John BolesFilmography

Babes in Bagdad

Actors: Paulette Goddard, Gypsy Rose Lee, Richard Ney, John Boles, Thomas Gallagher

Synopsis: Though she was pushing 50 at the time, Paulette Goddard still looked quite fetching in harem duds in the independently produced comedy Babes in Bagdad. On the other hand, Goddard's leading man, 57-year-old John Boles, not only looked his age but acted it. Even the youngest of the three leads, Gypsy Rose Lee Read More

Thousands Cheer

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Red Skelton, Mary Astor, John Boles, Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, José Iturbi

Synopsis: Storywise, Thousands Cheer is thin stuff indeed. Insouciant PFC Eddy Marsh (Gene Kelly) wants to put on a Big Show for his fellow serviceman. Along the way, Eddy falls in love with Kathryn Jones (Kathryn Grayson), the daughter of Colonel William Jones (John Boles). End of story. The principal Read More

Road to Happiness

Synopsis: An unusually sentimental endeavor from rough-and-ready Monogram pictures, Road to Happiness stars former 20th Century-Fox leading man John Boles. Recently divorced, Boles tries to make things pleasant for his son Billy Lee (who two years earlier had captivated the critics in The Biscuit Eater). 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

Sinners in Paradise

Actors: Madge Evans, John Boles, Bruce Cabot, Marion Martin, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: At one time Universal's "prestige" director, James Whale had slipped off the A-list by the end of the 1930s; even so, his films remained both intriguing and entertaining. In Whale's Sinners in Paradise, an airplane cracks up during a storm and crash-lands on an uncharted South Sea island. All nine Read More

She Married an Artist

Actors: John Boles, Luli Deste, Frances Drake, Helen Westley, Alex D'Arcy

Synopsis: The plot of She Married an Artist is summed up by the title, as was often the case in such 1930s romantic comedies. European import Lulli Deste plays Toni, the wife of commercial artist Lee Thornwood (John Boles). Because Thornwood's portraits of comely model Sally Dennis (Frances Drake) are in Read More

Romance in the Dark

Actors: Gladys Swarthout, John Boles, John Barrymore, Claire Dodd, Fritz Feld

Synopsis: Herman Bahr's German play The Yellow Nightingale from 1907 became Paramount's 1938 entry in the then-popular operetta cycle. Gladys Swarthout, formerly of the Met, stars as Ilona Boros, a peasant girl with a magnificent voice who becomes a pawn in the rivalry between opera tenor Tony Kovach (John Read More

Fight for Your Lady

Actors: John Boles, Jack Oakie, Ida Lupino, Margot Grahame, Gordon Jones

Synopsis: This musical parody follows the exploits of American performers in Hungary. The story begins as a Yankee wrestling trainer becomes friends with a gringo singer who works in the same Budapest nightclub as a female ventriloquist. When the singer is dumped, the trainer offers to help him with his Read More

As Good As Married

Actors: John Boles, Doris Nolan, Walter Pidgeon, Tala Birell, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: Former musical comedy star Edward N. Buzzell called the shots on the Universal programmer As Good as Married. John Boles plays a wealthy businessman whose inability to keep his love life in order threatens both his financial and emotional well-being. Faithful secretary Doris Nolan is determined to Read More

Stella Dallas

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Produced by Sam Goldwyn, this second film version of Olive Higgins Prouty's Stella Dallas is by far the best. The combined talents of Goldwyn, director King Vidor and star Barbara Stanwyck lift this property far above the level of mere soap opera. Stanwyck is perfectly cast as Stella Martin, the Read More

Craig's Wife

Actors: Rosalind Russell, John Boles, Billie Burke, Jane Darwell, Dorothy Wilson

Synopsis: After several light comedy roles, Rosalind Russell proved her salt as a dramatic film actress in this 1936 adaptation of George Kelly's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife. Russell plays Harriet Craig, whose obsession with keeping her house and its furnishings spotless has driven away most of Read More

