Lyle Latell Filmography

Alias Jesse James

Actors: Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Jay Silverheels, Bob Hope, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Jim Davis, Gloria Talbott

Synopsis: Bob Hope plays a 19th-century insurance agent whose miserable sales record prompts his boss to send him out West, where he can (supposedly) do little harm. Hope manages to sell a $100,000 life insurance policy--to outlaw Jesse James (Wendell Corey), one of the worst "risks" in history! In his Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Baited Hook

Synopsis: A mysterious veiled woman hands Perry (Raymond Burr) $2000 in cash, and one-half of a $10,000 bill, as a retainer to defend a woman on a murder charge. Shortly therafter, Perry pays a visit ot embezzling businessman Albert Tydings (George Neise), only to find the man's body stuffed in his closet. Read More

Kelly and Me

Actors: Van Johnson, Piper Laurie, Martha Hyer, Onslow Stevens, Herbert Anderson

Synopsis: Kelly is a big, lovable, immensely talented German Shepherd. "Me" is Len Carmody (Van Johnson), a third-rate vaudevillian. Carmody's fortunes take an upswing when he teams with the personable Kelly for professional reasons. When talking pictures come in, Carmody is signed to appear in short Read More

The Steel Jungle

Actors: Perry Lopez, Beverly Garland, Walter Abel, Ted de Corsia, Kenneth Tobey

Synopsis: The Steel Jungle is the prison where most of this film takes place. Perry Lopez heads the cast as two-bit bookie Ed Novak, who goes to jail rather than squeal on his Syndicate higher-ups. Novak's silence exacts a toll on his wife Frances (Beverly Garland), who is expecting a child. The longer he 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

At Gunpoint

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, Walter Brennan, Tommy Rettig, Skip Homeier

Synopsis: One of the best of the High Noon derivations, At Gunpoint is the story of reluctant hero Fred MacMurray. When a band of gunmen invade a small frontier town, storekeeper MacMurray fires off a lucky shot and kills the leader. Hailed as a hero, MacMurray realizes deep down that he's a coward. When Read More

Screen Directors' Playhouse: The Silent Partner

Synopsis: "The Silent Partner" is, along with John Ford's "Rookie of the Year", perhaps the best-known episode of the TV anthology series Screen Directors' Playhouse. Buster Keaton stars as Kelsey Dutton, a former silent-film comedian fallen upon hard times. While visiting a neighborhood tavern, Kelsey is Read More

Crime Wave

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk, Ted de Corsia

Synopsis: A car with two men visible in it pulls up to a Los Angeles service station at night, with a single attendant (Dub Taylor) working. As he starts to pump the gas, he doesn't see the third man come around the side until it's too late and he's knocked cold. The trio carries out their robbery but Read More

House of Wax

Actors: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Paul Picerni

Synopsis: This simplified (but lavish) remake of the 1933 melodrama The Mystery of the Wax Museum was the most financially successful 3-D production of the 1950s. In his first full-fledged "horror" role, Vincent Price plays Prof. Henry Jarrod, the owner of a wax museum, whose partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts Read More

Houdini

Actors: Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Torin Thatcher, Angela Clarke, Stefan Schnabel, Douglas Spencer

Synopsis: This highly fanciful but immensely entertaining biopic stars Tony Curtis as legendary magician/escape-artist Harry Houdini. Janet Leigh, Mrs. Tony Curtis at the time, co-stars as Houdini's wife Bess, while Angela Clarke is seen as Houdini's mother. The film follows Houdini's progress from sideshow Read More

The Big Heat

Actors: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin

Synopsis: Fritz Lang directed this gritty drama of gangland murder and police corruption, which was considered quite violent in its day. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is a scrupulously honest police detective who learns that one of his fellow officers has committed suicide. Bannion is told by the officer's Read More

I Was a Communist for the F.B.I.

Actors: Frank Lovejoy, Dorothy Hart, Philip Carey, James Millican, Richard Webb

Synopsis: The real Matt Cvetic was a borderline alcoholic with a nasty disposition (he once allegedly beat his sister-in-law so badly she required hospitalization). But Cvetic was also a fervent anti-communist, and so, for a brief period in the early 1950s, he was a folk hero. I Was a Communist for the Read More

A Streetcar Named Desire

Actors: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Rudy Bond

Synopsis: In the classic play by Tennessee Williams, brought to the screen by Elia Kazan, faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to visit her pregnant sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), in a seedy section of New Orleans. Stella's boorish husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), not only Read More

Bright Leaf

Actors: Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall, Jack Carson, Patricia Neal, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Bright Leaf, a sprawling saga of the tobacco industry in North Carolina, began as a novel by Foster Fitzsimmons, a native Carolinian who for many years taught at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's theatre department. The film version of Bright Leaf has been simplified and reshaped to Read More

