Lorin RakerFilmography

Tales of Robin Hood

Actors: Robert Clarke, Mary Hatcher, Paul Cavanagh, Wade Crosby, Whit Bissell

Synopsis: Though filmed through the facilities of Hal Roach Studios and produced by Hal Roach Jr., Tales of Robin Hood was released by Lippert Pictures. Robert Clarke stars as the young Earl of Huntington, who after losing his property and title to the invading Normans heads to Sherwood Forest. Here he Read More

Steel Town

Actors: Ann Sheridan, John Lund, Howard Duff, William Harrigan, James Best, Eileen Crowe

Synopsis: Steel Town top-bills Ann Sheridan, but the bulk of the story is carried by John Lund. Cast as Steve Kostane, the nephew of a steel-plant proprietor, Lund must prove his value to by learning the business from the ground up as a steelworker. It isn't easy: throughout the film, Kostane is weighed Read More

Journey into Light

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Viveca Lindfors, Thomas Mitchell, Ludwig Donath, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Minister Sterling Hayden is able to tend to the needs of his flock, but can do nothing for his alcoholic wife. She kills herself, whereupon the anguished minister turns his back on his calling. He ends up a skid-row derelict and is thrown into the drunk tank. An elderly preacher (Ludwig Donath) Read More

Chicago Calling

Actors: Dan Duryea, Mary Anderson, Gordon Geberl, Judy Brubaker, Ross Elliott

Synopsis: Alcoholic Bill Cannon's (Dan Duryea) past sins catch up with him in Chicago Calling. Cannon's daughter Nancy (Melinda Plowman) is seriously injured in an accident while out of town, and his wife Mary (Mary Anderson) has promised to call him back as soon as she learns the result of Nancy's 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

Family Honeymoon

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, William Daniels, Rita Johnson, Gigi Perreau, Jimmy Hunt

Synopsis: In this family farce, an older couple falls in love and decide to marry and embark upon a peaceful honeymoon without the bride's three bratty children. Unfortunately, the way things work out, the whole family ends up tagging along. The little darlings are less than pleased that their widowed Read More

Chicken Every Sunday

Actors: Dan Dailey, Celeste Holm, Colleen Townsend, Alan Young, Natalie Wood

Synopsis: George Seaton's 1948 comedy Chicken Every Sunday was based on the play by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein as well as the original memoirs of Rosemary Taylor. Set during the turn of the century on the American frontier, Emily Heffernan (eleste Holm) is the practical wife of foolish would-be Read More

The Web

Actors: Ella Raines, Edmond O'Brien, William Bendix, Vincent Price, Maria Palmer

Synopsis: Bob Regan (Edmond O'Brien) -- a small-time attorney from the wrong side of the tracks who nonetheless has a lot of dedication -- is representing a vegetable pushcart owner (Tito Vuolo) in a damage suit against multi-millionaire Andrew Colby (Vincent Price). It seems Colby's car wrecked the man's Read More

I'll Be Yours

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Tom Drake, William Bendix, Adolphe Menjou, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, Louise Ginglebusher (Deanna Durbin) is a girl from a small town who comes top New York City with dreams of making it in show business. She gets her foot in the door in a roundabout way when she gets a job as an usherette at a prestigious movie palace run by tycoon J. Conrad Read More

Variety Girl

Actors: Mary Hatcher, Eric Alden, William Bendix, Olga San Juan, DeForest Kelley, MacDonald Carey, Joan Caulfield, William Demarest, Frank Faylen, Stanley Clements

Synopsis: This story of two young hopefuls who come to Hollywood is merely a thin device to feature almost every star working for Paramount Studios in 1947. Mary Hatcher plays Catherine Brown, a woman of humble origins who arrives in Hollywood, where she meets another wanna-be movie star, Amber La Vonne Read More

Nocturne

Actors: George Raft, Lynn Bari, Virginia Huston, Joseph Pevney, Myrna Dell

Synopsis: The moody mystery melodrama Nocturne was produced by longtime Alfred Hitchcock associate Joan Harrison. The film wastes no time getting started, with a caddish Hollywood composer (Edward Ashley) dropping dead right after the opening credits. The police think it's a suicide, but maverick lieutenent Read More

