Lester Dorr Filmography

At Long Last Love

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Duilio del Prete, Eileen Brennan

Synopsis: Peter Bogdanovich's attempt to direct a homage to the great musicals of the 1930s is now remembered as one of the embarrassments of the 1970s. The film's thin plot, standard for the genre, centers on the romantic entanglements and misunderstandings among six stock characters: the bored playboy (Burt Reynolds Read More

Hotel

Actors: Rod Taylor, Catherine Spaak, Karl Malden, Melvyn Douglas, Merle Oberon

Synopsis: The posh St. Gregory Hotel in New Orleans is the setting for this drama based on a popular novel by Arthur Hailey. Trent (Melvyn Douglas) is the long-time owner who realizes that the hotel is in dire financial straits. Trent calls on faithful manager Peter McDermott (Rod Taylor) to try and bring Read More

Green Acres: I Didn't Raise My Pig to Be a Soldier

Synopsis: The focus in this classic Green Acres episode is on that porcine superstar, Arnold the Pig. The complications begin piling up as Oliver (Eddie Albert) and Lisa (Eva Gabor) agree to take care of Arnold while his owners, the Ziffels, are on their second honeymoon. But the fun really gets underway Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Telltale Tap

Synopsis: Accused by Vera Wynne (Jeanne Bal) of embezzling $200,000 from the So-Cal Investment Company, executive Clyde Darrell (Linden Chiles) hires Paul Drake (William Hopper) to expose the real crook, who is also suspected of leaking secret trading informaton to the firm's rival. Paul is able to identify Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Arrogant Arsonist

Synopsis: Ex-fire chief Carey York (Tom Tully) hires Perry (Raymond Burr) to sue TV repoter Tommy Towne (Frank Aletter) for slander, after Towne claims on the air that York burned down his own warehouse for the insurance money. To avoid ponying up $1.5 million, Towne issues a "retraction"--still insisting Read More

Vice Raid

Actors: Mamie van Doren, Richard Coogan, Brad Dexter, Frank Gerstle, Barry Atwater

Synopsis: A low-budget, tawdry police yarn with the world of prostitution and gangsters thrown in, Vice Raid features Mamie Van Doren as Carol Hudson, a Motor City hooker. The bosses of the prostitution racket have Hudson go to New York City to entrap a police officer and get him thrown off the force. She Read More

Arson for Hire

Actors: Steve Brodie, Lyn Thomas, Frank Scannell, Anthony Carbone, John Merrick

Synopsis: Feeble in the action department, this drama directed by Thor Brooks fizzles before the arsonist gets his due. John (Steve Brodie) is the leader of an arson squad and he does not realize that it is one of his men who is setting the disastrous fires around town. The duplicitous and secretly criminal Read More

Marjorie Morningstar

Actors: Gene Kelly, Natalie Wood, Claire Trevor, Everett Sloane, Martin Milner

Synopsis: Marjorie Morgenstern (Natalie Wood) is an 18-year-old, middle-class, Jewish girl from New York who wants nothing more than to be an actress, despite the hopes and wishes of her parents (Everett Sloane and Claire Trevor) that she graduate from college, marry, and settle down to have a family. At Read More

Hot Rod Gang

Actors: John Ashley, Jody Fair, Gene Vincent, Steve Drexel, Henry McCann

Synopsis: In this youthful drama, a young nephew is forced to live a highly restricted lifestyle by his two spinster aunts who will only bequeath him their fortune if he behaves like a proper gentleman. His aunts would have apoplexy if they new that their "perfect gentleman" had created a hot-rod club Read More

The First Traveling Saleslady

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Barry Nelson, Carol Channing, David Brian, James Arness, Clint Eastwood

Synopsis: Ginger Rogers ended her 23-year association with RKO Radio with the indifferent musical comedy western The First Travelling Saleslady. Ginger and Broadway favorite Carol Channing (whose only starring film this was) play a pair of corset salespersons who head westward in 1897 to hawk their wares. Read More

