Mary BolandFilmography

Guilty Bystander

Actors: Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Mary Boland, Sam Levene, J. Edward Bromberg

Synopsis: Zachary Scott plays Max Thursday, an alcoholic ex-police detective working as a bouncer at a sleazy rooming house owned by Smitty (Mary Boland), a likeable, earthy old lady. Thursday's former wife, Georgia (Faye Emerson), shows up one night, while her ex-husband is in an alcoholic stupor, to tell Read More

Julia Misbehaves

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: After suffering nobly in several heavyweight MGM dramas, Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon begged the studio to cast them together in a comedy. Though not an all-out laff riot, Julia Misbehaves strives hard to please. Garson plays an ever-in-debt British music-hall performer who relies on the Read More

Nothing But Trouble

Actors: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Mary Boland, Philip Merivale, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: The second of Laurel & Hardy's two MGM starring films, Nothing But Trouble casts Stan and Ollie as, respectively, an unemployed butler and chef. Despite their inherent ineptitude, there's a wartime servant shortage, so the boys are hired by flighty dowager Mrs. Hawkley (Mary Boland), who hopes to Read More

Forever Yours

Actors: Gale Storm, C. Aubrey Smith, Johnny Mack Brown, Frank Craven, Conrad Nagel

Synopsis: Originally titled They Shall Have Faith, Forever Yours was designed as Monogram's "prestige" release for 1945. Musical favorite Gale Storm goes dramatic as Joan Randall, a young debutante who is confined to a wheelchair after contracting infantile paralysis. Neither her doctor father (Conrad Read More

In Our Time

Actors: Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Nancy Coleman, Mary Boland, Victor Francen

Synopsis: More a romantic melodrama than the uplifting propaganda piece the producers perhaps envisioned, In Our Time stars Ida Lupino as Jennifer Whittredge, a young antique buyer marrying a Polish count, Stephan Orvid (Paul Henried), after a whirlwind romance in a Warsaw at the brink of World War II. The Read More

One Night in the Tropics

Actors: Bud Abbott, Allan Jones, Nancy Kelly, Lou Costello, Robert Cummings

Synopsis: The third film version of Earl Derr Biggers' novel Love Insurance, One Night in the Tropics stars Allan Jones as a hotshot insurance salesman who sells a policy to his best pal Robert Cummings. Cummings will earn $1 million if he fails to marry his fiance Nancy Kelly. Half of the policy is Read More

He Married His Wife

Actors: Joel McCrea, Nancy Kelly, Roland Young, Mary Boland, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: This slick marital farce features Joel McCrea as T. H. Randall, a race horse owner whose devotion to his work causes a strain in his relationship with wife Valerie (Nancy Kelly). Unable to stand any more neglect, Valerie divorces Randall, even though the audience is well aware that she's still in Read More

New Moon

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland, George Zucco, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1930 with Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore, the robust Sigmund Romberg operetta New Moon was given another airing in 1940 as Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald vehicle. Set in 18th century Louisiana, the story concerns the relationship between haughty plantation owner Marianne de Read More

Hit Parade of 1941

Actors: Kenny Baker, Frances Langford, Hugh Herbert, Mary Boland, Ann Miller

Synopsis: In this musical, the second entry in a five-film series, a thrift shop owner sells his business and buys a small time radio station. He begins looking for sponsors. He finds one with a department store owner who will only lend him the money if he will allow his daughter, an aspiring tap-dancer and Read More

Pride and Prejudice

Actors: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver, Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Sullivan

Synopsis: Long before 19th-century novelist Jane Austen became a hot property in Hollywood, MGM produced this opulent and entertaining adaptation of one of Austen's best-known novels. The elegant and slyly satirical comedy of manners gets under way when socially conscious Mrs. Bennet (Mary Boland), with the Read More

The Women

Actors: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard

Synopsis: Based on the Clare Booth Luce play of the same name, this MGM comedy is justly famous for its all-female cast and deft direction by George Cukor. The plot centers on a group of gossipy high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily wedded Read More

The Magnificent Fraud

Actors: Akim Tamiroff, Lloyd Nolan, Mary Boland, Patricia Morison, Ralph Forbes

Synopsis: In this lively programmer a con man hires a character actor to masqueraded as the recently assassinated dictator of a tiny Latin American country so he can bilk an arriving American ambassador out of his fortune. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Night Work

Actors: Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, Billy Lee, Donald O'Connor, Clem Bevans

Synopsis: In this domestic comedy, a husband and wife manage an apartment building owned by the husband's pal. Meanwhile they must also begin caring for an orphaned lad. They take a shine to the boy and desire to adopt him, but first they must convince his grandfather who is not impressed by their Read More

