Joan LeslieFilmography

Fire in the Dark

Synopsis: When her Mother breaks her hip and needs full-time care, a married woman is forced to a new understanding of the process of aging and the human spirit. Her Mother becomes resentful and fearful in this powerful affirmation of the dignity of the elderly and the power of a family. ~ Tana Hobart, All Read More

The Plot Against Harry

Actors: Martin Priest, Ben Lang, Henry Nemo

Synopsis: Filmed independently by Michael Roemer in 1969, The Plot Against Harry didn't earn a mainstream release until 1989. What was contemporary in 1969 became a period piece by the time it saw the light of day, but this anachronistic quality lent a great deal of charm to the proceedings. Harry Plotnick (Martin Priest Read More

Turn Back the Clock

Synopsis: This telefilm remake of the 1947 suspense fantasy Repeat Performance stars Connie Sellecca as a fading TV star who commits a murder on New Year's Eve before being given a chance to relive the last year and prevent the murder from occurring. The script is tarted up with a high-gloss veneer and some Read More

Murder, She Wrote: Mr. Penroy's Vacation

Synopsis: In this droll derivation of "Arsenic and Old Lace", former 1940s film ingénues Teresa Wright and Joan Leslie are cast as the spinsterish Appletree sisters, Cabot Cove's resident eccentrics. With the annual flower show coming up, it looks as though dear old Helen and Lillian Appletree are going to Read More

Charley Hannah

Synopsis: In this drama a veteran cop takes in a problematic adolescent who might have seen several policemen murdered. The old cop sees his action as a way of regaining his self-respect. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Keegans

Synopsis: The Keegans was a TV pilot film for a projected serialized weekly about an extended Irish-American family. Tim Keegan (Tom Clancy), the clan's father is a dock worker. Son Larry Keegan (Adam Roarke) is a magazine reporter, while Larry's brother Pat (Spencer Milligan) is a pro football player. And Read More

Branded: Leap Upon Mountains...

Synopsis: Film favorite Joan Leslie appears in this episode as Mrs. Cooper, a Quaker widow who hires Jason McCord (Chuck Connors) as a ranch hand. It soon develops that Jason will also have to act as Mrs. Cooper's bodyguard, thanks to vengeful one-armed rancher Renger (John Ireland). Embittered over the Read More

Smoke Jumpers

Synopsis: Smoke Jumpers stars Dan Duryea as the head man of a group of death-defying firefighters. Duryea and his crew are called upon to combat forest fires by parachuting into the various woodland conflagrations. One of Duryea's crew (Richard Jaeckel) accuses him of being a coward, but Duryea proves his Read More

The Revolt of Mamie Stover

Actors: Jane Russell, Richard Egan, Joan Leslie, Agnes Moorehead, Jorja Curtright

Synopsis: Set in the early '40s and directed by Raoul Walsh, The Revolt of Mamie Stover stars Jane Russell as Mamie, a San Francisco prostitute who is run out of town just as the second world war has begun to intensify. Mamie (Russell) settles down in Hawaii, hoping to start a new life. Though her prospects Read More

Hell's Outpost

Actors: Rod Cameron, Joan Leslie, John Russell, Chill Wills, Jim Davis

Synopsis: This "modern" western stars Rod Cameron as opportunistic Korean war veteran Tully Gibbs. Posing as a friend of the late son of mine owner Kevin Russel (Chill Wills), Tully intends to work the mine for all it's worth and then pull out. By and by, Tully slowly turns honest, but the same cannot be Read More

Jubilee Trail

Actors: Vera Ralston, Joan Leslie, Forrest Tucker, John Russell, Ray Middleton, Pat O'Brien

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Gwen Bristow, Jubilee Trail is a sprawling, all-star western from the Republic Studio mills. Despite is vaunted budget, the plot is strictly B-picture material. Ambitious California landowner Charles Hale (Ray Middleton) hopes to add to his riches by marrying off his brother Read More

Flight Nurse

Actors: Joan Leslie, Forrest Tucker, Arthur Franz, Jeff Donnell, Ben Cooper

Synopsis: In this war drama, set during the Korean War, an Air Force nurse gets involved in a love triangle on the front lines. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Woman They Almost Lynched

Actors: John Lund, Brian Donlevy, Audrey Totter, Joan Leslie, Ben Cooper

Synopsis: All suspense in The Woman They Almost Lynched would seem to be dissipated by title, but director Allan Dwan holds the viewers spellbound throughout. Part of the tension arises from fact that there are two leading female characters: Kate Quantrill (Audrey Totter), wife of infamous Confederate Read More

