Pat Flaherty Filmography

The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters

Actors: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bernard Gorcey, Lloyd Corrigan, Ellen Corby, Bennie Bartlett

Synopsis: The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters may not be the best of the "Bowery Boys" series, but it was unquestionably the most profitable. It all begins when Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) try to gain permission to use a local vacant lot for baseball games. The boys make a trip to the mansion of Read More

Jungle Gents

Synopsis: The Bowery Boys go to Africa in this entry in the long-running series. They embark upon their adventure after they discover that one of them has the ability to smell diamonds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Meet Danny Wilson

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr, Tommy Farrell

Synopsis: Some observers have suggested that Meet Danny Wilson could just as well have been titled Meet Frank Sinatra. A star vehicle if ever there was one, the film casts Sinatra as Danny, a would-be singer, playing cheap saloons while waiting for the Big Break. Danny and his buddy Mike Ryan (Alex Nicol) Read More

Million Dollar Mermaid

Actors: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Donna Corcoran

Synopsis: Who else but Esther Williams could star in a romantic drama (with musical numbers) bearing a title like this? In Million Dollar Mermaid, Williams plays Annette Kellerman, a real-life Australian swimming star who took up the sport as a child to strengthen her legs, which were severely weakened by a Read More

The Winning Team

Actors: Doris Day, Ronald Reagan, Frank Lovejoy, Eve Miller, James Millican

Synopsis: Ronald Reagan delivers one of his best screen performances as baseball great Grover Cleveland Alexander in The Winning Team. The title refers to the mutually supportive relationship between Alexander and his loving wife Aimee (top-billed Doris Day); with this in mind, is it any surprise that the Read More

Blackbeard the Pirate

Actors: Robert Newton, Linda Darnell, William Bendix, Keith Andes, Torin Thatcher

Synopsis: Robert Newton exhibits absolutely no shame in his portrayal of the title character in Blackbeard the Pirate. If you thought that Newton's "Arr, matey"s got out of hand in Treasure Island, wait til you see this one. The plot concerns the efforts of the British admirality to bring Blackbeard to Read More

Hoodlum Empire

Actors: Brian Donlevy, Claire Trevor, Forrest Tucker, Vera Ralston, Luther Adler

Synopsis: The Kefauver Committee's ongoing investigation of organized crime spawned several "Torn from Today's Headlines!" films in the early 1950s. Republic's Hoodlum Empire concerns the efforts by gangster Joe Gray (John Russell) to get out of the rackets after WW II. Part of Gray's "reclamation" is to Read More

The Racket

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan, William Talman, Ray Collins

Synopsis: The Racket was based on a play by Bartlett Cormack, first filmed as a silent in 1928. The storyline was updated to include references to Estes Kefauver's Senate Crime Investigating Committee: otherwise, the plot (and much of the dialogue) was lifted bodily from the Cormack play. Racketeer Robert Ryan Read More

Detective Story

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Lee Grant, Bert Freed, George Macready, Cathy O'Donnell

Synopsis: Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Detective Story was praised for its realistic view of an event-filled day in a single police precinct station. The film, directed by meticulous taskmaster William Wyler, manages to retain this realism, even allowing for the star-turn performance of Kirk Douglas. A Read More

The Asphalt Jungle

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe

Synopsis: The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliantly conceived and executed anatomy of a crime -- or, as director John Huston and scripter Ben Maddow put it, "a left-handed form of human endeavor." Recently paroled master criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), with funding from crooked attorney Emmerich Read More

The Jackie Robinson Story

Actors: Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Minor Watson, Louise Beavers, Richard Lane

Synopsis: Despite its lack of production values and box-office "names," The Jackie Robinson Story is one of the best and most convincing baseball biopics ever filmed. Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson plays himself, and quite well indeed. The film traces Robinson's career from his college Read More

Storm Warning

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, Steve Cochran, Hugh Sanders

Synopsis: In Storm Warning, Ginger Rogers stars as a schoolteacher visiting relatives in an unnamed small town. She happens to witness the beating death of a man at the hands of the KKK. Rogers soon discovers that the whole town is controlled by this vigilante group, and that her loutish brother-in-law Steve Cochran Read More

Harvey

Actors: James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Victoria Horne

Synopsis: This whimsical fantasy about a local drunk's 6' 3 1/2" imaginary rabbit pal was a smash hit (and a Pulitzer Prize winner) on Broadway and was then adapted into this likeable farce that's also an allegory about tolerance. James Stewart stars as Elwood P. Dowd, a wealthy tippler whose sunny Read More

