Joseph CawthornFilmography

So Ends Our Night

Actors: Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan, Frances Dee, Glenn Ford, Anna Sten

Synopsis: The Nazis are clearly the villains in So Ends Our Night, but since the film was made before America's entry into World War II, Adolph Hitler goes unmentioned (we wouldn't want to lose those foreign markets, would we?) Based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Flotsam, the film zeroes in on three Read More

Scatterbrain

Actors: Judy Canova, Alan Mowbray, Ruth Donnelly, Eddie Foy, Jr., Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: This early Judy Canova vehicle was conceived along the same lines as the 1937 20th Century-Fox musical Kentucky Moonshine. A movie studio sends its talent scouts to hillbilly country, there to find a new singing star. Actually it's all a publicity stunt; the studio has planted a Hollywoodite in Read More

Lillian Russell

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

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

Brides Are Like That

Actors: Ross Alexander, Anita Louise, Joseph Cawthorn, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart

Synopsis: Ross Alexander, whom Warner Bros. was obviously grooming for big-time stardom, is cast as Bill McAllister, the ne'er-do-well nephew of wealthy apple merchant Fred Schultz (Joe Cawthorn). Cut off without a cent, Bill soon finds out who his real friends are and wins the hand of Hazel Robinson (Anita Louise Read More

Crime Over London

Actors: Joseph Cawthorn, Basil Sydney, Margot Grahame, Paul Cavanagh, Renee Ray

Synopsis: In this British gangster movie, a Chicago gang goes to cool their heels in London. There they try to overtake the town. Meanwhile the mob boss searches for the perfect job. He convinces a millionaire, the owner of a department store, to help his gang rob the store blind. The plot fails and the Read More

One Rainy Afternoon

Actors: Francis Lederer, Ida Lupino, Hugh Herbert, Roland Young, Erik Rhodes

Synopsis: A remake of the French comedy Monsieur Sans-Gene, One Rainy Afternoon gets under way when film-actor Phillippe Martin (Francis Lederer) heads to a darkened Parisian movie theater for a romantic rendezvous with his married sweetheart Yvonne (Countess Live de Margaret). But our hero sits in the Read More

Hot Money

Actors: Ross Alexander, Beverly Roberts, Joseph Cawthorn, Paul Graetz, Andrew Tombes

Synopsis: In this comedy a sneaky salesman tries to sell an inventor's newest product, a water-based fuel. Before the inventor can finish testing the product he needs cash, so the salesman desperately endeavors to come up with some by creating a phony stock promotion. When he announces that the great Read More

The Great Ziegfeld

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank Morgan, Fanny Brice

Synopsis: In MGM's three-hour-plus The Great Ziegfeld, William Powell stars as the titular theatrical impresario, whose show business empire begins when he stage-manages a tour for legendary strongman Sandow (Nat Pendleton). With nary a penny in the bank, he charms European stage star Anna Held (Luise Rainer Read More

Freshman Love

Actors: Frank McHugh, Patricia Ellis, Warren Hull, Joseph Cawthorn, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In this lively campus comedy, a stern rowing coach sets up a rigorous practice schedule for his team and insists they lead strictly disciplined lives (meaning no girls and no fun) so that they will become winners and thereby save his endangered job. Unfortunately, a seductive coed keeps leading Read More

Page Miss Glory

Actors: Marion Davies, Pat O'Brien, Dick Powell, Mary Astor, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions moved from MGM to Warners with Page Miss Glory--along with Cosmopolitan's biggest commodity, actress Marion Davies. The plotline has something to do with a composite photo prepared for a magazine contest: The combined facial attributes of Garbo, Dietrich Read More

Bright Lights

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Ann Dvorak, Patricia Ellis, William Gargan, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown's extensive circus and burlesque training serve him well in this familiar but likeable yarn. Brown and Ann Dvorak stars as small-time vaudevillians Joe and Fay Wilson, presently employed by a seedy burlesque troupe. Also on tour with the Wilsons is society girl Peggy (Patricia Ellis) Read More