Rose of the Rancho

Actors: Gladys Swarthout, Charles Bickford, Willie Howard, Herb Williams

Synopsis: In her much vaunted screen debut, Metropolitan Opera star Gladys Swarthout takes on David Belasco's 30-year-old operetta about the female leader of a gang of vigilantes battling usurpers plotting to steal valuable land grants. The masked Don Carlos (aka Rosita Castro) uses her operatic voice as a Read More

A Message to Garcia

Actors: Wallace Beery, Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Alan Hale, Herbert Mundin

Synopsis: The real "message to Garcia" was delivered by an American lieutenant to Cuban rebel General Garcia, asking for the General's help in the Spanish-American war. The fact that the lieutenant made his way to Garcia in absolute safety was ignored in 20th Century-Fox's Message to Garcia--which is just Read More

Redheads on Parade

Actors: John Boles, Dixie Lee, Jack Haley, Raymond Walburn, Alan Dinehart

Synopsis: One of the last Fox releases before the studio's merger with 20th Century, Redheads on Parade stars John Boles and Dixie Lee as washed-up movie star John Bruce and aspiring singer Ginger Blair. The couple is given the opportunity to co-star in a film financed by Augustus Twill (Raymond Walburn) Read More

Orchids to You

Actors: John Boles, Jean Muir, Charles Butterworth, Ruthelma Stevens, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: The title may be Orchids to You, but the plot is motivated by a camellia -- to be exact, Camelia Rand (Jean Muir). About to be ejected from her thriving flower shop when a developer plans to tear down the building, Camelia confronts Thomas Bentley (John Boles), the lawyer representing the Read More

Curly Top

Actors: Shirley Temple, John Boles, Rochelle Hudson, Jane Darwell, Rafaela Ottiano

Synopsis: This adaptation of the oft-filmed Jean Webster novel Daddy Long Legs has been tailored to the talents of Shirley Temple. The orphaned daughter of vaudeville entertainers, Elizabeth Blair (Temple) is the most precocious charge at super-strict Lakeside Orphanage, regularly disrupting protocol with Read More

The Littlest Rebel

Actors: Shirley Temple, John Boles, Jack Holt, Karen Morley, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson

Synopsis: The old Edward Peble play The Littlest Rebel was gussied up in 1935 as a Shirley Temple vehicle. The curly-topped child star plays Virgie Cary, who lives in Southern-Plantation splendor with her dad Herbert (John Boles) and mom (Karen Morley). The family's idyllic existence is shattered when the Read More

Music in the Air

Actors: Gloria Swanson, John Boles, Douglass Montgomery, June Lang, Al Shean

Synopsis: The 1932 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein Broadway hit Music in the Air was brought to the screen two years later by Fox Studios. Temperamental Bavarian prima donna Frieda (Gloria Swanson) and equally volatile lyricist Bruno (John Boles) spend half their time quarrelling and the other half making Read More

Bottoms Up

Actors: Spencer Tracy, John Boles, Pat Paterson, Herbert Mundin, Sid Silvers

Synopsis: In his only musical-comedy appearance, Spencer Tracy stars as fast-buck promoter Smoothie King. Our hero's latest scam is to pass off Hollywood extra Wanda Gale (Pat Patterson) and forger Limey Brook (Herbert Mundin) as British nobility, getting both of them prestigious jobs at a movie studio. Read More

The Life of Vergie Winters

Actors: Ann Harding, John Boles, Betty Furness, Helen Vinson, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: In this tear-jerking adaptation of Louis Bromfield's novel A Good Woman, the title character stands tall in the face of small town gossip in order to stay with her already married lover who makes promises to her he does not intend to keep. Matters get complicated when Vergie gets pregnant. At the Read More

Stand up and Cheer

Actors: Warner Baxter, Madge Evans, James Dunn, John Boles

Synopsis: Based on an idea by Will Rogers, the story concerns the efforts by the President of the United States to get the public's mind off the Depression. To this end, he appoints Broadway impresario Lawrence Cromwell (Warner Baxter) to the new cabinet position of "Secretary of Amusement." Wasting no Read More

