, June Vincent, Samuel S. Hinds, Gus Schilling, Betty Kean

Synopsis: During WW II, Universal cornered the market on "quickie" musicals, wrapping up songs, laughs and pretty girls in neat 60-minute packages. In Sing a Jingle, Allan Jones plays popular radio crooner Roy King, who goes to work in a war plant after being declared 4F. He falls in love with Muriel Crane (June Vincent Read More

The Song of Bernadette

Actors: Jennifer Jones, Charles Bickford, Gladys Cooper, Vincent Price, Lee J. Cobb

Synopsis: The Song of Bernadette is a reverent recounting of the life of St. Bernadette of Lourdes. As a teen-aged peasant girl growing up in the tiny French village of Lourdes in the 19th century, Bernadette (Jennifer Jones) experiences a vision of the Virgin Mary in a nearby grotto. At least, she believes Read More

No Place for a Lady

Actors: William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay, Phyllis Brooks, Dick Purcell, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: William Gargan and Margaret Lindsay, stars of Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, were reunited for the like-minded comedy/mystery No Place for a Lady. Gargan plays private eye Jess Arno, while Lindsay is Jess' ever-faithful, long-suffering fiancee June Terry. The plot gets under way when a valuable Read More

Mission to Moscow

Actors: Walter Huston, Ann Harding, Oscar Homolka, Gene Lockhart, George Tobias, Eleanor Parker

Synopsis: More so than most wartime films, Mission to Moscow must be viewed within the context of its times. Requested by President Roosevelt to make a film supportive of America's Russian allies, Warner Bros. turned to the memoirs of Ambassador Joseph H. Davies, who spent several years prior to WWII in the Read More

Ladies' Day

Actors: Lupe Velez, Eddie Albert, Patsy Kelly, Max Baer, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Lupe Velez is "The Mexican Spitfire" in everything but name in the frantic baseball farce Ladies Day. Eddie Albert plays Wacky Waters, star pitcher of the Sox, a league-leading contender for the World Series. Alas, whenever Wacky falls in love, his game suffers-and so do the wives of his Read More

Find the Blackmailer

Actors: Jerome Cowan, Faye Emerson, Gene Lockhart, Marjorie Hoshelle, Robert Kent

Synopsis: After years of faithful supporting-player service to Warner Bros., Jerome Cowan was rewarded with two starring vehicles, the first of which was Find the Blackmailer. Cowan is cast as private eyes D. L. Trees, who is hired by mayoral candidate John M. Rhodes (Gene Lockhart) to prevent any sort of Read More

Street of Chance

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor, Sheldon Leonard, Jerome Cowan, Frieda Inescort

Synopsis: Based on Cornell Woolrich's novel The Black Curtain (later dramatized several times on the radio series Suspense), Street of Chance top-bills Burgess Meredith as an amnesia victim. He awakens in the middle of the street, with nary a clue of who he is or what he's done. Meredith comes to learn that Read More

Joan of Ozark

Actors: Judy Canova, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Foy, Jr., Jerome Cowan, Alexander Granach

Synopsis: The sure-fire combination of Judy Canova and Joe E. Brown paid off in big laughs and excellent box-office returns in the bizarre wartime musical Joan of Ozark. While hunting quail near her home, hillbilly Judy (Canova) catches a carrier pigeon bearing a message for a ring of Nazi spies. She turns Read More

A Gentleman at Heart

Actors: Cesar Romero, Carole Landis, Milton Berle, J. Carrol Naish, Richard Derr

Synopsis: Cesar Romero plays an outwardly tough bookie with the proverbial golden heart. Romero falls in love with Carole Landis, an art shop proprietor who introduces her raffish romeo into the world of fine art. Utilizing his gambling skills, he amasses an impressive collection of valuable paintings, only Read More