The Damned Don't Cry

Actors: Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith, Hugh Sanders

Synopsis: A woman's desire to rise above her drab lower middle-class life take her down the road to destruction in this gripping crime melodrama. The story opens as she cowers insider her old home, fearing the inevitable arrival of the murderous gangsters pursuing her. Her tragic tale unfolds via flashback. Read More

The Sky Dragon

Actors: Roland Winters, Keye Luke, Mantan Moreland, Tim Ryan, Milburn Stone

Synopsis: Film historian Leonard Maltin has labelled this final entry in Monogram's "Charlie Chan" series as "embarrassing," but it's not quite as bad as its reputation would indicate. True, star Roland Winters steadfastly refuses to take his characterization of Charlie Chan seriously, but that's part of Read More

Take One False Step

Actors: William Powell, Shelley Winters, Marsha Hunt, Dorothy Hart, James Gleason

Synopsis: William Powell stars in Take One False Step as a happily married college professor who foolishly agrees to a reunion supper with old flame Shelley Winters. Winters later disappears, and the evidence points to murder. To allay suspicion--and to avoid losing an important financial grant to his Read More

The Cobra Strikes

Actors: Sheila Ryan, Richard Fraser, Leslie Brooks, James Seay

Synopsis: Herbert Heyes, a largely unsung character actor who once played opposite Theda Bara in the silent days, is afforded one of his largest talking-picture assignments in The Cobra Strikes. Heyes is cast as Dr. Damon Cameron, who is murdered shortly after developing a revolutionary new medical Read More

Bungalow 13

Actors: Tom Conway, Margaret Hamilton, Richard Cromwell, James Flavin, Marjorie Hoshelle

Synopsis: In this detective drama, a gumshoe must find a priceless hunk of jade. His several leads evaporate when the police succeed in killing all of the suspects. Angered, the dick relaxes in a motel room and ponders the remaining clues, not realizing until it is almost too late that the biggest clue is 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

He Walked by Night

Actors: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James B. Cardwell

Synopsis: The "He" of the title is Richard Basehart, a clever but psychopathic burglar (based on real-life criminal Erwin Walker) Basehart stays one step ahead of the law by listening in to the police band on his radio. To avoid detection, he changes his M.O. on each crime, making it seem that the string of Read More

The Street with No Name

Actors: Mark Stevens, Richard Widmark, John McIntire, Lloyd Nolan, Barbara Lawrence, Ed Begley, Sr.

Synopsis: FBI operative Mark Stevens is dispatched by his boss Lloyd Nolan to infiltrate a criminal gang. Stevens ingratiates himself with Richard Widmark, the gang's leader, then helps concoct a robbery that will deliver the criminals into the hands of the authorities. But there's an informant in the Read More

The Scar

Actors: Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, Leslie Brooks, John Qualen

Synopsis: John Muller (Paul Henreid), an intelligent, arrogant criminal who has been a medical student and a phony psychoanalyst, believes that people are only interested in themselves and do not notice what is happening around them. Paroled from prison to a boring job, Muller is more interested in a big Read More

The Noose Hangs High

Actors: Lou Costello, Bud Abbott, Cathy Downs, Joseph Calleia, Leon Errol

Synopsis: For their first independently-produced vehicle, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello chose to appear in a remake of the 1939 Universal programmer For Love or Money. Bud and Lou are cast as Ted and Tommy, two bumbling window washers hired by gangster Mike Craig (Joseph Calleila) to collect a $50,000 Read More

Song of the Thin Man

Actors: Leon Ames, Warner Anderson, William Bishop, Bruce Cowling, Bess Flowers

Synopsis: In the sixth and final Thin Man whodunit, Nick (William Powell) and Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) look into the mysterious killing of bandleader Tommy Drake (Phillip Reed). The police quickly hone in on the owner of a gambling ship, Phil Brant (Bruce Cowling), who was about to lose Drake's band to a Read More

Gas House Kids in Hollywood

Synopsis: The Gas House Kids, the very poor man's Bowery Boys, head for Hollywood. While en route to their destination, they accept the invitation of scientist Milton Parsons to spend the night at his home. Head "Gas Housers" Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer and Tommy Bond investigate strange nocturnal noises and Read More

Ride the Pink Horse

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, Thomas Gomez, Rita Conde, Iris Flores, Fred Clark, Art Smith, Andrea King

Synopsis: Robert Montgomery directed and starred in this exotic film noir set during a New Mexico fiesta. Montgomery plays a secretive ex-GI who plans to extort money from a prominent gangster (Fred Clark) as retribution for the death of Montgomery's best friend. An FBI man (Art Smith) would like the Read More