The Toughest Man in Arizona

Actors: Vaughn Monroe, Joan Leslie, Edgar Buchanan, Victor Jory, Jean Parker

Synopsis: In his second and last Western for Republic Pictures, former bandleader Vaughn Monroe plays a marshal returning to Tombstone with a wanted gun-runner (Victor Jory) when he stumbles upon a woman (Joan Leslie) and a couple of children, apparently the only survivors of an Indian raid on a wagon Read More

Hellgate

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Joan Leslie, Ward Bond, James Arness, Marshall Bradford

Synopsis: This western stars Sterling Hayden as a man who innocently tends to the needs of a mysterious stranger. When it turns out that the stranger was part of a notorious gang of mercenaries, Hayden is condemned as a conspirator and sent to Hellgate Prison in New Mexico. He earns a pardon thanks to his Read More

Too Young to Kiss

Actors: June Allyson, Van Johnson, Gig Young, Kathryn Givney

Synopsis: Can it be that June Allyson is Too Young to Kiss in this bit of MGM fluff? Well, not really. Pianist Cynthia Potter (Allyson) is well into her 20s, but she's posing as a 14-year-old musical prodigy. It's part of her desperate effort to become a client of highly selective concert-promoter Eric Read More

Man in the Saddle

Actors: Randolph Scott, Joan Leslie, Ellen Drew, Alexander Knox, Richard Rober

Synopsis: Rancher Randolph Scott rides right into a romantic triangle in this moody western. He is forced to stand by as his mercenary girl friend (Joan Leslie) is lured away by a wealthy neighboring rancher (Alexander Knox). When the neighbor is killed, Scott is accused of the murder, and spends the Read More

Hill Number One

Synopsis: Filmed in color, the 60-minute Hill Number One was an episode of the TV religious anthology Family Theatre. Father Patrick Peyton hosts this star-studded Easter special, wherein the story of the Resurrection is told in flashback form at a contemporary family gathering. As always, Fr. Peyton has Read More

The Skipper Surprised His Wife

Actors: Robert Walker, Joan Leslie, Edward Arnold, Spring Byington, Leon Ames

Synopsis: Vincente Minnelli was slated to direct The Skipper Surprised His Wife, but Elliot Nugent stepped in when Minnelli was transferred to another MGM comedy, Father of the Bride. The titular skipper, Cmdr. William Lattimer, is played by Robert Walker, while his wife Daphne is portrayed by Joan Leslie. 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

Northwest Stampede

Actors: Joan Leslie, James Craig, Jack Oakie, Chill Wills, Victor Kilian

Synopsis: In this romantic western, the real stars are a mustang and a police dog. The human aspect of the story centers on a rodeo rider whose late father bequeathed him a ranch in Calgary, Canada. The rider really tries to settle down to ranching, but finds himself pining for the rodeo. His forewoman Read More

Repeat Performance

Actors: Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Richard Basehart, Virginia Field, Tom Conway

Synopsis: On New Year's Eve, Joan Leslie runs desperately out of a penthouse apartment and into the Times Square crowd. She has reason to flee--she has just shot and killed her husband. Through a freakish wrinkle in time, Leslie is transported back to the last New Year's and is allowed to relive the past Read More

Cinderella Jones

Actors: Joan Leslie, Robert Alda, S.Z. Sakall, Edward Everett Horton, Julie Bishop, Elisha Cook, Jr.

Synopsis: Busby Berkeley directed this lightweight musical comedy in which Judy Jones (Joan Leslie) is informed that she's due to receive a $10 million inheritance, but with one very large string attached: she has to marry an unusually intelligent man. With the call of her checking account ringing loudly in Read More

Two Guys from Milwaukee

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Joan Leslie, Janis Paige, S.Z. Sakall

Synopsis: If Paramount could rake in the bucks by teaming singer Bing Crosby and comedian Bob Hope in a series of Road pictures, then Warner Bros. could do the same. Lacking a Crosby or Hope, Warners paired Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson (who like Crosby and Hope were good buddies off-screen) and came up Read More

Janie Gets Married

Actors: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Barbara Brown, Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Robert Benchley, William Frambes

Synopsis: In this sequel to the 1944 teenage comedy Janie, Joan Leslie replaces Joyce Reynolds in the title role, playing the virtuous but amorous daughter of Edward Arnold and Ann Harding. Janie marries the soldier (Robert Hutton) she'd met in the earlier film, hoping to help him set the course of a Read More

Too Young to Know

Actors: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Dolores Moran, Harry Davenport, Rosemary de Camp

Synopsis: In this wartime romance, two young newlyweds must reluctantly part when the young man is called to war. He spends the next three years fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific. While there, he learns that his wife has left him and has given away his son--he didn't even know she was pregnant. Read More

Where Do We Go from Here?