Smart Girl

Actors: Ida Lupino, Kent Taylor, Gail Patrick, Joseph Cawthorn, Pinky Tomlin

Synopsis: Socialite Pat Reynolds (Ida Lupino) is forced to become the "smart girl" of the title when her wealthy father commits suicide, leaving nothing but a pile of debts. Pat sets up a successful hat-designing business, providing the sole support for herself and her sister Kay (Gail Patrick). So devoted Read More

Harmony Lane

Actors: Douglass Montgomery, Evelyn Venable, Adrienne Ames, Joseph Cawthorn, William Frawley

Synopsis: Produced on a reasonably lavish scale by the usually parsimonious Mascot Pictures, Harmony Lane was the first of three filmed biographies of 19th-century songwriter Stephen Foster (the others were Fox's Swanee River [1939] and 1952's I Dream of Jeannie, produced by Mascot's successor, Republic Read More

Naughty Marietta

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester, Douglas Dumbrille

Synopsis: The first of MGM's phenomenally profitable Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy musicals, Naughty Marietta takes several beneficial liberties with the libretto of the original Victor Herbert operetta. MacDonald plays an 18th-century French princess who escapes an arranged marriage by posing as a "cake Read More

Maybe It's Love

Actors: Gloria Stuart, Ross Alexander, Frank McHugh, Helen Lowell, Phillip Reed

Gold Diggers of 1935

Actors: Dick Powell, Gloria Stuart, Adolphe Menjou, Glenda Farrell, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: With little plot but incredible photography and choreography, Gold Diggers of 1935 was exactly what you would expect a Busby Berkeley movie to be--visually stimulating, awe-inspiring and almost Freudian in its obsession toward perfection. The Titanic scale of Berkeleian choreography was especially Read More

Sweet Music

Actors: Rudy Vallee, Ann Dvorak, Ned Sparks, Helen Morgan, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: Rudy Vallee made his third feature-film starring appearance in the breezy Warner Bros. musical Sweet Music. Vallee is appropriately cast as singer-bandleader Skip Houston, who falls in love with aspiring dancer Bonnie Haydon (Ann Dvorak). Though Bonnie feels the same way about Skip, the two leads Read More

Sweet Adeline

Actors: Irene Dunne, Donald Woods, Hugh Herbert, Ned Sparks, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: The 1929 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein Broadway musical Sweet Adeline has generally been credited as the vanguard for the "Gay 90s" nostalgia fad of the early 1930s. By the time the film was adapted to the screen in 1935, that fad had pretty much played itself out, making the property seem more Read More

The Last Gentleman

Actors: George Arliss, Edna May Oliver, Janet Beecher, Charlotte Henry, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: Dying New England millionaire Cabot Barr (George Arliss) doesn't trust any of his relatives as they flock to his bedside, and not without justification. Barr realizes that there's a few roses among the thorns, notably his good-hearted granddaughter (Charlotte Henry) and his likeable adopted nephew Read More

Lazy River

Actors: Jean Parker, Robert Young, Ted Healy, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: Based on Lea David Freeman's play Ruby, Lazy River takes place somewhere in the Mississippi River Valley. Jean Parker plays Sarah, a young Bayou girl who tries to guide three ex-convicts to moral redemption. Two of Sarah's charges, Gabby (Ted Healy) and Tiny (Nat Pendleton), seem to be beyond Read More

Young and Beautiful

Actors: William Haines, Judith Allen, Joseph Cawthorn, John Miljan

Synopsis: Produced by small-scale Mascot Pictures, this behind-the-scenes look at a now forgotten annual Hollywood event, the WAMPAS Baby Star selection, starred former MGM light leading man William Haines in his penultimate film role. Well cast as Bob Preston, the brash publicity director of Superba Read More

A Very Honorable Guy

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Alice White, Robert H. Barrat, Alan Dinehart, Irene Franklin