Blondie's Hero

Synopsis: This film, which is one of a series based on the characters from the Blondie comic strip, finds Dagwood entering the Army Reserve. Blondie visits, only to discover that he has caused all sorts of problems which lead to numerous conflicts. The ORC Training Center, Fort MacArthur, California was 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 Good Humor Man

Actors: Jack Carson, Lola Albright, Jean Wallace, George Reeves, Gerald Perreau-Saissine

Synopsis: In the tradition of Red Skelton's The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man comes The Good Humor Man, with Jack Carson subbing for Skelton this time out. Carson plays Biff Jones, who when not peddling Good Humor ice cream carries on a romance with perky Margie Bellew (Lola Albright). Through a Read More

Three Little Words

Actors: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, Vera-Ellen, Arlene Dahl, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: MGM's Three Little Words is a "twin" musical biopic, covering the lives and careers of songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Fred Astaire plays Kalmar, a frustrated magician, while Red Skelton is cast as Ruby, a wannabe baseball player. After "meeting cute" during a disastrous vaudeville show Read More

The Petty Girl

Actors: Robert Cummings, Joan Caulfield, Elsa Lanchester, Melville Cooper, Audrey Long

Synopsis: Back in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, artist George Petty was famous for his "Petty Girl" illustrations; lovingly detailed renderings of ripe young damsels wearing next to nothing, and sometimes not even that. In The Petty Girl, George Petty is portrayed by Robert Cummings, while Joan Caulfield Read More

It's a Great Feeling

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Bill Goodwin, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's future partner I.A.L. Diamond concocted the storyline for this Dennis Morgan/Jack Carson/Doris Day tunefest. Morgan and Carson, Warner Bros.' answer to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, appear as themselves. Attempting to line up a director for their next picture, the boys find themselves Read More

The Stratton Story

Actors: James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead, Bill Williams

Synopsis: Both Van Johnson and Gregory Peck were considered for the role of baseball star Monty Stratton in the 1949 biopic The Stratton Story before settling upon the real Stratton's own first choice, James Stewart. The film covers several years in the 1930s, as Texas farm boy Stratton rises from the 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

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

All My Sons

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Mady Christians, Howard Duff, Louisa Horton, Frank Conroy

Synopsis: Based on the play by Arthur Miller, All My Sons is a drama of man's duty to man that retains a potent impact. Edward G. Robinson plays a manufacturer of parts for World War II airplanes who lives a full, satisfied life in a small town. But his idyll is shattered by the arrival of the fiancée of Read More

Give My Regards to Broadway

Actors: Dan Dailey, Charles Winninger, Nancy Guild, Fay Bainter, Charlie Ruggles

Synopsis: Charles Winninger plays the head of a vaudevillian family who, when jobs become scarce, takes a humble factory job. He dreams of sustaining a show-biz dynasty with his grown children, but none of them show any real interest in trodding the boards. Realizing that the golden days are past, Winninger 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

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett, Barton MacLane

Synopsis: John Huston's 1948 treasure-hunt classic begins as drifter Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), down and out in Tampico, Mexico, impulsively spends his last bit of dough on a lottery ticket. Later on, Dobbs and fellow indigent Curtin (Tim Holt) seek shelter in a cheap flophouse and meet Howard (Walter Huston 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

The Babe Ruth Story

Crew: Technical Advisor

Actors: William Bendix, Claire Trevor, Charles Bickford, Sam Levene, William Frawley

Synopsis: The Plan 9 From Outer Space of baseball biopics, The Babe Ruth Story is definitely in the "So Bad It's Good" category. An outrageously miscast William Bendix stars as George Herman "Babe" Ruth, who as depicted herein is a childish, misunderstood oaf who happens to be one of the greatest Read More

Key Largo

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Monte Blue, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Richard Brooks and John Huston's screenplay for Huston's Key Largo eschews the lofty blank verse of Maxwell Anderson's original play, concentrating instead on the simmering tensions among the many characters. Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, an embittered war veteran who travels to Key Largo Read More

The Red House

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Lon McCallister, Judith Anderson, Allene Roberts, Julie London

Synopsis: Delmer Daves directs the noirish thriller The Red House, based on the novel by George Agnew Chamberlain. Edward G. Robinson plays Pete Morgan, a farmer who harbors dark secrets and refuses to let anyone near the red house in the woods behind the house. In order to fend off trespassers, he hires Read More

The Long Night

Actors: Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price, Ann Dvorak, Howard Freeman, Elisha Cook, Jr.