Beloved

Actors: John Boles, Gloria Stuart, Albert Conti, Dorothy Peterson, Morgan Farley

Synopsis: Apparently inspired by Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet, Beloved is a lush, lachrymose musical romance set in Vienna, South Carolina and New York City. John Boles stars as Austrian composer Carl Hausmann, whose musical career is very nearly cut short during the 1848 revolution. Carl is whisked off by Read More

Wild Gold

Actors: John Boles, Claire Trevor, Harry Green, Roger Imhof, Ruth Gillette

Synopsis: This off-beat romantic melodrama contains elements of comedy not usually found in the genre as it tells the story of the love between a show girl fleeing from her husband, a grifter. She heads to a mining company and ends up involved with a dam engineer. When a dam accidentally breaks, the Read More

The White Parade

Actors: Loretta Young, John Boles, Dorothy Wilson, Muriel Kirkland, Astrid Allwyn

Synopsis: Dedicated to "the memory of Florence Nightingale," White Parade might have been better dedicated to the cliche experts at Fox Studios who put this highly entertaining, highly predictable film together. The film chronicles the probationary period of a new team of student nurses in a midwestern Read More

The Age of Innocence

Actors: Irene Dunne, John Boles, Lionel Atwill, Laura Hope Crewes, Helen Westley

Synopsis: At his 1875 engagement party, Newland Archer (John Boles) is surprised to meet his childhood friend Ellen (Irene Dunne), now Countess Olenska; she's the cousin of his fiancee May (Julie Haydon). The strait-laced society of the time regards her as somewhat scandalous, but she's treated well by Read More

I Believe in You

Actors: Rosemary Ames, Victor Jory, John Boles, Gertrude Michael, George Meeker

Synopsis: In this tepid melodrama, an aspiring writer and her boyfriend, a professional agitator head off to the Big Apple in search of good fortune. Unfortunately, the agitator soon finds himself in trouble with the cops. Meanwhile the writer attempts to become a Greenwich Village Bohemian type. She and Read More

Only Yesterday

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, John Boles, Edna May Oliver, Billie Burke, Jimmy Butler, Benita Hume, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: Distantly related to Frederick Lewis Allen's non-fiction book of the same name, Only Yesterday uses fictional characters to trace the years between 1917 and 1929. Wealthy New Yorker John Boles recalls a long-ago affair with southern belle Margaret Sullavan. She gave birth to his child without ever Read More

My Lips Betray

Actors: Lilian Harvey, John Boles, El Brendel, Irene Browne, Maude Eburne

Synopsis: The Hollywood debut of German star Lillian Harvey, this film operetta was held back in favor of Harvey's second outing, My Weakness (1933), which, despite its title, was considered a stronger effort. In My Lips Betray, the erstwhile star of Congress Dances plays Lili, a café singer mistakenly Read More

Child of Manhattan

Actors: Buck Jones, Nancy Carroll, John Boles, Warburton Gamble, Clara Blandick, Jane Darwell

Synopsis: On the outs at Paramount, musical comedy star Nancy Carroll was "punished" by being sent to Columbia for the lachrymose Child of Manhattan. Carroll plays a dance-hall girl who falls hard for wealthy John Boles. Marriage is out of the question until she becomes pregnant. After losing her baby, Carroll Read More

Back Street

Actors: Irene Dunne, John Boles, June Clyde, George Meeker, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: Based on a best-selling novel by Fannie Hurst, Back Street concerns an ill-starred couple, Rae (Irene Dunne) and Walter (John Boles). Rae meets Walter and falls hopelessly in love with him; Walter is also drawn to Rae, but he has already pledged to marry another woman and can't find a way out. Read More

Careless Lady

Actors: Joan Bennett, John Boles, Minna Gombell, Weldon Heyburn, Nora Lane

Synopsis: In this romance, a homely country girl makes herself over into a gorgeous New York Fashion model. Suddenly men flock to her and one night she is in a speakeasy when she meets a suave, handsome and rich fellow. The cops raid the place and after she gets out of the hoosegow, the woman goes to Paris Read More

Six Hours to Live

Actors: Warner Baxter, John Boles, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: In this off-beat sci-fi film, an outspoken diplomat is murdered during an international trade conference. This is a terrible blow for his native country because the ambassador had come to stop his country from signing a treaty that would allow their enemy to exploit them. To prevent this from Read More

