Madge EvansFilmography

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

Espionage

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Madge Evans, Paul Lukas, Ketti Gallian

Synopsis: The notorious Orient Express provides the setting for this romance involving two rival reporters in pursuit of a munitions baron. The two rivals eventually fall in love, but not before they are implicated and subsequently cleared of a plot to kill the arms maker. The munitions man also falls in Read More

The Thirteenth Chair

Actors: Dame May Whitty, Madge Evans, Elissa Landi, Thomas Beck

Synopsis: The 1937 Thirteenth Chair was the third film version of the 1919 stage melodrama by Bayard Veiller. Dame Mae Whitty dominates the proceedings as Mme. La Grange, a phony mystic who is on hand when a man is killed during one of her seances. The killing takes place in the home of a provincial British Read More

Exclusive Story

Actors: Franchot Tone, Madge Evans, Stuart Erwin, Joseph Calleia, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: Former newspaperman Martin Mooney based his script for Exclusive Story on the racket-busting activities of New York district attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Franchot Tone plays the lawyer for a major newspaper which is conducting a campaign against gang boss Joseph Calleia. The paper can't get any Read More

Piccadilly Jim

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Madge Evans, Eric Blore, Billie Burke

Synopsis: British humorist P. G. Wodehouse wrote the story upon which Piccadilly Jim was based. Frank Morgan and Robert Montgomery play a well-to-do father and son, who find themselves rivals in love. The object of their affection is Madge Evans, who likes them both but favors the son. Everything could have Read More

Moonlight Murder

Actors: Chester Morris, Leo Carrillo, Frank McHugh, Benita Hume

Synopsis: Moonlight Murder takes place virtually in its entirety at the Hollywood Bowl. Despite dire warnings by a sinister mystic (Pedro de Cordoba), opera-star Gino D'Acosta (Leo Carrillo) insists that he will sing in the Bowl's current production of Il Trovatore. He gets no farther than the "Anvil Read More

Pennies from Heaven

Actors: Nydia Westman, Bing Crosby, Madge Evans, Edith Fellows, Donald Meek, John Gallaudet, Louis Armstrong, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: In his only visit to Columbia Pictures, Paramount's resident crooner Bing Crosby stars in a sentimental musical drama. In jail on a trumped-up charge, Crosby meets a condemned prisoner, and promises the doomed man to look after his little girl (Edith Fellows) when he gets out. The girl's Read More

David Copperfield

Actors: W.C. Fields, Lionel Barrymore, Freddie Bartholomew, Maureen O'Sullivan, Madge Evans, Frank Lawton, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: David Copperfield was MGM's major Christmas release for its 1934-1935 season and also the first of producer David O. Selznick's major "literary" films for that studio. While a great deal of editing and streamlining was necessary to distill Charles Dickens' massive novel into 133 minutes of screen Read More

Calm Yourself

Actors: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Betty Furness, Nat Pendleton, Hardie Albright

Synopsis: Calm Yourself starts off as ace advertising man Pat (Robert Young) is fired from his job when he offends the highly offendable -- and none too likeable -- Mary Elizabeth (Betty Furness). This segues into a phony kidnapping scheme that thrusts Pat and Mary together, furthering their mutual Read More

Helldorado

Actors: Richard Arlen, Madge Evans, Ralph Bellamy, James Gleason, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: In this drama, an impoverished dreamer saves a group of people during a terrible storm by leading them to shelter in a ghost town containing but one ancient resident. The stranded travelers are surprised by the high-style in which the codger lives. Soon they learn that the man and the drifter's Read More

Men Without Names

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Madge Evans, Lynne Overman, David Holt, John Wray

Synopsis: The title refers to those special government agents who go undercover to flush out criminal gangs. In his second starring role, Fred MacMurray plays a government man who travels incognito as he trails a team of crooks from Brooklyn to Kansas. Lynne Overman is MacMurray's easygoing partner, who Read More

Transatlantic Tunnel

Actors: Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, Madge Evans, Helen Vinson, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Transatlantic Tunnel is the English-language version of the 1932 French-German speculative drama The Tunnel. Set sometime in the future (complete with two-way televisions, art-deco airships and self-propelled automobiles), the film stars Richard Dix as McAllen, a visionary architect who devotes Read More

Age of Indiscretion

Actors: Paul Lukas, Madge Evans, Helen Vinson, May Robson, David Holt

Synopsis: Critics in 1935 recognized immediately that Age of Indiscretion drew its inspiration from the well-publicized Gloria Vanderbilt custody battle. Paul Lukas plays publisher Robert Lenhart, a man of conservative tastes who is unfortunately saddled with a footloose socialite wife named Eve (Helen Vinson Read More