The Girl Rush

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Fernando Lamas, Eddie Albert, Gloria de Haven, Marion Lorne

Synopsis: In this comedy sequel to Wonderful Town (a popular Broadway musical), Kim, a museum worker from Providence, Rhode Island, inherits half ownership of a Las Vegas hotel when her father dies. She and her Aunt Clara go there to learn more about it. Unfortunately, just before they arrive, the other Read More

Killers From Space

Actors: Peter Graves, James Seay, Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton, Barbara Bestar

Synopsis: The Killers from Space in this low-budget sci-fier are a group of aliens bent on conquering the earth. To this end, they overtake the mind and body of atomic scientist Peter Graves, using the poor man as a combination spy and saboteur. When Graves realizes this, he tries to warn mankind, but no Read More

Superman Flies Again

Actors: George Reeves

Three Ring Circus

Actors: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Joanne Dru, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elsa Lanchester, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: According to some eyewitness reports, the feud between Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was at its peak during the filming of Three Ring Circus. Other observers have noted that the boys behaved with thorough professionalism throughout the shoot. Whatever the case, the film offers a comparatively Read More

The Adventures of Superman: The Dog Who Knew Superman

Synopsis: Superman (George Reeves) rescues Corky, a sweet, playful dog, from the well into which he's fallen, and returns the dog to his owner, Joyce (Dona Drake). He later discovers that the dog has bonded with him and is seeking him out -- the problem is that Corky recognizes him in his Clark Kent guise Read More

Somebody Loves Me

Actors: Betty Hutton, Ralph Meeker, Robert Keith, Adele Jergens, Billie Bird

Synopsis: Written and directed by Irving Brecher, best known for his weekly TV series Life of Riley and The People's Choice, Somebody Loves Me is the highly fictionalized life story of vaudeville and Broadway star Blossom Seeley (Betty Hutton) and her husband-partner Benny Fields (Ralph Meeker). Read More

The Adventures of Superman: The Mind Machine

Synopsis: A congressional witness against crime boss Lou Cranek (Dan Seymour) suddenly refuses to testify--then abruptly drops dead. The reason? The unfortunate witness has fallen victim to a deadly mind-controlling machine, created for the "good of mankind" by kindly Dr. Stanton (Griff Barnett), but used Read More

The Greatest Show on Earth

Actors: Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is a lavish tribute to circuses, featuring three intertwining plotlines concerning romance and rivalry beneath the big top. DeMille's film includes spectacular action sequences, including a show-stopping train wreck. The Greatest Show on Earth won Read More

Two Tickets to Broadway

Actors: Tony Martin, Janet Leigh, Gloria de Haven, Eddie Bracken, Ann Miller

Synopsis: Personally supervised by Howard R. Hughes, the RKO Technicolor musical Two Tickets to Broadway stars Janet Leigh as a small-town girl who hopes to make it big in the Big Apple. Moving into a Manhattan boarding house populated by such showbiz hopefuls as Ann Miller, Tony Martin, Gloria De Haven and Barbara Lawrence Read More

Flying Disc Man from Mars [Serial]

Synopsis: A virtual remake of the earlier The Purple Monster Strikes (1945) and containing an overabundance of stock footage from that serial and G-Men vs. the Black Dragon (1943), this 12 chapter science fiction serial from Republic Pictures featured former RKO contract player Walter Reed as owner of an Read More

Follow the Sun

Actors: Glenn Ford, Anne Baxter, Dennis O'Keefe, June Havoc, Larry Keating

Synopsis: Follow the Sun is the filmed biography of golf champion Ben Hogan. Glenn Ford, no mean duffer himself, stars as Hogan, here depicted as a single-purposed individual to whom golf is everything. Anne Baxter co-stars as Hogan's supportive wife Valerie, who sticks with him through thick and thin. On Read More

Ace in the Hole

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady

Synopsis: Billy Winder directed and co-wrote this bitterly satiric comedy-drama which turns a jaundiced eye towards both the news media and its consumers. Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a talented but short-tempered reporter whose fondness for booze and unwillingness to bow to authority has cost him jobs at Read More