Lady Luck

Actors: Robert Young, Barbara Hale, Frank Morgan, James Gleason, Don Rice

Synopsis: Barbara Hale landed her first A-picture starring role in the engaging romantic comedy Lady Luck. Hale is cast as Mary Audrey, the descendant of a long line of professional gamblers. Haughtily turning up her nose at the "family business," Mary spends most of her time keeping her poker-happy Read More

Without Reservations

Actors: Claudette Colbert, John Wayne, Don DeFore, Dona Drake, Anne Triola, Phil Brown, Louella Parsons

Synopsis: Without Reservations has to be the least typical John Wayne picture of the postwar era. Top billing is bestowed upon Claudette Colbert as Kit, a best-selling novelist heading westward to oversee the film version of her latest novel. Taking it upon herself to select the man who should portray the Read More

Men in Her Diary

Actors: Peggy Ryan, Louise Allbritton, Ernest Truex, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: In 1912, John Bunny and Flora Finch starred in the one-reel farce The New Secretary, wherein Bunny's wife hires a homely stenographer to keep her hubby from straying. 33 years later, this old chestnut was reheated for The Men in Her Diary. The cute-as-a-button Peggy Ryan "dresses down" to portray Read More

I'll Tell the World

Synopsis: In this comedy, a PR man saves a struggling radio station from ruin. Songs include: "Slap Polka", "Walk A Little Faster", "Moonlight Fiesta", and "Where The Prairie Meets The Sky". ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Standing Room Only

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Paulette Goddard, Edward Arnold, Roland Young, Anne Revere, Hillary Brooke

Synopsis: The overcrowding in WWII-era Washington, D.C., provided the concept for this comedy, as well as another film from the previous year, The More the Merrier (1943). Lee Stevens (Fred MacMurray) is an executive from a toy company owned by T.J. Todd (Edward Arnold). In hopes of landing a lucrative Read More

You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith

Actors: Allan Jones, Evelyn Ankers, Billie Burke, David Bruce, Patsy O'Connor

Synopsis: The title of this low-budget Universal musical was lifted from the Andrew Sisters' hit song, introduced in 1941's Buck Privates. Evelyn Ankers stars as Lynn, who in order to collect an inheritance must quickly wed dull old Harvey (David Bruce). En route to her marriage by train, Lynn is Read More

No Time for Love

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Ilka Chase, Richard Haydn, Paul McGrath

Synopsis: Mitchell Leisen utilizes his stylistic pizzazz to enliven this romantic comedy that proves the old adage "opposites attract" -- but only after three or four reels. Claudette Colbert is Katherine Grant, an upper-crust fashion photographer who has a gang of admirers snapping at her heels. When her Read More

Never a Dull Moment

Actors: Harry Ritz, Jimmy Ritz, Al Ritz, Frances Langford, Mary Beth Hughes, Jack LaRue, Stuart Crawford

Synopsis: In their last starring film, The Ritz Brothers play the Three Funny Bunnies, a trio of nightclub comedians. The plot contrives to have our heroes pose as tough Chicago gangsters, which gets them mixed up with genuine hoodlums Tony (George Zucco) and Joey (Jack LaRue), a sexy pickpocket named Flo Read More

Cowboy in Manhattan

Actors: Robert Paige, Frances Langford, Leon Errol, Walter Catlett, Joe Sawyer

Synopsis: Robert Paige plays a struggling songwriter who poses as a millionaire cowboy. It's all part of a zany, wacky and nutty scheme to win the hand and heart of Broadway star Frances Langford. Apparently Paige is a fast worker, since the film runs only 54 minutes. If one looks closely, one might deduce Read More

Cowboy Serenade

Actors: Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Fay McKenzie, Cecil Cunningham, Addison Richards

Synopsis: Just before entering the armed services, Gene Autry delivered one of his best Republic westerns, Cowboy Serenade. Many of Autry's previous vehicles had suffered from too much music and not enough action. Happily, Cowboy Serenade struck the happy medium common to Autry's vintage 1930s efforts. Read More

Give Out, Sisters

Actors: The Andrews Sisters, Grace McDonald, Dan Dailey, Charles Butterworth, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: The Andrews Sisters headline this musical. They play the lead act at a popular nightclub. The trouble begins when they hire a few students from a financially foundering dance school for their newest production. One of the dancers, a rich young socialite, desperately wants to be in it too, but her Read More