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Joan Leslie, June Haver, Gene Sheldon, Anthony Quinn

Synopsis: In this engagingly silly musical fantasy from the waning days of WW2, Fred MacMurray stars as Bill, who wants to serve his country but has been classified 4-F. While working at a local USO, Bill falls in love with the fickle Lucilla (June Haver, soon to be Mrs. Fred MacMurray), never realizing Read More

Rhapsody in Blue

Actors: Robert Alda, Joan Leslie, Alexis Smith, Charles Coburn, Julie Bishop, Oscar Levant

Synopsis: There's slightly more fancy than fact in this lavish film biography of legendary American composer George Gershwin, but oh! That music! Director Irving Rapper had wanted Tyrone Power to play Gershwin, but Power was still serving in the Marines, so Rapper had to settle for Robert Alda--who isn't Read More

Hollywood Canteen

Actors: The Andrews Sisters, Robert Hutton, Jack Benny, Joan Leslie, Julie Bishop, Bette Davis, John Garfield, Betty Brodel, Sydney Greenstreet, Barbara Brown

Synopsis: The West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, the Hollywood Canteen was created as a GI morale-booster by film stars Bette Davis and John Garfield. The Canteen was established so that Our Boys on leave in Tinseltown could have a good time with good food and good dancing -- and, as a Read More

Thank Your Lucky Stars

Actors: Eddie Cantor, Dinah Shore, Joan Leslie, Bette Davis, Dennis Morgan, Humphrey Bogart, Olivia de Havilland, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Practically everybody on the Warner Bros. lot shows up in the wartime morale-boosting musical extravaganza Thank Your Lucky Stars. Believe it or not, this one has a wisp of a plot. A pair of enterprising producers, played by S.Z. Sakall and Edward Everett Horton, want to hire singer Dinah Shore Read More

The Sky's the Limit

Actors: Fred Astaire, Joan Leslie, Robert Benchley, Robert Ryan, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: After a four-year absence, Fred Astaire returns to RKO Radio for the Ginger Rogers-less The Sky's the Limit. Astaire plays a war hero who wants to spend a quiet furlough in New York. Since the city is poised to give Astaire a ticker-tape welcome, he sneaks into town incognito. He meets Read More

This Is the Army

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

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

The Hard Way

Actors: Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Gladys George

Synopsis: In this dark drama an iron-willed older sister forcibly thrusts her only modestly talented younger sister into a Broadway career. She does this to desperately try to keep her little sis from falling into the same small-town trap of marriage to a dull working-stiff and endless hours of taking care Read More

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Actors: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, Irene Manning

Synopsis: Yankee Doodle Dandy is no more the true-life story of George M. Cohan than The Jolson Story was the unvarnished truth about Al Jolson -- but who the heck cares? Dandy has song, dance, pathos, pageantry, uproarious comedy, and, best of all, James Cagney at his Oscar-winning best. After several Read More

The Male Animal

Actors: Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this screen version of the James Thurber-Elliot Nugent Broadway play of the same name, Henry Fonda stars as bespectacled, bookish college professor Tommy Turner, who puts his career on the line by insisting upon standing up for his right to free speech. Determining to read a letter written by Read More

The Great Mr. Nobody

Actors: Eddie Albert, Joan Leslie, Alan Hale, William Lundigan, John Litel

Synopsis: The Great Mr. Nobody is an easygoing classified ad salesman, appropriately nicknamed Dreamy (Eddie Albert). All Dreamy wants out of life is to own a boat and drift aimlessly across the ocean in the company of his good pal Skipper (played by Alan Hale-ironically the father of Gilligan's Island's 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

The Wagons Roll at Night

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, Eddie Albert, Joan Leslie, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: In the 1930s and 1940s, Warner Bros. developed a positive genius for remaking earlier films in new, disguised fashion, retaining the plotlines but altering the circumstances and character names. Wagons Roll at Night was a 1941 reworking of the prizefight drama Kid Galahad, filmed only four years Read More