Resurrection

Actors: John Boles, Lupe Velez, Nance O'Neil, William Keighley, Rose Tapley

Synopsis: Three years before Sam Goldwyn's overpublicized Anna Sten vehicle We Live Again, Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection was filmed under its original title by Universal (it had previously been filmed no fewer than times, most recently with Dolores Del Rio and Rod LaRocque in 1926). Set in 19th-century Russia Read More

Good Sport

Synopsis: High-class call girls provide the focus of this intelligent romantic comedy that takes a rather scathing look at the down-side of blazing passion. The trouble begins when a young wife learns that her husband has been fooling around with the ladies of the evening on the side. As she investigates Read More

Seed

Actors: John Boles, Genevieve Tobin, Lois Wilson, Raymond Hackett, Bette Davis

Synopsis: In this three-hanky melodrama, an aspiring writer abandons his wife and five children to work more closely with a beautiful woman who works for a prominent publishing company. Ten years pass and the writer has become extremely popular despite the fact that his work is consistently trashed by Read More

One Heavenly Night

Actors: Evelyn Laye, John Boles, Leon Errol, Lilyan Tashman, Hugh Cameron

Synopsis: Samuel Goldwyn attempted to turn British operetta star Evelyn Laye into another Jeanette MacDonald with this cardboard romance that proved a disaster at the operetta-weary box office. Laye plays Lilli, a demure flower girl at a Budapest theater who worships the show's star, the temperamental and Read More

Frankenstein

Actors: Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan

Synopsis: Still regarded as the definitive film version of Mary Shelley's classic tale of tragedy and horror, Frankenstein made unknown character actor Boris Karloff a star and created a new icon of terror. Along with the highly successful Dracula, released earlier the same year, it launched Universal Read More

Song of the West

Actors: John Boles, Vivienne Segal, Marie Wells, Joe E. Brown, Sam Hardy

Synopsis: Based upon an ambitious but unsuccessful stage operetta by Oscar Hammerstein and Vincent Youmans, Song of the West is set in the middle 1800s during the great western Gold Rush. At a fort in Kansas, Lt. Singleton is in love with Virginia, daughter of the fort's Colonel. Singleton encounters Capt. Read More

King of Jazz

Actors: Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Laura La Plante, Jeanette Loff

Synopsis: Intended as Universal Pictures' entry in the "all-star musical" cycle of the early talkie era, King of Jazz is certainly the most elaborate of the bunch, though far from the most successful financially. Staged by Broadway impresario John Murray Anderson, the film is held together by the Read More

Captain of the Guard

Actors: John Boles, Sam de Grasse, James Marcus, Harry Cording

Synopsis: This French epic chronicles the French Revolution as seen by Rouget de Lisle, the man who composed the French national anthem. In addition to many scenes of angry peasants, the film also feature's many songs by Lisle. The film makes no claim for historical accuracy. Songs include: "Song of the Read More

The Desert Song

Actors: John Boles, Louise Fazenda, Johnny Arthur, Edward Martindel

Synopsis: After literally inventing the movie musical with The Jazz Singer, Warner Bros. purchased the motion picture rights to the evergreen Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II 2nd operetta The Desert Song. Although the results looked like a photographed stage play (a common failing of early-talkie Read More

Scandal

Actors: John Boles, Huntly Gordon, Jane Winton, Nancy Dover

Synopsis: In this early sound drama, an ex-socialite is forced to get a job after hard times cause her to lose her fortune. In her new job she runs into many of her old pals, including her ex-boyfriend who is currently married. Later his wife is murdered and he begins to woo the girl. Though she secretly Read More

The Last Warning

Actors: Laura La Plante, Montagu Love, Mack Swain, Roy D'Arcy, Tom O'Brien

Synopsis: In this mystery, a producer reopens a theater where five years before, a lead actor was killed on stage during a performance. The murder remained unsolved. To solve the mystery, the producer stages the same play with the same cast. As the play is performed, the same series of events occurs and the Read More