Boy Trouble

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Donald O'Connor, Joyce Mathews, John Hartley

Synopsis: It may sound like a teenage-romance comedy, but Boy Trouble is actually a sentimental effort about middle-aged parents. Charlie Ruggles stars as a small town shopkeeper whose wife (Mary Boland) adopts a pair of rambunctious orphan boys (Donald O'Connor, Billy Lee). Ruggles is at first hostile Read More

Artists and Models Abroad

Actors: Jack Benny, Joan Bennett, Mary Boland, Charles Grapewin, Yacht Club Boys

Synopsis: In this musical sequel to the highly successful Artists and Models, Jack Benny plays Buck Boswell, the leader of a troupe of performers who end up broke and stranded in gay Paris. To rustle up a little cash, he decides to produce a musical fashion show. Boswell hires an American father and Read More

Little Tough Guys in Society

Actors: Mischa Auer, Mary Boland, Helen Parrish, Jackie Searl

Synopsis: In this socially conscious drama a sextet of juvenile delinquents flee a crime screen in their seedy ghetto and wind up getting invited to a posh mansion by a wealthy criminal. Their attempts to accustom themselves to the opulent surroundings nearly results in the destruction of the manse. Read More

Mama Runs Wild

Actors: Mary Boland, Ernest Truex, William Henry, Lynne Roberts, Max "Alibi" Terhune

Synopsis: Veteran character actors Mary Boland and Ernest Truex are aces as the stars of Republic's Mama Runs Wild. "Mama" is social-climbing Alice Summers (Boland), the wife of milquetoast Calvin Summers (Truex). When Alice accidentally causes the arrest of a bank robber, she becomes a local heroine and Read More

There Goes the Groom

Actors: Ann Sothern, Burgess Meredith, Mary Boland, Onslow Stevens, William Brisbane

Synopsis: In this screwball comedy, a fresh-out-of-college fellow heads for the gold fields of Alaska to find his fortune. He is gone for a long time. He returns to marry his girl friend and is dismayed to discover that she is no longer interested him. When her mother learns that the fellow has struck it Read More

Marry the Girl

Actors: Mary Boland, Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert, Carolyn Hughes, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: The disarmingly zany Marry the Girl was one of the better Hugh Herbert "B"-vehicles for Warner Bros. Much of the story takes place within the walls of the ramshackle newspaper syndicate owned by the screwball Radway family. Purportedly the head of the operation, John B. Radway (Hugh Herbert) is Read More

Danger: Love at Work

Actors: Ann Sothern, Jack Haley, Mary Boland, John Carradine

Synopsis: An airy screwball comedy, Danger--Love at Work explores the lives of a wealthy but wacky family. Ann Sothern plays the daughter, the only remotely "normal" member of the clan. Poor Jack Haley enters the scene as a feckless attorney who tries to get the family to finalize an important land deal. Read More

A Son Comes Home

Actors: Mary Boland, Julie Haydon, Donald Woods, Wallace Ford, Roger Imhof

Synopsis: This crime drama is set in the fictional San Francisco eatery, Mary Grady's Chowder House which is presided over by the crusty Mary, a tough broad with a marshmallow heart. One of her regulars is a newspaper reporter who decides to write about the widow Grady's long lost son who disappeared Read More

Early to Bed

Actors: Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, George Barbier, Gail Patrick, Robert McWade

Synopsis: In one of the best Charlie Ruggles-Mary Boland vehicles of the 1930s, Ruggles plays a mild mannered husband prone to sleepwalking. His nocturnal prowlings cause no end of embarrassment for his wife (Mary Boland), especially since Ruggles is a more aggressive personality when asleep. Eventually Read More

College Holiday

Actors: Jack Benny, Gracie Allen, Mary Boland, Martha Raye

Synopsis: The quaint genetic theories of the 1930s are satirized in College Holiday. Dotty matron Mary Boland runs a ramshackle summer resort, opening her doors to college students of both sexes--but only those collegiates with extra-special physical and mental skills. She hopes to encourage these select Read More

Wives Never Know

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Adolphe Menjou, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: In this bedroom farce, a writer rails against marriage and touts the benefits of staying single. He then convinces his friend that only relationships based on struggle and strife are worth having. His friend is married so the writer suggests he start trouble by trying to make her jealous. The Read More

The Big Broadcast of 1936

Actors: Jack Oakie, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Lyda Roberti, Wendy Barrie, Bing Crosby