Synopsis: Based upon the French film Le Jour Se Lève, The Long Night opens in the in the midst of a dire situation: ex-serviceman Joe Adams (Henry Fonda) finds himself holed up in his apartment, surrounded by policemen who soon open fire in a relentless and determined manner. Adams has been accused of Read More

Where There's Life

Actors: Bob Hope, Signe Hasso, William Bendix, George Coulouris, Vera Marshe

Synopsis: Bearing traces of such earlier hits as My Favorite Blonde and The Ghost Breakers, Where There's Life is one of the best of Bob Hope's postwar vehicles. The inimitable Mr. Hope is cast as New York radio personality Michael Valentine, who's poised to marry his long-time fiancee Hazel O'Brien (Vera Marshe Read More

Angel and the Badman

Actors: Joan Barton, John Wayne, Gail Russell, Harry Carey, Bruce Cabot, Stephen Grant, Irene Rich, Lee Dixon

Synopsis: One of John Wayne's most mystical films, Angel and the Badman is also the first production that Wayne personally produced. The star plays a wounded outlaw who is sheltered by a Quaker family. Attracted to the family's angelic daughter Gail Russell, the hard-bitten Wayne undergoes a slow and subtle 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

Decoy

Actors: Jean Gillie, Edward Norris, Robert Armstrong, Herbert Rudley, Sheldon Leonard

Synopsis: This gripping, gritty film noir begins as a mortally wounded physician staggers into the apartment of a vicious vixen, the leader of a notorious gang of thieves. Shots ring out, and the police rush to the scene. Sergeant Leonard gets there to find the doctor dead, and the woman failing fast. As Read More

Home Sweet Homicide

Actors: Peggy Ann Garner, Randolph Scott, Lynn Bari, Dean Stockwell, James Gleason

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Craig Rice, Home Sweet Homicide is a delightful blend of domestic comedy and murder mystery. Peggy Ann Garner, Dean Stockwell and Connie Marshall play Dinah, Archie and April Carstairs, the precocious offspring of widowed mystery writer Marian Carstairs (Lynn Bari). When a Read More

Step by Step

Actors: Lawrence Tierney, Anne Jeffreys, Lowell Gilmore, George Cleveland, Jason Robards, Sr.

Synopsis: In this espionage drama, a WW II veteran teams up with a government secretary and begins hunting a gang of Nazi agents who are seeking the secret documents carried by the G-man they killed. The two heroes are hindered on their hunt by fellow government agents who believe the two are responsible Read More

The Best Years of Our Lives

Actors: Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Virginia Mayo

Synopsis: The postwar classic The Best Years of Our Lives, based on a novel in verse by MacKinlay Kantor about the difficult readjustments of returning World War II veterans, tells the intertwined homecoming stories of ex-sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March), former bombadier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) Read More

Hit the Ice

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Ginny Simms, Patric Knowles, Elyse Knox

Synopsis: The Abbott & Costello vehicle Hit the Ice started life as satire of health clinics, with Lou Costello cast as a hypochondriac who used a streetcar conductor's change-purse to dispense pills to himself. By the time the film hit the screens, it was a standard A&C melange of comedy, music and Read More

It Happened in Flatbush

Actors: Lloyd Nolan, Carole Landis, William Frawley, Sara Allgood, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: It Happened in Flatbush is a likable baseball comedy inspired by the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers' pennant win. Lloyd Nolan portrays an ace ballplayer who was disgraced while still in college and is only able to secure work as a team manager. He takes charge of an unnamed Brooklyn team and whips in into Read More

Captains of the Clouds

Actors: James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias

Synopsis: James Cagney made his first Technicolor appearance in the morale-boosting aviation flick Captains of the Clouds. Cagney plays Brian MacLean, a hotshot Canadian bush pilot who delights in stealing jobs-and women-away from his competitors. Brian is forced to shape up in a hurry when he's assigned to Read More

Juke Girl

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan, Richard Whorf, Gene Lockhart, Betty Brewer