Synopsis: A Very Honorable Guy is an interesting if not terribly funny change of pace for comedy star Joe E. Brown. This Damon Runyon adaptation casts Brown as Feet Samuels, a compulsive gambler known for his determination to keep his word at all costs. To pay off his mounting debts, Feet sells his body to Read More

Twenty Million Sweethearts

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Allen Jenkins, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: A satire on radio crooners, Twenty Million Sweethearts stars Dick Powell as a singing waiter--fake handlebar mustache and all. Publicity man Pat O'Brien discovers Powell and gets him a radio gig, leading to nationwide adulation for the nonplused tenor. All of this jeopardizes Powell's happy 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

Housewife

Actors: George Brent, Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak, John Halliday, Ruth Donnelly

Synopsis: A pre-stardom Bette Davis struggles mightily as the "other woman" in this rather obvious divorce court drama from Warner Bros. George Brent stars as William Reynolds, a hardworking but markedly unmotivated office manager whose wife, Nan (Ann Dvorak), manages to make ends meet with the little she's Read More

The Cat and the Fiddle

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Based on the stage musical by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach, The Cat and the Fiddle stars Jeanette MacDonald as a music student and Ramon Novarro as a struggling composer. When the leading lady walks out of Victor's (Novarro) upcoming operetta, the star's husband pulls his financial support. The Read More

Glamour

Actors: Paul Lukas, Constance Cummings, Phillip Reed, Joseph Cawthorn, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: Another of director William Wyler's "apprenticeship" films, Glamour is based on a story by Edna Ferber. The original story covered 24 hours in the life of actress Linda Fayne (Constance Cummings), who is so busy with her career that there's no time left over for her baby. This plotline was used as Read More

The Human Side

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Doris Kenyon, Charlotte Henry, Joseph Cawthorn, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: The Human Side was adapted by Frank Craven and Ernest Pascal from a play by Christine Ames. Long married and the parents of four children, Gregory and Vera Sheldon break up when Gregory begins keeping time with seductive Alma Hastings (played by Betty Lawford, Peter's mom). Despite the subsequent Read More

Broken Dreams

Actors: Randolph Scott, Martha Sleeper, Joseph Cawthorn, Beryl Mercer, Buster Phelps

Synopsis: In this melodrama a father rejects his son after his wife dies in childbirth. As a result, the boy is sent to live with his relatives. Six years later, the father reconsiders and tries to regain custody of his son. A custody battle ensues with the father emerging victorious. But the victory is Read More

Best of Enemies

Actors: Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Marian Nixon, Frank Morgan, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: Rian James was the last of three directors assigned to The Best of Enemies; this sort of unnecessary expenditure was one of the reasons that the Fox Studios was always on the brink of bankruptcy. The plot is basic Hatfield/McCoy stuff, with Buddy Rogers and Marian Nixon playing the grown children Read More

Blondie Johnson

Actors: Joan Blondell, Chester Morris, Allen Jenkins, Claire Dodd, Earl Foxe, Mae Busch

Synopsis: Set during the Depression, this crime drama centers upon a basically honest girl who is forced into prostitution by circumstance. She then becomes a gangster's moll where she learns a bitter lesson about the criminal life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Whistling in the Dark

Actors: Ernest Truex, Una Merkel, Edward Arnold, John Miljan

Synopsis: In this crime-comedy, an aspiring pulp writer elopes with a young woman and ends up in a boot-legger's lair. There he decides to impress his bride and the crooks with a story about the perfect murder. The crime boss likes the idea and uses it to plot the demise of his arch rival. When the would-be Read More

Made on Broadway

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Sally Eilers, Madge Evans, Eugene Pallette, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Heroine Mona (Sally Eilers) is "made" in more ways than one in this free-wheeling spoof of the press-agent business. A would-be suicide, Mona is rescued by public-relations whiz Jeff (Robert Montgomery), who decides to turn the girl into a celebrity -- and line his own pockets in the process. But Read More