Synopsis: After a false start in 1932, Paramount's Big Broadcast series was jump-started in late 1935 with The Big Broadcast of 1936. The wisp of a storyline involves two-bit radio station owner Spud (Jack Oakie), who doubles as the station's sole announcer while his comic partner Smiley (Henry Wadsworth) Read More

Two for Tonight

Actors: Bing Crosby, Joan Bennett, Mary Boland, Lynne Overman, Thelma Todd

Synopsis: Based on an obscure stage comedy, the Paramount musical Two for Tonight stars Bing Crosby as would-be composer and playwright Gilbert Gordon. Hired by music publisher Alexander Myers (Maurice Cass) to write a musical for temperamental stage star Lilly Bianca (Thelma Todd), Gordon is less than Read More

People Will Talk

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Leila Hyams, Dean Jagger, Ruthelma Stevens

Synopsis: No relation to the 1951 Cary Grant film of the same name, People Will Talk was another of Paramount's moneymaking comedies starring Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland. This time the middle-aged pair try to patch up the marriage of their daughter (Leila Hyams) and son-in-law (Dean Jagger, with hair). Read More

Ruggles of Red Gap

Actors: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, ZaSu Pitts, Roland Young, Leila Hyams

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1918 and 1923, Harry Leon Wilson's novel achieved movie classic status when it was remade by Leo McCarey in 1935. The story opens in Paris, circa 1908. Ruggles, beautifully underplayed by Charles Laughton, is the ultra-obedient manservant to the bibulous Earl of Burnstead (Roland Young Read More

Stingaree

Actors: Irene Dunne, Richard Dix, Mary Boland, Conway Tearle, Andy Devine

Synopsis: Richard Dix plays the title-role, of a dashing highwayman and bandit in 1870's Australia, in this strangely delightful mix of swashbuckler and musical. But the real star is Irene Dunne as Hilda Bouverie, an impoverished serving girl who wants to sing. Left orphaned and homeless by the deaths of Read More

The Pursuit of Happiness

Actors: Francis Lederer, Joan Bennett, Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Minor Watson

Synopsis: Pursuit of Happiness was adapted from the risque stage comedy by Lawrence Langner and Armina Marshall. Set during the American revolution, the film centers around the quaint 18th century custom of "bundling"--that is, having unmarried men and women share the same bed during cold weather, albeit Read More

Six of a Kind

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, George Burns, W.C. Fields, Gracie Allen

Synopsis: The "six" are Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, George Burns, Gracie Allen, W.C. Fields, and Alison Skipworth, who star in this cross-country comedy. Planning a motor vacation to California, J. Pinkham Whinney (Ruggles) and Flora Whinney (Boland) advertise for a couple to help drive and share Read More

Down to Their Last Yacht

Actors: Mary Boland, Polly Moran, Ned Sparks, Sidney Fox, Sidney Blackmer

Synopsis: The musical picture that ended Lou Brock's career as an RKO Radio producer, Down to Their Last Yacht is almost festive in its awfulness. The nonsensical plot finds a group of impoverished socialites (including Sidney Blackmer and Marjorie Gateson) trying to raise money by renting out their yacht Read More

Here Comes the Groom

Actors: Jack Haley, Mary Boland, Patricia Ellis, Neil Hamilton, Isabel Jewell

Synopsis: No relation to the 1952 Frank Capra comedy of the same name, 1934's Here Comes the Groom stars Jack Haley as an unobtrusive little guy who wants to succeed as a criminal. In order to win the heart of hard-boiled Isabel Jewell, Haley must prove he has what it takes to become a gangster. Enter Patricia Ellis Read More

Melody in Spring

Actors: Lanny Ross, Mary Boland, Ann Sothern, George Meeker

Synopsis: Radio tenor Lanny Ross made a game but unsuccessful bid for film stardom in Paramount's Melody in Spring. Though Ross, cast as one John Craddock, is given top billing, the picture belongs to the delightful screen team of Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland as Warren and Mary Blodgett, sponsors of a Read More

Four Frightened People

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Mary Boland, William Gargan, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's least characteristic sound feature, Four Frightened People is a character study about a quartet of castaways whose fates are permanently altered by spectacular circumstances. Four coastal steamer passengers jump ship when a deadly bubonic plague breaks out. They steal a Read More

Three-Cornered Moon

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Richard Arlen, Mary Boland, Wallace Ford, Tom Brown

Synopsis: Three-Cornered Moon is regarded by many film buffs as the first of the genuine "screwball comedies." Claudette Colbert stars as the only level-headed member of a wacky Brooklyn family. Her mother (Mary Boland) loses the family fortune in the stock market, forcing Colbert's knuckleheaded brothers Read More