Thieves Fall Out

Actors: Eddie Albert, Joan Leslie, Jane Darwell, Alan Hale, William Orr

Synopsis: In this comedy, a grandmother decides to help her naive grandson get the money he needs to marry his girl by allowing him to get his inheritance, a mattress factory, before she dies. She suggests that he use it as collateral on a loan, but instead the young man sells the business to a crook who Read More

Sergeant York

Actors: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, Ward Bond, Margaret Wycherly, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: When World War I hero Alvin York agreed to sell the movie rights to his life story to Warner Bros., it was on three conditions: (1) That the film contains no phony heroics, (2) that Mrs.York not be played by a Hollywood "glamour girl" and (3) That Gary Cooper portray York on screen. All three Read More

Laddie

Actors: Joan Leslie, Tim Holt, Virginia Gilmore, Joan Carroll, Spring Byington, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: 1940's Laddie was the third cinemadaptation of the heartwarming story by Gene Stratton-Porter (the second version, filmed in 1935, was directed by no less than George Stevens). Tim Holt plays the title character, a good-natured Indiana farmer who falls in love with immigrant English girl Pamela (Virginia Gilmore Read More

Susan and God

Actors: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll, Rita Hayworth

Synopsis: Rachel Crothers' thoughtful stage play Susan and God was tastefully adapted for the screen by Anita Loos. Joan Crawford stars as Susan, whose unquestioning devotion to various religious organizations causes a great deal of strain between herself and her family. When Susan embraces a "New Thought" Read More

Foreign Correspondent

Actors: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Basserman

Synopsis: Fourteen scriptwriters spent five years toiling over a movie adaptation of war correspondent Vincent Sheehan's Personal History before producer Walter Wanger brought the property to the screen as Foreign Correspondent. What emerged was approximately 2 parts Sheehan and 8 parts director Alfred Hitchcock Read More

Young As You Feel

Actors: Jed Prouty, Spring Byington, Russell Gleason, Ken Howell

Synopsis: This domestic comedy is the final episode of the 17-film "Jones Family" series. The story begins as restless Father decides to leave the simplicity of small-town life for the sophistication and excitement of the city, so he sells the family drugstore and moves his family to the Big Apple. Soon Read More

Military Academy

Actors: Tommy Kelly, Bobby Jordan, David Holt, Jackie Searl, Don Beddoe

Synopsis: Military Academy would seem to have been an attempt by Columbia Pictures to match the success of the "Dead End Kids" pictures; indeed, one of the stars is former Dead Ender (and future East Side Kid) Bobby Jordan. The story zeroes in on Tommy Lewis (Tommy Kelly, previously the star of Selznick's Adventures of Tom Sawyer 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

Winter Carnival

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Richard Carlson, Helen Parrish, James Corner, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: This romance is set during the Dartmouth College Winter Carnival and follows the exploits of a woman recently divorced from a count who has returned to her alma mater for the annual carnival. A former carnival queen, she watches as her lovely little sister vies for the title. She also flirts with Read More

Love Affair

Actors: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman, Astrid Allwyn

Synopsis: Leo McCarey's classic tale of romance stars Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer as two strangers who fall in love on an ocean voyage. Charles Boyer is Michel Marnet, engaged to be married to Lois Clarke (Astrid Allwyn). Irene Dunne is Terry McKay, also engaged to be married, in this case to Kenneth Read More

Nancy Drew, Reporter

Actors: Bonita Granville, John Litel, Mary Lee, Sheila Bromley

Synopsis: The second entry in Warner Bros.' popular detective series, Nancy Drew, Reporter presented young sleuth Bonita Granville at her busybody best. This time, the irrepressible Miss Drew has entered a junior newspaper-reporter contest and, determined to win, insinuates herself into the ongoing Read More

Two Thoroughbreds

Actors: Joan Leslie

Synopsis: The thoroughbreds invoked by the title are a stray colt and the teenaged boy (Jimmy Lydon) who raises the animal. Despite the objections of his miserly uncle (Arthur Hohl), Lydon cares for the seemingly worthless colt with the help of a crusty but kindly groom (J. M. Kerrigan). The boy discovers Read More

Men with Wings

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, Louise Campbell, Andy Devine, Lynne Overman

Synopsis: Brash and vigorous director William Wellman always had a place in his filmography for movies glorifying the early years of aviation -- from the start of his career (Wings), until the end (Lafayette Escadrille). But, perhaps, never has his devotion to aviation been made more vivid than in his 1938 Read More

Camille

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille Read More