Romance of the Underworld

Actors: Mary Astor, Ben Bard, Robert Elliott, John Boles, Oscar Apfel

Synopsis: Romance of the Underworld was adapted from a barnstorming stage piece by Paul Armstrong. Forced by circumstance into a life of sin and deprivation, Judith Andrews (Mary Astor) ends up as a "hostess" in a seedy dance hall. She is rescued by her kind-hearted employer Stephen Ransome (John Boles) Read More

Rio Rita

Actors: Bebe Daniels, Sam Nelson, John Boles, Fred Burns, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Don Alvarado, Dorothy Lee

Synopsis: Rio Rita, an expensive filmization of the legendary Florenz Ziegfeld-produced Broadway musical of 1928, was the first major production for fledgling RKO Radio Studios. Bebe Daniels plays Rita, an Irish-Mexican girl (with thick Hispanic accent) who oversees a large ranch near the Mexican border. Read More

We Americans

Actors: Patsy Ruth Miller, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: We Americans was based on the Broadway play of the same name. Returning to the "melting pot" themes that he handled so well, director Edward H. Sloman concentrates on the trials and tribulations of three first-generation American families: The Jewish Levines, the German Schmidts and the Italian Read More

Man-Made Women

Actors: Leatrice Joy, H.B. Warner, Seena Owen

Synopsis: The piquant Leatrice Joy starred in this frothy marital comedy about a wife who leaves her boring husband (John Boles) to be the companion of a kept woman (Seena Owen). The latter, however, leaves in a huff when she suspects that her gentleman friend (H.B. Warner) may be paying a bit too much Read More

The Water Hole

Actors: Jack Holt, Nancy Carroll, John Boles

Synopsis: Based on Zane Grey's 1905 Collier's short story, this fine Paramount Western starred the underrated Nancy Carroll as an Eastern socialite vamping Arizona rancher Philip Randolph Jack Holt, in town to discuss business with her father (C. Montague Shaw). When the smitten young man proposes, he Read More

Fazil

Actors: Charles Farrell, Greta Nissen, Mae Busch, Vadim Uraneff, Tyler Brooke

Synopsis: Director Howard Hawks never attempted another Valentinoesque melodrama like Fazil. Beautiful Fabienne (Greta Nissen) is wooed and won by Arab sheik Fazil (Charles Farrell, who is a bit on the thin side for this role). He takes her off to his fabulous palace, where he holds her a virtual prisoner Read More

Virgin Lips

The Loves of Sunya

Shepherd of the Hills

Actors: Alec B. Francis, Molly O'Day, John Boles, Matthew Betz, Romaine Fielding

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1920, Harold Bell Wright's "backwoods" novel Shepherd of the Hills was remade in 1928. The story is motivated by a drought which threatens the well-being of every resident of an Ozark ranching community. Into this situation steps the Shepherd of the Hills (Alec B. Francis), a Read More

The Love of Sunya

Actors: Anders Randolph, Gloria Swanson, John Boles, Raymond Hackett, Robert Schable, Flobelle Fairbanks, Ivan Lebedeff

Synopsis: Also known as The Loves of Sunya, this Gloria Swanson picture is a remake of the 1919 Clara Kimball Young vehicle The Eyes of Youth (itself based on a play by Charles Guernon and Max Marcin). Unable to choose among her many suitors, heroine Swanson consults a crystal ball. Here she is given a Read More

Excuse Me

Actors: Norma Shearer, Conrad Nagel, Renée Adorée, John Boles, Bert Roach

Synopsis: Norma Shearer and Conrad Nagel star in this farce based on the successful stage play by Rupert Hughes. Lieutenant Harry Mallory (Nagel) wins a promotion for his valor and is ordered to go to the Philippines. His fiancée, Marjorie Newton (Shearer), wants to go with him so they decide to get Read More

So This Is Marriage?

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Eleanor Boardman, Warner Oland

Synopsis: This domestic comedy-drama seems to owe a lot of its spirit to filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, who made quite a few similar films. When Beth (Eleanor Boardman) marries Peter Marsh (Conrad Nagel), they find their ideas of domestic bliss are very different. Peter dreams of power and a large family Read More