The Girl From Alaska

Actors: Ray Middleton, Jean Parker, Jerome Cowan, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: In this drama, set during the gold-rush, an unsuccessful prospector prepares to leave Alaska. But first he has a grand, drunken send-off. During the celebration a lawman is killed. The prospector is the prime suspect, and so he escapes to keep from being arrested. While on the lam, he encounters a Read More

Frisco Lil

Actors: Irene Hervey, Kent Taylor, Minor Watson, Jerome Cowan, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Universal contractee Irene Hervey, generally required to stand by the sidelines while the leading men did all the acting, was given a vehicle of her very own with Frisco Lil. Irene plays a law student whose father is framed for a crime he didn't commit. Going undercover as a gambling-joint 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

Who Done It?

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Patric Knowles, William Gargan, Louise Allbritton

Synopsis: With only a minimal romantic subplot and no music whatsoever, Who Done It? is pure, undiluted Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and a good mystery on its own to boot. Bud and Lou star as Chick Larkin and Mervyn Milgrim, a pair of soda jerks who aspire to become radio detective-show writers (their Read More

Moontide

Actors: Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Forced to flee Paris during the Occupation, the great French leading man Jean Gabin starred in a brace of Hollywood films, the best of which was the first, 20th Century-Fox's Moontide. Cast to type, Gabin plays Bobo, a brooding itinerant dock-worker who gets mixed up in a drunken brawl. Upon Read More

Kiss the Boys Goodbye

Actors: Mary Martin, Don Ameche, Oscar Levant, Jerome Cowan, Virginia Dale, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: The nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind formed the basis of Claire Booth Luce's satirical Broadway comedy Kiss the Boys Goodbye. By the time the film version came out in 1941, Gone with the Wind was yesterday's news, but the picture still manage to elicit Read More

Kisses for Breakfast

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jane Wyatt, Shirley Ross, Lee Patrick, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Kisses for Breakfast is a dumbed-down remake of the 1930 marital comedy The Matrimonial Bed, itself based on a British stage play by Seymour Hicks-which in turn was adapted from a French farce by Yves Mirande and Andre Mouzey-Eon. With that pedigree, it's amazing that this frenetic 1941 Read More

One Foot in Heaven

Actors: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: Author Hartzell Spence's popular biography of his preacher father was the source for One Foot in Heaven. Fredric March stars as Methodist cleric William Spence, whose calling requires him to move his family from parish to parish on a near-monthly basis. The children resent the fact that they're Read More

Singapore Woman

Actors: Brenda Marshall, David Bruce, Virginia Field, Jerome Cowan, Rose Hobart

Synopsis: This remake of Dangerous is set in Singapore and chronicles the exploits of a woman who believes herself cursed. To recover, she is taken to the rubber plantation of a handsome young man. There she finds true happiness and love. Suddenly, her abusive ex-husband shows up. She had thought him dead Read More

The Great Lie

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Mary Astor, Hattie McDaniel, Lucile Watson, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: The Great Lie is Soap Opera Deluxe from Bette Davis' peak period at Warner Bros. Davis plays a socialite who is madly in love with playboy aviator George Brent. Brilliant but bitchy concert pianist Mary Astor (who won a well-deserved Academy Award for her chain-smoking histrionics) is also in love Read More

Mr. and Mrs. North

Actors: Gracie Allen, William Post, Jr., Paul Kelly, Rose Hobart, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: "Mr. and Mrs. North" started as a series of comic articles about a Park Avenue married couple, written by Richard and Frances Lockridge. One of these articles was "The Norths Solve a Murder", which was adapted as a stage play by Owen Davis Sr. and was later spun off into a popular radio and TV Read More

The Maltese Falcon

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Barton MacLane, Gladys George

Synopsis: After two previous film versions of Dashiell Hammett's detective classic The Maltese Falcon, Warner Bros. finally got it right in 1941--or, rather, John Huston, a long-established screenwriter making his directorial debut, got it right, simply by adhering as closely as possible to the original. 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