The Solitaire Man

Actors: Herbert Marshall, May Robson, Elizabeth Allan, Ralph Forbes, Mary Boland

Synopsis: Based on a story by Bela and Samuel Spewack, Solitaire Man stars Herbert Marshall as Oliver Lane, a "diamond expert" (read: master jewel thief). During a plane flight across the English channel, Lane becomes aware that practically every member of his gang plans to double-cross him -- not that the Read More

Mama Loves Papa

Actors: Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, Lilyan Tashman, George Barbier, Morgan Wallace

Synopsis: The felicitous screen team of Mary Boland and Charles Ruggles once more collaborated with director Norman Z. McLeod for the delightful Mama Loves Papa. Middle-class Wilbur Todd (Ruggles) is content with his lot in life, but his wife Jessie (Boland) is an inveterate social climber. Convinced that Read More

Trouble in Paradise

Actors: Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charlie Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Ernst Lubitsch used Laszlo Aladar's play The Honest Finder as a springboard for one of his most delightful early-'30s Paramount confections. Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play Gaston and Lily, a pair of Parisian thieves, both disguised as nobility, who decide to rob lovely perfume company Read More

If I Had a Million

Actors: Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, W.C. Fields, Charlie Ruggles, George Raft, Jack Oakie

Synopsis: Based on a story by Robert Andrews, If I Had a Million is a multipart comedy-drama employing Paramount's top directorial and acting talents. Refusing to leave his fortune to his grasping relatives, dying millionaire Richard Bennett selects several people at random from the phone book and bestows Read More

Night After Night

Actors: George Raft, Constance Cummings, Wynne Gibson, Mae West, Alison Skipworth, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: In one of his first starring roles, George Raft plays Joe Anton, a tough but basically decent speakeasy owner who falls in love with Park Avenue socialite Miss Healy (Constance Cummings). Hoping to come up to the girl's social level, Joe starts taking lessons in speech and behavior from haughty Read More

The Night of June 13

Actors: Clive Brook, Lila Lee, Charlie Ruggles, Gene Raymond, Frances Dee

Synopsis: A multi-character drama set in a suburban neighborhood, The Night of June 13th takes place in four households. One of these is inhabited by unhappy husband Clive Brook, who is accused of murdering his wife. Actually, she has committed suicide, but those neighbors who could provide Brook with an Read More

Evenings for Sale

Actors: Herbert Marshall, Sara Maritza, Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, George Barbier

Synopsis: In this romance, an impoverished Viennese aristocrat becomes a gigolo. While on the job, he encounters a Yankee widow who is terribly impressed by titled men. They get involved and she helps him start afresh. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Personal Maid

Actors: Nancy Carroll, Pat O'Brien, Gene Raymond, Hugh O'Connell, Mary Boland

Synopsis: In this drama, a humble Irish lass from New York City's East Side, dreams of ascending the social ladder to escape her tumultuous family life. She attempts to live her dream by becoming a servant in upscale homes. Soon she finds that wealthy families are just as troubled as her own. Fortunately Read More

Secrets of a Secretary

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, George Metaxa, Betty Lawford, Mary Boland

Synopsis: In this drawing room drama, an impetuous heiress goes on a cruise and ends up marrying a Latin gigolo on a whim. Her father then dies, and as soon as her devoted husband discovers that the old man died destitute, he takes off. Now the girl must work; she gets a job as her father's best friend's Read More

The Perfect Lover

Synopsis: Brian Lazar (Eugene O'Brien) is a struggling artist with looks as well as talent. It's the former that really attracts the wealthy-but-love-starved Mrs. Byfield (Lucille Lee Stewart). When she finds out how poor he is, she finds him a big studio and sits for a portrait. Soon Lazar is all the rage Read More

The Prodigal Wife

Synopsis: While Mary Boland is primarily known for portraying society matrons, occasionally she played against type to show the strength of her acting ability. Here she is Marion Farnham, the neglected wife of a young, ambitious doctor. She runs off with another man, deserting her husband and four-year-old Read More

Stepping Stone

Synopsis: In her third starring film, Mary Boland was cast as Mary Beresford, the wife of unambitious law clerk Al Beresford (Robert McKim). Thanks to Mary's tenacity and carefully calculated social-climbing, Al is promoted to the position of personal secretary of prominent financier Elihu Knowland (Frank Keenan Read More

The Edge of the Abyss

Synopsis: Mary Boland, best known for her scatterbrained comedy roles in talkies, made her screen debut as romantic lead Alma Clayton in Edge of the Abyss. Alma rejects poor-but-honest boyfriend Jim Sims (Willard Mack) to marry rich-but-neglectful attorney Neil Webster (Robert McKim). Bored with Webster Read More