Men Are Such Fools

Actors: Vivienne Osborne, Una Merkel, Joseph Cawthorn, Tom Moore

Synopsis: An immigrant and his wife arrive in America hoping to make it big in the world of music. Shortly thereafter, though, the husband finds out his wife is having an affair with a local lowlife; when he turns up dead, the husband is jailed for his murder, even though he protests his innocence. ~ Brian Read More

Grand Slam

Actors: Paul Lukas, Loretta Young, Frank McHugh, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Paul Lukas plays a nightclub headwaiter who rises to fame as a bridge expert. He marries hat check girl Loretta Young, likewise a card fanatic. Lukas and Young find themselves vying for the national bridge championship, which results in the expected frictions. All is forgiven in the climactic Read More

They Call It Sin

Actors: Loretta Young, George Brent, David Manners, Louis Calhern, Una Merkel

Synopsis: Though only 19, Loretta Young was an established Hollywood star in 1932, appearing in six films in that year alone. In They Call It Sin, Young plays Marion, a church organist in a picturesque Kansas village. She falls in love with visiting city slicker Jimmy (David Manners) -- who, worse luck, is Read More

Love Me Tonight

Actors: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charlie Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, Myrna Loy

Synopsis: One of the most technically accomplished and sophisticated movie musicals of the 1930's, Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight (1932) had a profound effect on the shape of the musical genre (especially the films of Vincente Minnelli), and remains a candidate for best movie musical ever made, some Read More

White Zombie

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert W. Frazer, John Harron

Synopsis: It is altogether typical of Bela Lugosi's lousy business judgement that he accepted one of his finest film roles for a mere $500 dollars. In the haunting low-budgeter White Zombie, Lugosi stars as Murder Legendre, a shadowy character who exercises supernatural powers over the natives in his Read More

Peach O' Reno

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Dorothy Lee, Joseph Cawthorn, Cora Witherspoon

Synopsis: One of the best of the pre-Production Code Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey vehicles, Peach O' Reno remains as hilariously ribald today as it was nearly 70 years ago. Wheeler and Woolsey play Wattles and Swift, a pair of Reno divorce attorneys whose practice is so successful that their clients have Read More

A Tailor Made Man

Actors: William Haines, Dorothy Jordan, Joseph Cawthorn, Marjorie Rambeau, William Austin

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1922, the 1917 stage farce The Impostor was reheated in 1931 as the William Haines vehicle A Tailor Made Man. Essaying his usual brash wisecracker, Haines plays John Paul Bart, a pants-presser who tries to crash High Society by borrowing the dress suit owned by millionaire Read More

Kiki

Actors: Mary Pickford, Reginald Denny, Joseph Cawthorn, Margaret Livingston, Phil Tead

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1926 with Norma Talmadge, the creaky David Belasco stage piece Kiki served as a curious talkie vehicle for "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford. The star plays the title character, a jazz-age Parisian chorus girl (complete with a molasses-thick French accent). When theatrical Read More

The Runaround

Actors: Geoffrey Kerr, Mary Brian, Johnny Hines, Marie Prevost, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: Filmed in an early Technicolor process, The Runaround tells the story of Broadway dancer Mary Brian, who refuses to play the gold-digging games indulged in by her fellow chorines. Though she's sorely tempted to accept a $1000 bracelet from an elderly admirer, Brian turns down the gift when she Read More

The Princess and the Plumber

Actors: Charles Farrell, Maureen O'Sullivan

Synopsis: In this comedy, a plumbing magnate's son, who has started on the bottom rung of his father's business, is hired to fix the pipes in an old European castle. The castle is being let by a destitute prince and his daughter. In order to restore his fortune and prestige, the prince wants her daughter to Read More

Dixiana

Actors: Bebe Daniels, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: Hoping to repeat the success of its 1929 musical spectacular Rio Rita, RKO Radio reteamed leading lady Bebe Daniels and the comedy team of Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey for the equally lavish Dixiana. Set in antebellum Louisiana, the film casts Daniels as the title character, a lovely and charming Read More