The Strip

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Sally Forrest, William Demarest, James Craig, Kay Brown

Synopsis: Mickey Rooney returned to his "home" studio MGM, after a three-year absence, in the location-filmed melodrama The Strip. Rooney is cast as Stanley Maxton, an aspiring drummer who has the misfortune to fall within the orbit of bookie Sunny Johnson (James Craig). Out of the goodness of his heart Read More

The Great Rupert

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Terry Moore, Tom Drake, Frank Orth, Sara Haden

Synopsis: Jimmy Durante plays the patriarch of a down-on-their-luck family of acrobats, who suddenly finds a great deal of money hidden in his house amid the depths of the Great Depression. The authorities suspect Durante of being a thief, but in fact the culprit is a benevolent little squirrel named Read More

Quicksand

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Barbara Bates, Peter Lorre, Taylor Holmes

Synopsis: Mickey Rooney, with his kid roles and musicals behind him, went for a major change of image in this harrowing film noir. He gives what many consider to be the best performance of his career as Danny Brady, a well-meaning grease monkey whose life is destroyed in less than a week. Danny finds Read More

Covered Wagon Raid

Actors: Allan Lane, Eddy Waller, Alex Gerry, Lyn Thomas

Synopsis: Covered Wagon Raid stars Allan "Rocky" Lane as a frontier insurance investigator named...Allan "Rocky" Lane. The story concerns a gang of hijackers who've been bushwhacking and murdering wagon train passengers. Someone has been tipping the gang off as to the locations and routes of the wagon Read More

The Blonde Bandit

Actors: Dorothy Patrick, Gerald Mohr, Robert Rockwell, Larry Blake, Charles Cane

Synopsis: Dorothy Patrick is The Blonde Bandit in this Republic time-filler. The script establishes a degree of sympathy for Gloria Dell (Patrick) by depicting her as more sinned against the sinning. Involved in a holdup masterminded by bookie Joe Sapelli (Gerald Mohr), Gloria is given a chance for Read More

Where Danger Lives

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, Claude Rains, Maureen O'Sullivan, Charles Kemper

Synopsis: Faith Domergue, the latest of Howard Hughes' protegees, made her film debut in 1950's Where Danger Lives. Domergue plays Margo Lannington the wife of Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains), an elderly millionaire possessed of a sadistic streak. Robert Mitchum co-stars as Jeff Cameron, a poor soul who Read More

Night Riders of Montana

Actors: Allan Lane, Chubby Johnson, Roy Barcroft, Claudia Barrett

Synopsis: A state rangers rides out to find rustlers who have stolen from every ranch in the territory except a hot-headed loner, whom all the other ranchers think is the culprit. However, the ranger investigates, and finds that the blacksmith and his accomplice are guilty. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide Read More

Red, Hot and Blue

Actors: Betty Hutton, Victor Mature, William Demarest, June Havoc, Jane Nigh

Synopsis: Taken (as far as possible) from the Cole Porter musical comedy of the same name, Red, Hot and Blue stars Betty Hutton as an ambitious chorus girl. Hutton gets a job with a musical comedy bankrolled by gangsters, and is the wrong girl at the wrong place when one of the show's backers (William Talman Read More

Tell It to the Judge

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Robert Cummings, Gig Young, Marie McDonald, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: Though divorced from attorney Robert Cummings, Rosalind Russell continues hoping that she can arrange a reconciliation. This proves difficult due to Cummings' fascination with curvaceous Marie McDonald. Contriving to arouse Cumming's jealousy, Russell pretends to be married to feckless Gig Young. Read More

Without Honor

Actors: Laraine Day, Dane Clark, Franchot Tone, Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett

Synopsis: Also known as Twilight, Without Honor is a tour de force for leading-lady Laraine Day. During a quarrel with her lover Dennis Williams (Franchot Tone), Mrs. Jane Bandle (Day) attacks him with an ice pick. Believing she has killed Williams, she hurriedly hides the body in her laundry room when her Read More