Dick Tracy's Dilemma

Actors: Ralph Byrd, Lyle Latell, Kay Christopher, Jack Lambert, Ian Keith

Synopsis: Ralph Byrd returns to the character he had originated ten years earlier in the serial Dick Tracy. This time, Chester Gould's immortal comic strip hero is called in to handle a fur theft. The owner of Flawless Furs, Humphreys (Charles Marsh), has just signed on with the Honesty Insurance Company Read More

Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome

Actors: Ralph Byrd, Boris Karloff, Lyle Latell, Anne Gwynne, June Clayworth, Skelton Knaggs

Synopsis: Befitting his status as a genre star, Boris Karloff earns top billing over leading man Ralph Byrd in RKO's final Dick Tracy caper. The former Frankenstein monster plays an escaped convict masterminding a daring bank robbery. To get in and out of the bank without being noticed, the gang uses an Read More

T-Men

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Mary Meade, Charles McGraw, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, June Lockhart

Synopsis: The moodily evocative docudrama T-Men stars Dennis O'Keefe as Dennis O'Brien, a treasury agent determined to bring a counterfeiting ring to justice. O'Brien and his partner Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder) go undercover to gain the confidence of the ruthless Detroit mob responsible for the phony money. Read More

Dick Tracy vs. Cueball

Actors: Morgan Conway, Anne Jeffreys, Lyle Latell, Dick Wessel, Rita Corday, Ian Keith

Synopsis: Morgan Conway made his final screen appearance as Chester Gould's granite-jawed detective Dick Tracy in this RKO Radio programmer. This time around, Tracy's nemesis is baldheaded jewel thief Cueball, played with blunt menace by Dick Wessel. Double-crossed by his gang, Cueball methodically bumps Read More

The Mysterious Mr. Valentine

Synopsis: The Mysterious Mr. Valentine is a neat-and-tidy thriller from the Republic B-picture mills. Lovely Linda Stirling is driving down a country road when one of her tires blows out. This seemingly innocuous, everyday occurrence leads Linda into a labyrinth of murder, blackmail and intrigue. William Read More

Shadows over Chinatown

Actors: Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Tanis Chandler, John Gallaudet

Synopsis: Sidney Toler seems listless and barely awake throughout the intrigues of the Monogram "Charlie Chan" opus Shadows over Chinatown. This time out, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) and his erstwhile assistants, son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) and chauffeur Birmingham (Mantan Moreland), investigate a clever Read More

The Perfect Marriage

Actors: Loretta Young, David Niven, Eddie Albert, Charlie Ruggles, Virginia Field

Synopsis: If the Perfect Marriage in this romantic comedy were truly perfect, there wouldn't be any story, would there? Outwardly an ideal couple, Maggie and Dale Williams (Loretta Young, David Niven) have grown tired of one another after 10 years. Petty squabbles lead to major battles, exacerbated by the Read More

George White's Scandals

Actors: Joan Davis, Jack Haley, Martha Holliday, Phillip Terry, Ethel Smith, Jane Greer

Synopsis: Like the same-named 1934 and 1935 films, RKO Radio's 1945 musical George White's Scandals uses the eponymous Broadway revue as a framework for a fabricated plotline. The main story concerns the romance between stage comedienne Joan Mason (Joan Davis) and back-bay Bostonite Jack Williams (Jack Read More

Dick Tracy, Detective

Actors: Morgan Conway, Anne Jeffreys, Mike Mazurki, Jane Greer, Mickey Kuhn, Lyle Latell

Synopsis: Dick Tracy, Detective (originally just Dick Tracy) was the first of four RKO Radio B-pictures based on Chester Gould's classic comic strip. Though Ralph Byrd is most closely associated with the role of Tracy, the title character is played herein by Morgan Conway (Byrd would be seen as Tracy in the Read More

Hold That Blonde

Actors: Eddie Bracken, Veronica Lake, Albert Dekker, Willie Best, Frank Fenton

Synopsis: This curious mixture of comedy, romance and melodrama teams up comic actor Eddie Bracken and glamour girl Veronica Lake, two of Paramount's most popular stars of the mid-1940s. He plays Ogden Spencer Trulow III, a wealthy kleptomaniac; she plays Sally Martin, who may or may not provide the "cure" Read More

One Mysterious Night

Actors: Chester Morris, Richard Lane, Janis Carter, William Wright, Robert B. Williams

Synopsis: A nebulously sinister title disguises the fact that this is actually a "Boston Blackie" mystery, the seventh in Columbia's series. Reformed criminal Boston Blackie (Chester Morris) is accused of stealing the Niles diamond from a charity function. The police cut a deal with Blackie: If he'll locate Read More