Fugitive Lovers

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Madge Evans, Ted Healy, Nat Pendleton, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Though it's also a "bus" picture, MGM's Fugitive Lovers is as different from Columbia's It Happened One Night as oil and water. Escaping from her gangster boyfriend Legs (Nat Pendleton), chorus girl Letty (Madge Evans) boards a Greyhound bus bound for California. Likewise a passenger -- albeit a Read More

Death on the Diamond

Actors: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Nat Pendleton, Ted Healy, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Cortland Fitzsimmons, the storyline of this "gimmick" mystery follows the St. Louis Cardinals during a championship season. The arrival of hotshot pitcher Larry Kelly (Robert Young) coincides with an apparent plot to sabotage the Cards' chances of making it to the World Series. 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

Paris Interlude

Actors: Madge Evans, Robert Young, Una Merkel, Otto Kruger, Ted Healy

Synopsis: In director Edwin L. Marin's film Paris Interlude, a beautiful French woman named Julie Bell (Madge Evans) unexpectedly falls in love with Sam Colt (Otto Kruger, a vulgar American news journalist. Based on (All Good Americans), a play by Laura and .J. Perelman , Sam spends most of his time in Read More

Grand Canary

Actors: Warner Baxter, H.B. Warner, Madge Evans, Julie Compton, Zita Johann

Synopsis: This drama, an adaptation of a novel by A.J. Cronin, chronicles the exploits of an alcoholic doctor whose career is in shambles as he embarks upon a cruise to the Canary Islands. The deeply despondent physician spends much of the journey hiding in his stateroom staring at the walls and woefully Read More

The Show-Off

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Madge Evans, Henry Wadsworth, Lois Wilson, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: In this comedy, based on a popular play by George Kelly, an office clerk masquerades as a railroad magnate to impress a young woman. Though the enamored girl believes his every word, her mother is not so easily fooled. Still she says nothing and the emboldened fellow begins making even more Read More

What Every Woman Knows

Actors: Helen Hayes, Brian Aherne, Madge Evans, Lucile Watson, Dudley Digges

Synopsis: Legendary "improvisational" director Gregory La Cava elected to stick to the script for his film version of the James M. Barrie play What Every Woman Knows. Helen Hayes repeats her stage role as a Victorian Scotswoman of far-reaching ambition. Using her supposedly frail feminine wiles, Hayes Read More

Hallelujah, I'm a Bum

Actors: Al Jolson, Madge Evans, Frank Morgan, Harry Langdon, Chester Conklin

Synopsis: Al Jolson's "comeback" picture Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is an offbeat Depression-era concoction with script by Ben Hecht and S.N. Behrmann and music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Jolson plays a genial hobo who wanders happily around Central Park, neither seeking nor accepting honest Read More

The Mayor of Hell

Actors: James Cagney, Madge Evans, Allen Jenkins, Dudley Digges, Arthur Byron

Synopsis: Gangster Cagney allows his powerful political connections to appoint him "deputy inspector" of a state reform school. There he finds the youths abused and battered by a brutal, heartless warden and his thuggish guards. It is a nurse who informs Cagney and pleads with him to clean things up. Read More

Dinner at Eight

Actors: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke

Synopsis: Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore 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

Hell Below

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Walter Huston, Madge Evans, Jimmy Durante, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Hell Below transcends its hackneyed World War I plot to emerge as a drama of rare originality and gutsiness. Walter Huston stars as a submarine commander whose lieutenant (Robert Montgomery) falls in love with Huston's daughter (Madge Evans). All cliches (including the intrusive comedy relief of Jimmy Durante Read More

Day of Reckoning

Actors: Richard Dix, Madge Evans, Conway Tearle, Una Merkel, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: In this brutal prison drama a hen-pecked husband is sentenced to prison after getting caught with his hand in the company till. He is sent to a high-rise facility in LA. It seems the fellow was only following the instructions of his domineering, constantly nagging wife who, as soon as he is put Read More

Beauty for Sale

Actors: Madge Evans, Otto Kruger, Alice Brady, Una Merkel, May Robson

Synopsis: The beauty-parlor craze of the early 1930s was given a good going-over in MGM's Beauty for Sale. Madge Evans, Florine McKinney and Una Merkel star as Letty, Jane and Carol, three employees of a swank Manhattan beauty salon. While Carol wisecracks her way through life, Letty takes things more Read More

The Nuisance

Actors: Lee Tracy, Madge Evans, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth, John Miljan

Synopsis: In this comedy, an oily tongued sleazy lawyer, who specializes in injuries, makes sure all of clients, regardless of the size of their injuries, make it big in court. He is assisted by a thoroughly convincing doctor who can make the smallest bruise look like life-threatening internal bleeding. The Read More

Broadway to Hollywood

Actors: Alice Brady, Frank Morgan, Madge Evans, Russell Hardie, Jackie Cooper

Synopsis: Broadway to Hollywood is a through-the-years saga about a show business family. Frank Morgan and Alice Brady play vaudeville headliners of the 1880s whose fame is eclipsed by their son (played as a youth by Jackie Cooper, then as an adult by Russell Hardie). Morgan and Brady are reduced to bit Read More