Take a Letter, Darling

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Fred MacMurray, Constance Moore, MacDonald Carey, Robert Benchley

Synopsis: Take a Letter, Darling is from the "boss lady" school of 1940s comedies. Fred MacMurray is Darling (that's his last name), an unsuccessful artist who advertises for a position as male secretary. He is hired by female advertising executive Rosalind Russell, who is all business--during business Read More

Six Lessons from Madame La Zonca

Actors: Lupe Velez, Leon Errol, Helen Parrish, Charles Lang, William Frawley

Synopsis: To those under the age of 60, it should be noted that the title of this lively Universal filler was inspired by a popular song of 1941. Carrying over their antics from RKO Radio's "Mexican Spitfire" series, Lupe Velez and Leon Errol star respectively as Havana nightclub entertainer Madame La Zonga Read More

No Hands on the Clock

Actors: Chester Morris, Jean Parker, Rose Hobart, Dick Purcell, Astrid Allwyn

Synopsis: Detective Chester Morris and his nosy wife Jean Parker set up housekeeping in a small Reno hotel room, whence Morris conducts his investigation of a kidnap case. It appears that the abduction has some tenuous connection with a recent bank robbery. As Morris digs deeper, he finds that virtually all Read More

In the Navy

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Dick Powell, Claire Dodd, The Andrews Sisters

Synopsis: The third of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's starring films, In the Navy was released second; Universal had just made a bundle off Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates, and the studio wanted another "service" comedy put into circulation in a hurry. Abbott and Costello share over-the-title billing Read More

Two-Faced Woman

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Constance Bennett, Ruth Gordon, Robert Sterling, Roland Young

Synopsis: Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.'s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Read More

The Primrose Path

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry Travers, Miles Mander

Synopsis: In her third film for innovative director Gregory LaCava, Ginger Rogers briefly turns her back on her established screen image by playing the daughter and granddaughter of prostitutes. Determined not to pursue the "family business", Ellie May Adams (Rogers) opts for respectability, as personified Read More

California Straight Ahead

Actors: John Wayne, Louise Latimer, Robert McWade, Theodore Von Eltz, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: This action drama features John Wayne in an early, non western role. He plays a trucker who owns half of a small but increasingly successful trucking firm. When Duke's company begins stealing business away from LeRoy Mason's firm, Mason retaliates by engineering the violent death of Wayne's Read More

Honeymoon Limited

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Irene Hervey, Lloyd Hughes, Russell Hicks, Lorin Raker

Synopsis: In this drama, a writer, dissatisfied with his flagging career, decides to raise some money by walking from New York to San Francisco in six months. Along the way, he will be writing about the experience. One of his buddies bets that the writer won't make it, and this makes him even more Read More

Les Miserables

Actors: Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, Rochelle Hudson, John Beal, Marilyn Knowlden, Frances Drake

Synopsis: Richard Boleslawski directed this lavish adaptation of Victor Hugo's oft-filmed epic novel. Fredric March stars as Jean Valjean, who is hauled into prison for stealing a loaf of bread. After ten years at hard labor, he escapes from the merciless prison but the years have taken their toll and Read More

The Nut Farm

Synopsis: This amusing lampoon of low-budget filmmaking is set in motion when fly-by-night entrepreneur Bradley Page talks small-towner Mrs. Bent (Betty Alden) into financing a movie. Mrs. Bent's shiftless brother Willie Barton (Wallace Ford) is appointed director of the film, which turns out to be a Read More

I've Been Around

Actors: Chester Morris, Rochelle Hudson, Isabel Jewell, Gene Lockhart, Phyllis Brooks

Synopsis: I've Been Around hinges on an unlikely case of mistaken identity. Society girl Drue Waring (Rochelle Hudson) mistakes roughneck engineer Eric Foster (Chester Morris) for the foppish Franklin DeHaven (G. P. Huntley Jr.) The two get married, but Eric walks out on Drue when he finds out that she's Read More

The Man on the Flying Trapeze

Actors: W.C. Fields, Mary Brian, Kathleen Howard, Grady Sutton, Vera Lewis

Synopsis: W.C. Fields plays Ambrose Wolfinger, the henpecked husband to end all henpecked husbands. A widower, Ambrose married a second time only to provide a mother for his pretty daughter (Mary Brian). What he got was an overbearing harpy of a wife (Kathleen Howard), a fussy and imperious mother-in-law (Vera Lewis Read More