That's My Baby

Actors: Richard Arlen, Ellen Drew, Leonid Kinskey, Richard Bailey, Minor Watson

Synopsis: Only at Republic studios would action star Richard Arlen head the cast of a muscial comedy. In That's My Baby, Tim Jones (Arlen) and his girl friend Betty (Ellen Drew) try to pull her dad, the appropriately named R. P. Moody (Minor Watson), out of a deep blue funk. On the verge of suicide, Moody Read More

Men on Her Mind

Actors: Mary Beth Hughes, Edward Norris, Alan Edwards, Luis Alberni

Synopsis: Perennial starlet Mary Beth Hughes has Men on Her Mind in this PRC quickie. Mary Beth plays a radio and nightclub singer to whom success means everything. Everything, that is, until she falls in love with handsome Edward Norris. Like every other male in the cast, Norris was selected not so much Read More

They Got Me Covered

Actors: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Lenore Aubert, Otto Preminger, Eduardo Ciannelli

Synopsis: Bob Hope's first starring vehicle for producer Sam Goldwyn borrows the title of Bob's 1942 autobiography They Got Me Covered and very little else. Co-scripted by Leonard Q. Ross (aka Leo Rosten), Leonard Spigelgass and Harry Kurnitz (among many others!), the film casts Hope as Robert Kittredge Read More

They All Kissed the Bride

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Helen Parrish, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is the kissable bride of the title--but when the film opens, matrimony is the farthest thing from her mind. Crawford becomes a big-time executive upon inheriting her father's trucking business, which leaves her no time for such trivialities as romance. To enhance her business Read More

The Wife Takes a Flyer

Actors: Joan Bennett, Franchot Tone, Allyn Joslyn, Cecil Cunningham, Roger Clark

Synopsis: In this WW II spy comedy, an American pilot stationed in England is flying a routine mission when the Nazis shoot down his plane. He ends up seeking shelter in the home of an unhappily married Dutch woman. She covers for the pilot by introducing him as her mentally unbalanced but basically Read More

Lucky Jordan

Actors: Alan Ladd, Helen Walker, Sheldon Leonard, Mabel Paige, Marie McDonald

Synopsis: Lucky Jordan (Alan Ladd) is a tough but good-natured New York racketeer who tries to finagle his way out of Army service. Despite his efforts, Jordan is drafted, but soon goes AWOL, with a lovely USO worker (Helen Walker) dogging his heels. She tries to arouse Jordan's patriotism, but he is Read More

The Fleet's In

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, William Holden, Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Cass Daley

Synopsis: In this, the third screen adaptation of the musical revue Sailor Beware, William Holden plays Casey Kirby, a shy sailor who through a series of misunderstandings develops a reputation as a world-class lady-killer. In order to save face, Casey has to persuade "The Countess of Swingland" (Dorothy Lamour Read More

Foreign Agent

Actors: John Shelton, Gale Storm, Ivan Lebedeff, Hans Schumm, William Halligan

Synopsis: Director William "One Take" Beaudine slapped together Foreign Agent in a week or so, enabling Monogram to ship the picture to theaters before its subject matter grew stale. Set in a Hollywood movie studio (sure looks like the cramped Monogram headquarters), the story concerns a gang of Nazi agents Read More

Happy Go Lucky

Actors: Mary Martin, Dick Powell, Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Rudy Vallee

Synopsis: In this lighthearted musical comedy, Marjory Stuart (Mary Martin) is a girl who works in the hatcheck room at a Manhattan nightclub and dreams of being a rich socialite herself. Toward that end, Marjory wants to land a rich husband, so she saves up her money and takes a cruise to the Caribbean Read More

Shadow of the Thin Man

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Sam Levene

Synopsis: This fourth entry in MGM's Thin Man series could just as well have been titled "Nick and Nora Charles Go to the Races". Officially retired from sleuthing, Nick Charles (William Powell) does his best to be a dutiful husband to his lovely wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and a good father to his young son Nick Read More

Texas

Actors: William Holden, Glenn Ford, Claire Trevor, George Bancroft, Edgar Buchanan

Synopsis: Texas was Columbia Pictures' lighthearted (and frankly more enjoyable) follow-up to its 1940 big-budget western Arizona. William Holden and Glenn Ford, looking collectively 28 years old, play a couple of ex-Confederate soldiers who get into all sorts of trouble in a wide-open Texas town. The two Read More

Federal Fugitives

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Doris Day, Victor Varconi, Charles Wilson, George Carleton

Synopsis: Silent film stalwart Neil Hamilton heads the cast of the PRC "special" Federal Fugitives. Hamilton plays secret service officer Captain Madison, assigned to investigate the deaths of three of his colleagues in highly suspicious plane crashes. Posing as an airplane manufacturer, Madison keeps a 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