Lovers Courageous

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Madge Evans, Roland Young, Frederick Kerr, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: Lovers Courageous represents a rare direct-to-screen original by Frederick Lonsdale, the playwright responsible for such drawing-room comedies as The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Robert Montgomery and Madge Evans plays the titular lovers, Willy and Mary. After living a peripatetic existence all over the Read More

The Greeks Had a Word for Them

Actors: Madge Evans, Joan Blondell, Ina Claire, David Manners, Lowell Sherman

Synopsis: Zoë Akins' archetypal "gold-digger" stage comedy The Greeks Had a Word for It was transferred to the screen in 1933, with the "It" changed to "Them" in the title, reportedly at the insistence of over-cautious producer Sam Goldwyn (this became a moot point in the 1940s, when the film was reissued Read More

The Huddle

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Madge Evans, Una Merkel, Ralph Graves, John Arledge

Synopsis: In this football drama, a tough steelworker's son wins a scholarship to Yale and attempts to use his talent on the football field to become popular. His ploy doesn't work. He cannot even con the girl of his dreams into going out with him. After four years, he finally grows up and his future begins Read More

Fast Life

Actors: William Haines, Madge Evans, Conrad Nagel, Arthur Byron, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: In this comedy-adventure, an enterprising young man devises a new kind of speedboat motor. The trouble begins when he tries test out his new invention in the big race and finds he needs a sponsor. Fortunately, the beautiful but haughty daughter of a prominent shipwright is around to help and Read More

Are You Listening?

Actors: William Haines, Madge Evans, Anita Page, Karen Morley, Neil Hamilton

Synopsis: "Are you listening?" was the catchphrase of early-1930s radio personality Tony Wons. Though Wons does not appear in the 1932 MGM programmer Are You Listening?, the film is concerned with the burgeoning broadcast industry. William Haines plays a wise-cracking radio writer who is tricked into Read More

Sporting Blood

Actors: Clark Gable, Ernest Torrence, Madge Evans, Lew Cody, Marie Prevost

Synopsis: Clark Gable went from supporting actor to star in the space of one year with Sporting Blood, adapted from a novel by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan. Gable is top-billed as a gambling house proprietor named Rid Riddell. When the owner of a prize thoroughbred loses heavily in Riddell's establishment, he Read More

Guilty Hands

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Kay Francis, Madge Evans, William Bakewell, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: The titular hands belong to Lionel Barrymore, who plays a prominent defense attorney. To save his daughter (Madge Evans) from a cad (Alan Mobray), Barrymore murders the man and arranges to make the deed look like suicide. The victim's mistress (Kay Francis) suspects foul play, but the lawyer has Read More

Son of India

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Conrad Nagel, Marjorie Rambeau, Madge Evans, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: An young boy is en route to Bombay with his wealthy father when they are ambushed by highwaymen and his father is mortally wounded. Just before he dies, he hands his son a large diamond. The boy then continues on to the city. By the time he gets there he is ragged and dirty. A crooked merchant Read More

West of Broadway

Actors: John Gilbert, El Brendel, Lois Moran, Madge Evans, Ralph Bellamy

Synopsis: Though silent star John Gilbert's talking pictures were habitual money-losers, the stubborn actor insisted that MGM honor his $250,000-per-picture contract, signed just before talkies came on. West of Broadway wasn't a bad Gilbert vehicle by any means, but the star's previous failures worked Read More

Heartbreak

Actors: Charles Farrell, Madge Evans, Hardie Albright, Paul Cavanagh, John Arledge

Synopsis: This drama, set in Vienna during WW I, a soldier endures ostracism from his commanding officers after he travels over enemy lines to see his girl and tell her that he is deeply sorry to have killed her brother during an aerial dogfight. At first she kicks him out, but then invites him back in. Read More

Classmates

Actors: Claude Brooke, Richard Barthelmess, Reginald Sheffield, Charlotte Walker, Madge Evans

Synopsis: The play by William C. deMille and Margaret Turnbull was filmed once before in 1914. This version features Richard Barthelmess as the star and some scenes were actually shot at West Point. Duncan Irving Jr. (Barthelmess) is the son of the village postmaster (Claude Brooke) in a small southern Read More

On the Banks of the Wabash

Synopsis: Film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton tempered his old-fashioned approach with some welcome slapstick moments in this melodrama, which contained just about every rural cliché in the book. Struggling artist Paul Bixler (Lumsden Hare) leaves his family to commit suicide but the village busybody (Marcia Read More