Roseanna McCoy

Actors: Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Charles Bickford, Raymond Massey, Richard Basehart

Synopsis: The saga of the Hatfield-and-McCoy feud is romanticized in Samuel Goldwyn's Roseanna McCoy. Newcomer Joan Evans stars as the title character, whose elopement with Johnse Hatfield (Farley Granger) serves to further fuel the flames of the deadly mountain feud. The opposing patriarches, Devil Anse Read More

On the Town

Actors: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin

Synopsis: Three sailors on a 24-hour pass -- Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) -- decide to soak up the sights and sounds of New York. Each one finds romance within those 24 hours: Gabey with aspiring dancer Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Chip with lady cabbie Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett 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

Joan of Arc

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Selena Royle, José Ferrer, Ward Bond, Robert H. Barrat, Francis L. Sullivan, Jimmy Lydon, Rand Brooks, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: Director Victor Fleming's final film features Ingrid Bergman as a vivid and luminous Joan of Arc, the 15th-century French peasant girl who led the French in battle against the invading English, becoming a national hero. When she was captured, tortured, and ultimately executed by the English, she Read More

Silver River

Actors: Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Thomas Mitchell, Bruce Bennett, Tom D'Andrea

Synopsis: Love leads a man to his most evil deeds and forces him to change his ways in this Western. After being handed a dishonorable discharge during the Civil War, Mike McComb (Errol Flynn) becomes a professional gambler and follows a path of ruthless action to get what he wants. After moving out West Read More

The Big Clock

Actors: Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, Elsa Lanchester, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: John Farrow's movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer (and produced by future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum), is a near-perfect match for the book, telling in generally superb visual style a tale set against the backdrop of upscale Read More

The Circle

Actors: David Alexander, Sam Bernard, Peter Brocco, Rudolph Cameron, Robert Cherry

Synopsis: The positive public response to such productions as Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement led to a mini-cycle of postwar anti-prejudice films. One of these was The Vicious Circle, based on a true incident which had previously been dramatized in G. W. Pabst's The Trial. In the late-19th century, an Read More

The Countess of Monte Cristo

Actors: Sonja Henie, Olga San Juan, Arthur Treacher, Hugh French

Synopsis: This musical tells the tales of two movie extras who abscond to an expensive resort with their costumes and pretend to be aristocrats. Included in the film are ice skating numbers and songs. Songs include: "The Friendly Polka," "Count Your Blessings," and "Who Believes in Santa Claus." ~ Sandra Read More

On an Island with You

Actors: Esther Williams, Peter Lawford, Ricardo Montalban, Jimmy Durante, Cyd Charisse

Synopsis: The title of this MGM musical alone should tip you to the fact that Esther Williams is the star. In this one, she plays a movie star (what an innovation!), Rosalind Reynolds, who is on location in Hawaii to shoot a picture. Peter Lawford plays the film's naval technical advisor, Lt. Lawrence Y. Read More

Blaze of Noon

Actors: Anne Baxter, William Holden, Sonny Tufts, William Bendix, Sterling Hayden

Synopsis: In this aerial melodrama, four brothers working as stunt pilots for a flying circus leave their jobs to become mail pilots. Because their job requires that they constantly travel, they are advised to not settle down with wives and kids. Still, one pilot falls in love and marries. Unfortunately Read More

Robin Hood of Texas

Actors: Stanley Andrews, Gene Autry, Michael Branden, Al Bridge, Paul Bryar

Synopsis: A dude ranch, unemployed cowhands, modern-day bank robbers, and music are the main ingredients in this, Gene Autry's swan song for Republic Pictures, lovingly restored by UCLA and Gene Autry Entertainment in 2001. Swindled out of their savings, Gene and the Cass County Boys mistakenly get mixed up Read More

Pursued

Actors: Teresa Wright, Robert Mitchum, Judith Anderson, Dean Jagger, Harry Carey, Jr., Alan Hale