The Taming of the Shrew

Actors: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Edwin Maxwell, Joseph Cawthorn, Clyde Cook

Synopsis: As the silent era drew to a close (along with their marriage), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks made this early talkie, appearing in their first film together as William Shakespeare's rambunctious couple Katherine and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. In this pared down, slapstick version Read More

Dance Hall

Actors: Olive Borden, Arthur Lake, Margaret Seddon, Ralph Emerson, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: Taxi dancing provides the framework for this romantic drama that chronicles the attempted love affair between a shipping clerk and a taxi dancer. Try as he might, he cannot distract the lovely dancer from her fixation upon a dashing aviator. The pilot seems to return her affection. The shipping Read More

Jazz Heaven

Actors: Johnny Mack Brown, Clyde Cook, Blanche Frederici, Sally O'Neil, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: In this drama, an impoverished songwriter from the South travels to Tin Pan Alley with his trusty piano. He stays at a boarding house where he falls in love with a pretty young woman. When the two are discovered trysting in the same room, the landlady tosses them out on their ears. To help pay for Read More

Speakeasy

Actors: Paul Page, Lola Lane, Henry B. Walthall, Helen Ware, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: Much of this drama is comprised of newsreel footage. It chronicles the exploits of a luckless college prize-fighter attempting to go professional. Unfortunately he is exploited by his dishonest manager. The innocent pugilist is eventually befriended and assisted by a pretty reporter who helps free Read More

Street Girl

Actors: John Harron, Ned Sparks, Jack Oakie, Guy Buccola, Betty Compson, Ivan Lebedeff

Synopsis: The first official release from RKO Productions (previous films from this company had been produced by RKO antecedent FBO Pictures), Street Girl afforded Betty Compson to exhibit her considerable skills as a violinist. Compson is cast as Frederika "Freddy" Joyzelle, manager and principal Read More

Hold 'Em Yale

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Jeanette Loff, Joseph Cawthorn, Tom Kennedy, Jerry Mandy

Synopsis: Rod La Rocque stars in this silent farce about an Argentinean playboy, who in spite of being trailed by a bumbling detective (Tom Kennedy) for a crime he didn't commit, manages to not only secure victory in the annual football game against Princeton, but also win the daughter (Jeanette Loff) of Read More

Hold'em Yale

Silk Legs

Actors: Madge Bellamy, James Hall, Joseph Cawthorn, Maude Fulton, Margaret Seddon

Synopsis: The "silk legs" of the title belong to star Madge Bellamy, and a fine pair of extremities they are indeed. The story focuses on the rivalry between two travelling lingerie salespersons, Ruth Stevens (Madge Bellamy) and Phil Barker (James Hall). Phil has the slicker sales approach, but Ruth has the Read More

Very Confidential

Actors: Joseph Cawthorn, Mary Duncan, Marjorie Beebe

Synopsis: Madge Bellamy stars as a humble sales clerk, forced by circumstance to pose as a famous female athlete. In this guise, she is wooed by wealthy Pat Cunning, who makes it clear that he's crazy about "outdoor" girls. So as not to lose Cunning, Bellamy endures a rigorous weekend of jogging, hiking Read More

Two Girls Wanted

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Glenn Tryon, Ben Bard, Marie Mosquini, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: A stage play by Gladys Ungar was the source for Fox's Two Girls Wanted. In her first above-the-title starring role, Janet Gaynor is cast as Marianna Miller, who together with her sister Sarah (Marie Mosquini) pounds the pavements, looking for a job. After a period of starvation and deprivation Read More

Secret Studio

Actors: Olive Borden, Clifford Holland, Ben Bard, Kate Bruce

Synopsis: The "secret studio" is squirreled away somewhere in the artist's colony in Greenwich Village. It is kept a secret so that curious rubberneckers won't try to get a glimpse of the female nude models. Small-town girl Rosemary Marton (Olive Borden) agrees to pose for one of the studio's artists, but Read More