Out of the Fog

Actors: Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Thomas Mitchell, Eddie Albert, George Tobias

Synopsis: Out of the Fog is the film version of the Irwin Shaw play The Gentle People, refashioned to mollify the Hollywood censors by expert wordsmiths Robert Rossen, Jerry Wald, and Richard Macaulay. Humphrey Bogart lobbied strenuously to play the leading role of charming but ruthless waterfront loan Read More

Rags to Riches

Actors: Alan Baxter, Mary Carlisle, Ralf Harolde

Synopsis: Maintaining Republic Pictures' early-1940s predilection for corny, antiquated titles, Rags to Riches made its national debut in the late summer of 1941. Despite its Horatio Algerish cognomen, the film is a fur-hijacking melodrama, with nary a genuine "rag" in sight. Taking a break from his usual Read More

The Bugle Sounds

Actors: Wallace Beery, Marjorie Main, George Bancroft, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: By 1941, Wallace Beery was pretty much confined to playing two characters: The reprobate with the heart of gold, or the old-line martinet who resents the incursions of progress. In The Bugle Sounds, Beery opted for characterization #2, playing entrenched Cavalry sergeant Hap Doan. Accustomed to Read More

High Sierra

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Arthur Kennedy, Joan Leslie, Alan Curtis

Synopsis: In a manner of speaking, Humphrey Bogart had George Raft to thank for his ascendancy to stardom: after all, if Raft hadn't turned down both High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, Bogart might have continued playing second-billed gangsters to the end of his days. Adapted from W. R. Burnett's novel by Burnett Read More

Affectionately Yours

Actors: Merle Oberon, Dennis Morgan, Rita Hayworth, Ralph Bellamy, George Tobias

Synopsis: Affectionately Yours offers the spectacle of glamorous Merle Oberon and gorgeous Rita Hayworth jockeying for the best camera positions, virtually pushing male leads Dennis Morgan and Ralph Bellamy right off the screen! Here's the deal: Neglected wife Sue Marberry (Oberon) obtains a quickie Nevada Read More

The Roundup

Actors: Richard Dix, Patricia Morison, Preston S. Foster, Don Wilson, Ruth Donnelly

Synopsis: Originally written as a stage vehicle for corpulent character actor Macklyn Arbuckle, Ernest Day's The Roundup was first filmed in 1920 with Fatty Arbuckle (no relation) in the lead. By the time the film was remade in 1941, Arbuckle's character, a roly-poly frontier sheriff named Slim (!), was Read More

Meet the Wildcat

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Allen Jenkins, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Ralph Bellamy and Margaret Lindsay, stars of Columbia's "Boston Blackie" series, let their hair down and went "screwball" in the Universal comedy-mystery Meet the Wildcat. Bellamy plays a New York gumshoe on the trail of an art thief. His investigation is confounded by the presence of snoopy girl Read More

Torrid Zone

Actors: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien, Andy Devine, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Torrid Zone star James Cagney once described the film as "The Front Page among the bananas." Indeed, the screenplay diligently follows the Front Page plot device of a tough boss (Pat O'Brien) pulling every underhanded trick in the book to keep his top man (Cagney) from quitting. This time the Read More

Castle on the Hudson

Actors: John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien, Burgess Meredith, Jerome Cowan, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: In this remake of the classic prison story 20,000 Years in Sing-Sing, John Garfield plays Tommy Gordon, a jewel thief who has been sent up the river for a minimum of 25 years. Tommy isn't especially worried about prison, as he's convinced his well-connected friends will help him get out before Read More

Wolf of New York

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Rose Hobart, James Stephenson, Jerome Cowan, William Demarest

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a brilliant lawyer is renowned for getting guilty-as-sin-but-powerful crime figures acquitted. He has never lost a case until he defends an innocent man. The hapless client ends up imprisoned and executed for killing a policeman. The loss traumatizes the lawyer and compels him Read More