The Loudspeaker

Actors: Ray Walker, Jacqueline Wells, Noel Francis, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Perhaps the best of Monogram's breezy Ray Walker vehicles, The Loudspeaker casts Walker as Joe Miller, a cocky would-be radio star. Armed with a minimum of talent and a maximum of chutzpah, our hero lands a job as emcee of a network radio program sponsored by "pancake king" Burroughs (Spencer Charters Read More

The Little Giant

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Helen Vinson, Ken Thomson, Shirley Grey

Synopsis: The end of prohibition spells the end of business as usual for Chicago gangster Bugs Ahearn (Edward G. Robinson in this delightful spoof of mob melodramas from Warner Bros. Paying off their latest moll, Edith (Shirley Grey, Bugs and chief lieutenant Al Daniels (Russell Hopton) grab their Read More

Love is Like That

Actors: Bradley Page, Judith Vosselli, Dorothy Revier, Albert Conti, Rochelle Hudson

The Racing Strain

Actors: Dickie Moore, Paul Fix

Synopsis: The son of a famed race car driver is so traumatized by witnessing his father's fatal racetrack crash that he refuses to drive. Instead, the young man becomes an ace stunt pilot. His aerial prowess gives him the confidence he needs to get behind the wheel and honor his father's memory. ~ Sandra Read More

My Woman

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Victor Jory, Wallace Ford, Claire Dodd, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: After suffering magnificently in picture after picture at RKO and Paramount, Helen Twelvetrees was subjected to even more agony in Columbia's My Woman. Twelvetrees is cast as Connie, the ever-lovin' wife of vaudeville hoofer Chick (Wallace Ford). After years of tanktowns and two-a-days, Chick Read More

The Impatient Maiden

Actors: Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke, Una Merkel, John Halliday, Andy Devine

Synopsis: Lew Ayres and Mae Clarke, the reigning king and queen of the Universal lot in 1932, were teamed under the guidance of the studio's star director James Whale in Impatient Maiden. Anticipating his "Dr. Kildare" duties by nearly six years, Ayres is cast as inexperienced young surgeon Myron Brown. In Read More

By Whose Hand?

Actors: Ben Lyon, Barbara Weeks, William V. Mong, Ethel Kenyon, Ken Thomson

Synopsis: In this crime drama an escaped killer hunts the man who squealed upon him. He stalks the man onto a train bound for San Francisco. The stoolie is killed. As a result another passenger, who witnessed the killing becomes determined to catch the cold-blooded killer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Six Cylinder Love

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel

Synopsis: In his third feature-film appearance, Spencer Tracy plays a small-town hotshot named William Donroy, who talks a young married couple, Gilbert and Marilyn Sterling (Lorrin Raker, Sidney Fox), into purchasing an expensive car. At this point, Donroy takes a back seat to the plot proper, as poor Gil Read More

Kismet

Actors: Otis Skinner, Loretta Young, David Manners, Mary Duncan, Sidney Blackmer

Synopsis: Edward Knoblock's warhorse theatrical piece Kismet, first filmed in 1920, resurfaced as a talkie in 1930. Repeating the role he'd created on stage in 1911, Otis Skinner stars as Hajji, the wily Baghdad beggar who goes from rags to riches to rags again to riches again in the space of 24 hours. Read More

Mother's Boy

Actors: John T. Doyle, Beryl Mercer, Morton Downey, Sr., Brian Donlevy, Helen Chandler

Synopsis: Popular radio crooner Morton Downey (yes, the father of talk-show host Morton Downey Jr.) stars in this sentimental Jazz Singer wannabe. On the eve of his Broadway debut, singer Tommy O'Day (Downey) learns that his care-worn, self-sacrificing old mother (Beryl Mercer) is gravely ill. Without Read More

Gang War

Actors: Lorin Raker, Mabel Albertson, David Hartman, Olive Borden

Synopsis: Gang War stars Jack Pickford as speakeasy musician Clyde Baxter and Olive Borden as Flowers, a dime-a-dance girl. When Clyde falls in love with Flowers, he finds he has a deadly rival in the form of gangster Blackjack (Eddie Gribbon). During an all-out war between two rival gangs, Blackjack proves Read More