Synopsis: Chased by a posse to a remote cabin, Jeb (Robert Mitchum) is joined by his fearful wife Thorley (Teresa Wright), awaiting the arrival of the men tracking them, as they try to reason out what has gone wrong in their lives. Jeb can't remember anything about his early childhood except for a horrible Read More

Cass Timberlane

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Zachary Scott, Tom Drake, Mary Astor

Synopsis: A visibly uneasy Spencer Tracy plays the title role in this lavish MGM screen version of Sinclair Lewis' 1945 magazine serial. A small-town bachelor judge, Cass Timberlane, takes a personal interest in beautiful stenographer Jinny Marshland (Lana Turner), who appears one day as a witness in his Read More

The Shadow Returns

Actors: Kane Richmond, Tom Dugan, Joseph Crehan, Pierre Watkin

Synopsis: The Shadow Returns was the first of three above-average Monogram features based on the popular radio melodrama The Shadow. Kane Richmond stars as wealthy man-about-town Lamont Cranston, who years ago in the Orient had learned the hypnotic power to "cloud men's minds," thereby transforming himself Read More

Bowery Bombshell

Actors: Vince Barnett, Billy Benedict, James Burke, Wee Willie Davis, Lester Dorr

Synopsis: Although Bowery Bombshell was the third entry in Monogram's "Bowery Boys" series, it was released second in several regions. The trouble begins when Sach (Huntz Hall) is photographed leaving a bank at the same time as a group of bank robbers. The police think that Sach was involved with the 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

Notorious

Actors: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin

Synopsis: Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an Read More

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

Nob Hill

Actors: George Raft, Joan Bennett, Vivian Blaine, Peggy Ann Garner

Synopsis: The bland performance of star George Raft is the only drawback of this splashy 20th Century-Fox musical. Set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, the film casts Raft as Barbary Coast saloonkeeper Tony Angel, who endears himself to patrons and pedestrians alike by tossing out silver dollars at the Read More

Duffy's Tavern

Actors: Bing Crosby, Betty Hutton, Paulette Goddard, Alan Ladd, Dorothy Lamour

Synopsis: Several of Paramount Pictures brightest stars make cameo appearances in this comedy set in "Duffy's Tavern," a favorite watering hole from old time radio shows. The trouble begins when the neighborhood bar is in danger of closing. The trouble begins when the proprietor, Archie, discovers that one Read More

Enemy of Women

Actors: Claudia Drake, Paul Andor, Donald Woods, H.B. Warner, Sigrid Gurie

Synopsis: Though the filmmakers claimed they were writing a biography of Nazi minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels, this film is actually highly fictionalized and filled with patriotic propaganda. The story attempts to explain Goebbels' madness, blaming it on a love affair gone awry when he was a young aspiring Read More

Four Jills in a Jeep

Actors: Kay Francis, Carole Landis, Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair

Synopsis: Four Jills in a Jeep is the (mostly) true story of a four-girl USO team, entertaining American troops overseas. Kay Francis, Martha Raye, Carole Landis and Mitzi Mayfair play "themselves," recreating their recent whirlwind tour of Europe and North Africa. This wisp of a plot takes a back seat to Read More

Shadow of Suspicion

Actors: Marjorie Weaver, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Pierre Watkin, Anthony Warde

Synopsis: Judging by such films as Shadows of Suspicion, it's too bad that leading man Peter Cookson eventually elected to leave the movies in favor of the Broadway stage. Cookson is cast as Jimmy, an enterprising private detective who hits upon a most unusual method of solving a jewel robbery. With the Read More

The Jade Mask

Actors: Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Edwin Luke, Janet Warren, Edith Evanson

Synopsis: An engagingly silly Charlie Chan whodunit from Poverty Row company Monogram, The Jade Mask mixed science fiction with Old House melodramatics and a generous dose of comedy. The venerable Chinese detective (Sidney Toler) is this time assigned by the government to establish the whereabouts of Harper Read More

The Lady in the Dark

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Jon Hall, Warner Baxter, Barry Sullivan

Synopsis: Freely adapted from a successful Broadway musical by