Victory

Actors: Fredric March, Betty Field, Cedric Hardwicke, Jerome Cowan, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: Victory was the first of Joseph Conrad's novels to be adapted to film, way back in 1919. The earliest talkie version, pointlessly retitled Dangerous Paradise, was lensed in 1930. Finally, Victory was given its best screen treatment in 1940 under the sensitive direction of John Cromwell. Fredric March Read More

The Quarterback

Actors: Wayne Morris, Virginia Dale, Lillian Cornell, Edgar Kennedy, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: This mistaken-identity concoction takes place on a college campus--a familiar locale for Paramount B-pictures. Wayne Morris plays the dual role of scholarly Jimmy Jones and his athlete brother Bill. Jimmy is in line for a professorship, while Bill can hardly qualify for grade school. The fun Read More

Framed

Actors: Frank Albertson, Constance Moore, Jerome Cowan, Robert Armstrong, Sidney Blackmer

Synopsis: Reporter Albertson works to solve a murder case in order to clear his name and get a great story for his paper. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Melody Ranch

Actors: Gene Autry, Jimmy Durante, Ann Miller, Barton MacLane, Barbara Jo Allen

Synopsis: Beautifully restored to its original theatrical length of 84 minutes by the Gene Autry Foundation, Melody Ranch is a bright, tuneful, and at times quite action-packed piece of B-Western extravaganza, Republic style. The victim of both a drop in ratings and a tardy leading lady, radio star Gene Read More

Street of Memories

Actors: Lynne Roberts, Guy Kibbee, John McGuire, Hobart Cavanaugh

Synopsis: In this drama, a transient farm worker suffering from amnesia gets in trouble with the cops. One day he drifts into a town, finds a good woman and marries. Soon after, a blow to the head restores his memory. He remembers that his father is a prominent businessman in Chicago. At first, he does not Read More

City for Conquest

Actors: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Frank Craven, Donald Crisp, Arthur Kennedy

Synopsis: There are three key characters in Anatole Litvak's filmization of Aben Kandel's novel City for Conquest, as opposed to the six or more in the book -- but the real star, to a large extent, is New York City and its entire population. For purposes of the movie, however, the dramatic arc is linked to James Cagney Read More

Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me

Actors: Tom Brown, Constance Moore, Richard Carle, Anne Nagel, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: In this musical, a sharp witted press agent teams up with an unemployed chorine and dubs her "Miss Manhattan" to promote a cheap line of clothing. To escort her about town, the agent invents a "Mr. Manhattan." He then has them fake a marriage. When he realizes that he is in love with his creation Read More

The Saint Strikes Back

Actors: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jonathan Hale, Jerome Cowan, Neil Hamilton

Synopsis: The Saint Strikes Back was the second in the series of films featuring Simon Templay, better known as The Saint, and the first to star George Sanders in the role. Val Travers (Wendy Barrie) is the daughter of a police detective who killed himself after being dishonorably let go from the San Read More

The Old Maid

Actors: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan

Synopsis: When Zoë Akins' play The Old Maid (based on a novel by Edith Wharton) won the 1934-1935 Pulitzer Prize, the selection was roundly condemned by critics, who felt that Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour was more deserving, but had lost because of its lesbian theme. Certainly, Akins' story of the Read More

Exile Express

Actors: Anna Sten, Alan Marshal, Jerome Cowan, Jed Prouty, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: Exile Express was the last film produced by Grand National Pictures, and a worthy farewell it was. Anna Sten, former Sam Goldwyn protegee and the wife of Exile Express producer Eugene Frenke, stars as Nadine Nikolas, a young European girl whose chances of becoming an American citizen are scotched Read More

She Married a Cop

Actors: Phil Regan, Jean Parker, Jerome Cowan, Dorothea Kent, Ben Baker

Synopsis: This comedy is set in New York and centers upon a singing Irish cop who causes quite a sensation among two producers when he sings at the annual Policeman's Ball. For a long time, they have been looking for a voice for their new cartoon feature, "Paddy the Pig," and the cop is just perfect. The Read More