Synopsis: Director Curtis Bernhardt hadn't wanted to make Juke Girl, but he was under contract to Warner Bros. and had to tow the line lest he find himself drawing Unemployment. One of Bernhardt's gripes against the film is that it starred Ronald Reagan, whom he considered an "unimportant" screen Read More

It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog

Actors: Carole Landis, Allyn Joslyn, Margo Woode, Henry Morgan, Reed Hadley, Jean Wallace

Synopsis: This 20th Century-Fox cheapie stars Carole Landis as a pretty detective and Allyn Joslyn as a fast-talking reporter ever on the verge of losing his job. Landis is entrusted with a large, troublesome Doberman pinscher named Rodney, who is docile only around her. After numerous Disney-like Read More

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Actors: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, Irene Manning

Synopsis: Yankee Doodle Dandy is no more the true-life story of George M. Cohan than The Jolson Story was the unvarnished truth about Al Jolson -- but who the heck cares? Dandy has song, dance, pathos, pageantry, uproarious comedy, and, best of all, James Cagney at his Oscar-winning best. After several Read More

Saboteur

Actors: Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, Norman Lloyd, Otto Kruger, Vaughan Glaser, Murray Alper

Synopsis: Aircraft plant worker Robert Cummings is accused of sabotaging his factory and causing the death of a co-worker. Actually, Cummings is the fall guy for a clever ring of Nazi spies, headed by above-suspicion American philanthropist Otto Kruger. Our hero goes on a cross-country chase after genuine Read More

Gentleman Jim

Actors: Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, John Loder

Synopsis: Maybe Errol Flynn was never the war hero that he often played, but he was a capable boxer, and Gentleman Jim makes full use of this skill. Flynn stars as Jim Corbett, the 19th-century American pugilist who introduced "scientific" methods to bare-knuckle boxing. Originally an office clerk, Corbett Read More

My Favorite Spy

Actors: Ellen Drew, Jane Wyman, Robert Armstrong, Helen Westley

Synopsis: Produced by silent-film comedian Harold Lloyd, My Favorite Spy is a vehicle for bespectacled bandleader Kay Kyser, who resembles Lloyd more than somewhat. Just before embarking on his honeymoon with new bride Terry (Ellen Drew), Kyser is drafted into the Army. Proving to be a monumentally Read More

The Pride of the Yankees

Actors: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea

Synopsis: "It's box office poison," producer Samuel Goldwyn is said to have exclaimed when he heard the idea of filming the life story of fabled first baseman Lou Gehrig. "If people want baseball, they go to the ballpark!" The story begins before World War I, when young Lou Gehrig (played as a boy by Douglas Croft Read More

Who Is Hope Schuyler?

Actors: Joseph Allen, Jr., Mary Howard, Sheila Ryan, Ricardo Cortez, Janis Carter

Synopsis: Hope Schuyler is a notorious but never-seen astrologer, inextricably linked with blackmail, political graft and murder. Special prosecutor Tom Mason (Joseph Allen Jr.) hopes to ascertain the true identity of Hope Schuyler and to put an end to her (or his) crime spree. Despite the obstacles thrown Read More

Ball of Fire

Actors: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oscar Homolka, Dana Andrews, S.Z. Sakall, Dan Duryea, Henry Travers

Synopsis: Ball of Fire is a delightful retelling (by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett) of the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" legend -- though strictly for grownups. Gary Cooper is the youngest of eight bookish professors authoring an encyclopedia. They find a perfect "research associate" in the Read More

Highway West

Actors: Brenda Marshall, Arthur Kennedy, Olympe Bradna, William Lundigan, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a remake of Heat Lightning(1931), a robber kills a bank teller during a robbery and then takes his wife, who believes he is a traveling businessman, on the road with him as he flees. He is eventually captured and sentenced. Meanwhile his wife returns to running a motel and gas Read More

Meet John Doe

Actors: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington

Synopsis: The first of director Frank Capra's independent productions (in partnership with Robert Riskin), Meet John Doe begins with the end of reporter Ann Mitchell's (Barbara Stanwyck) job. Fired as part of a downsizing move, she ends her last column with an imaginary letter written by "John Doe." Angered Read More

The Strawberry Blonde

Actors: James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Jack Carson, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Strawberry Blonde is the second, and by far the most well-regarded, of the three film versions of James Hogan's play One Sunday Afternoon. James Cagney stars as Biff Grimes, a turn-of-the-century dentist married to onetime suffragette Amy Lind (Olivia de Havilland). A former convict, Biff has Read More