Volunteer

Synopsis: This picture, made in the thick of America's involvement in World War I, is a combination of real life and fiction. Because her father (Victor Kennard) has joined the army, and her mother (Muriel Ostriche) is going to Europe as a Red Cross nurse, little Madge (Madge Evans) can no longer work at Read More

Woman and Wife

Synopsis: Having spent several years at World Films, the studio owned by her Broadway-producer father William A. Brady, Alice Brady took a step upward in the film world when she signed on with Lewis J. Selznick's Select Pictures. One of Brady's first Select endeavors was Woman and Wife, a sporadically Read More

True Blue

Synopsis: True Blue begins with the marriage of black-sheep British nobleman Gilbert Brockhurst (Charles Clary) to the daughter of a Western rancher. When he learns that he has inherited his father's title and estate, Brockhurst deserts his wife (Frances McKeever) and young son Bob. Upon attaining Read More

Neighbors

Synopsis: In one of her best pre-adult roles, little Madge Evans was cast as nine-year-old troublemaker Clarissa Leigh. Our heroine pauses in her deviltry long enough to play matchmaker for her older sister Ruth (Violet Palmer) and college boy Paul Harding (Johnny Hines). After several misadventures Read More

The Power and the Glory

Synopsis: This picture has nothing to do with the 1933 Spencer Tracy film, or its 1961 remake. It's an adaptation of a novel by Grace MacGowan Cooke. Because her poverty-stricken family is deeply in debt, Johnnie Consadine (June Elvidge) leaves her home in the Blue Ridge mountains and finds a job in a Read More

Maternity

Synopsis: Although Ellen Franklin (Alice Brady) consents to marry John Locke (David Powell), she's reluctant to have a family since, for three generations, the women in her family have died in childbirth. Because of her attitude, she and Locke become estranged and he renews contact with an old flame, now a Read More

The Beloved Adventuress

Synopsis: Rejected by her parents, the wayward Juliette La Monde (Kitty Gordon) becomes a musical comedy actress and is courted by Morgan Grant (Frederick Truesdell). Grant is married, but no matter; he leaves his wife (Pinna Nesbit) to be with Juliette. After the death of her parents, Juliette takes care Read More

A Little Patriot

Synopsis: Fired up by the story of Joan of Arc, eight-year-old Mary ("Baby"Marie Osborne) decides to "do her bit" when America enters WWI. Before long, Mary has organized her schoolmates into an auxiliary army. The kids prove that they aren't "summer soldiers" when they rush to the rescue of an old inventor Read More

The Adventures of Carol

Synopsis: Child actress Madge Evans plays the title role in The Adventures of Carol. One of those sugary miss-fixit types, Carol spreads a little sunshine wherever she goes. By film's end, she has straigthened out her selfish and insensitive family, through the simple expedient of running away to join the Read More

Corner Grocer

Synopsis: This film, based on the stage play of the same name by Adolph Philipps, gave comedian Lew Fields a role that had both humor and pathos. Charles Wendel (Fields) is a wealthy grocer who, along with his wife (Justine Cutting), adopts a little orphan, Mary (Madge Evans). He also has a son, Ralph (William Sherwood Read More

Broken Chains

Synopsis: Captain Harry Ford (Carlyle Blackwell) is tracking down moonshiners in the South when he runs afoul of nasty political goings-on. Some Negroes have stolen a ballot box, but a white man refuses to be bribed for its return and horsewhips the group's leader. The Negro kills the man, and the crime Read More

Husband and Wife

Synopsis: When Doris Baker (Ethel Clayton) spends her husband Dick (Holbrook Blinn) into serious debt, he embezzles funds from the bank where he works to cover some speculative investments. He is joined in these plans by one of the bank's directors, but when Doris unknowingly snubs the director's wife, he Read More

The Hidden Scar

Synopsis: This story was very much typical of its era -- Janet Hall (Ethel Clayton) is "wronged" by Henry Dalton (Montagu Love) and becomes pregnant. She has the child and begs Dalton to marry her but he refuses. However, when he comes to a sudden end, he leaves her with a cottage and a small income. Then Read More

The Seven Sisters

Synopsis: An old Hungarian story was the basis for the Marguerite Clark vehicle Seven Sisters. The story takes place in a Budapest household, where it is believed that if one of the younger daughters marries first, her older siblings will be doomed to live out their lives as old maids. The youngest Read More

Zaza

Synopsis: Zaza, the ever-popular David Belasco-produced stage drama by Pierre Breton and Charles Simon, was first brought to the screen by Famous Players. Taking over from the original production's Mrs. Leslie Carter in the title role was the equally talented Pauline Frederick. The story is the familiar one Read More

Alias Jimmy Valentine

Synopsis: Lee Randall (Robert Warwick) is a man who leads a double life. By day he is a respectable person; by night he robs banks. His gang stages an elaborate break-in at a bank, but they are discovered while fleeing the scene of the crime, and the gang is captured. (During their stay in jail, real shots Read More