East Side of Heaven

Actors: Bing Crosby, Joan Blondell, Mischa Auer, Irene Hervey, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Bing Crosby plays a tune-happy cab driver who finds himself the reluctant recipient of an abandoned baby. Together with his roommate, dour doorman Mischa Auer, Crosby offers care and shelter to the infant until he can locate the parents. The baby brings in some unwanted publicity for Crosby, which Read More

St. Louis Blues

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Lloyd Nolan, Tito Guizar, Jerome Cowan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Dorothy Lamour had been playing "sarong girls" long enough to parody her screen character in 1939's Best of the Blues. Tired of portraying jungle princesses, a temperamental Broadway star (Lamour) runs out on her manager (Jerome Cowan) and joins a Mississippi showboat under a phony name. 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 Great Victor Herbert

Actors: Allan Jones, Mary Martin, Walter Connolly, Lee Bowman

Synopsis: In his last film assignment, portly Walter Connolly fills the title role (in more ways than one) in The Great Victor Herbert. Very little of Herbert's life story is incorporated in the screenplay (a closing title actually apologizes for the film's paucity of cold hard facts); instead, the writers Read More

The Goldwyn Follies

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, The Ritz Brothers [Al, Jimmy, Harry], Vera Zorina, Kenny Baker, Andrea Leeds

Synopsis: A longtime admirer of Broadway impresario Flo Ziegfeld, Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn hoped to emulate the success of The Ziegfeld Follies by producing an annual movie-musical revue. Goldwyn's dream began and ended with 1938's Goldwyn Follies, a film centering on Goldwyn-like movie producer Read More

There's Always a Woman

Actors: Joan Blondell, Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Frances Drake, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Capitalizing on the success of MGM's Thin Man series, virtually every major studio of the 1930s came up with its own husband-and-wife detective team. Columbia's entry was There's Always a Woman, starring Melvyn Douglas and Joan Blondell. Douglas and Blondell are the married proprietors of an Read More

Shall We Dance?

Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: The seventh of RKO's Fred Astaire--Ginger Rogers musicals, Shall We Dance casts Astaire as a world-renowned ballet dancer and Rogers as a musical comedy headliner. Rogers' manager Jerome Cowan concocts a phony romance between his client and Astaire in order to garner publicity for them both. 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

You Only Live Once

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon, William Gargan

Synopsis: Archetypal depression-era stars Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney are felicitously teamed in Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once. Fonda plays an ex-convict who can't get a break on the "outside". He marries Sidney, who like her husband is one of life's losers. Framed on a murder rap, Fonda is forced to Read More

The Hurricane

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell

Synopsis: Framed in a flashback related by doctor Thomas Mitchell, The Hurricane is in essence the story of a struggle between individual freedom and colonial oppression. Jon Hall plays Terangi, a tempestuous native of the French-controlled island of Manakoora. After marrying childhood sweetheart Marama (Dorothy Lamour Read More

New Faces of 1937

Actors: Joe Penner, Milton Berle, Parkyakarkus [Harry Einstein], Harriet Hilliard

Synopsis: New Faces of 1937 was supposed to be the vanguard of a series of annual musical comedies -- RKO Radio's latest attempt to revive its long-dormant "Radio City Revels" concept. The plot is based on an old show-business legend, later immortalized in Mel Brooks' The Producers: Crooked Broadway Read More

Beloved Enemy

Actors: Merle Oberon, Brian Aherne, Karen Morley, Jerome Cowan, David Niven

Synopsis: This lavishly appointed Sam Goldwyn soap opera is set in Ireland during "the troubles." Irish rebel leader Dennis Reardon (Brian Aherne) falls in love with Lady Helen Drummond (Merle Oberon), the aristocratic daughter of British diplomat Lord Athleigh (Henry Stephenson). Reardon's underground Read More