Pat SomersetFilmography

Death in the Sky

Actors: Lona Andre, John Carroll, Henry Hall, Leon Ames, Wheeler Oakman

Synopsis: Puritan Pictures, a poverty-row operation devoted in the main to Tim McCoy westerns, turned out a few diverting murder mysteries during its short life span. In Death in the Sky, Leon Ames plays a World War I ace whose combat experiences have driven him mad. Convinced that every other aviator on Read More

Maytime

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, John Barrymore, Herman Bing, Tom Brown

Synopsis: The third of MGM's profitable Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy songfests, Maytime opens in the early 20th century, with a young girl arguing with her boyfriend over her wishes to become an opera singer. The girl's neighbor, a lonely old woman whom we gradually recognize as a convincingly "aged" Read More

Wee Willie Winkie

Actors: Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith, June Lang, Michael Whalen

Synopsis: In this lovely John Ford film, Joyce Williams (June Lang) and her young daughter, Priscilla (Shirley Temple), travel to India to live on a British Army base with Joyce's father, Colonel Williams, Aubrey C. Smith). Once there, sweet, young Priscilla manages to win the love and affection of the Read More

The Prisoner of Zenda

Actors: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Mary Astor, David Niven, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Ronald Colman stars in David O. Selznick's classic production of Anthony Hope's swashbuckling adventure. The film takes place in a mythical Central European kingdom with Colman in a dual role as King Rudolf V and Rudolph Rassendyl, a visitor from England who's a distant cousin to the prince. Read More

Thin Ice

Actors: Sonja Henie, Tyrone Power, Arthur Treacher, Raymond Walburn, Joan Davis

Synopsis: Norwegian skating star Sonja Henie reached an early pinnacle with this romantic comedy co-starring Tyrone Power as a Ruritanian prince impersonating an American reporter. They fall in love, of course, and the whirlwind romance threatens to interrupt an important treaty between three rival Read More

I Cover the War

Actors: John Wayne, Gwen Gaze, Don Barclay, Pat Somerset, Sam Harris

Synopsis: Seasoned newsreel cameraman Bob Adams (John Wayne) is assigned to cover the rebellion in the fictional Arab country of Samarai. Samari is chock full of tribal unrest, and in order for Adams (Wayne) to get footage of rebel leader El Kadar (Charles Brokaw), he must fight his way through a Read More

The Firefly

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Allan Jones, Warren William, Billy Gilbert, Henry Daniell

Synopsis: In this adaptation of the operetta by Rudolf Friml, secret agent Nina Maria Azara (Jeannette MacDonald) is working undercover for the King of Spain as a singer known as the "Mosca del Fuego" or "Firefly." Her mission is to uncover Napoleon's plot to invade Spain before it is too late. This film Read More

Death in the Air

Actors: Lona Andre, John Carroll, Leon Ames, Henry Hall

Synopsis: An airborne serial killer terrorizes a group of war veterans in this ultra-cheap but fairly engrossing whodunit produced by one of Hollywood's few women executives, Fanchon Royer. Assigned to investigate a series of flight disasters committed by a phantom aircraft bearing only the legend "X," Read More

To Mary - with Love

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Ian Hunter, Claire Trevor, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy star as a husband and wife who've been married ten years...but they might not make it to eleven. The husband is a businessman who has rebuilt his fortune after the 1929 crash. The wife has stood by her man through thick and thin, rich and poor. Now it's 1935, and the Read More

The Lone Wolf Returns

Actors: Melvyn Douglas, Gail Patrick, Tala Birell, Thurston Hall

Synopsis: The Lone Wolf Returns stars Melvyn Douglas as Louis Joseph Vance's reformed criminal Michael Lanyard, a.k.a. The Lone Wolf. Lanyard lapses back into his old ways when he attempts to steal an emerald pendant belonging to Gail Patrick, but he falls in love with the girl and remains on the straight Read More

Libeled Lady

Actors: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy, and William Powell star in this crackling screwball comedy about a cut-throat newspaper editor's scheme to prevent a libel suit that ends up exploding in everybody's face. Tracy plays Warren Haggerty, the managing editor of a newspaper that mistakenly prints a story Read More

Don't Bet on Blondes

Actors: Warren William, Claire Dodd, Guy Kibbee, William Gargan, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: High-rolling gambler "Odds" Owen (Warren William) establishes an American insurance agency created along the lines of Lloyd's of London. Owen insures Kentucky colonel Jefferson Davis Youngblood (Guy Kibbee) against the possibility that Youngblood's actress daughter Marilyn (Claire Dodd) might get Read More

Clive of India

Actors: Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, Colin Clive, Francis Lister, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Ronald Colman plays Robert Clive, a true-life 18th century Britisher who works up the ranks to become leader of Britain's military forces in India. Though produced on a superficially lavish scale, the film inexpensively sidesteps several of Clive's more famous battles with Indian insurrectionists Read More

Here's to Romance

Actors: Nino Martini, Genevieve Tobin, Anita Louise, Maria Gambarelli

Synopsis: International singing sensation Nino Martini made his American film debut in the Jesse L. Lasky production Here's to Romance. His career bankrolled by the beneficent opera diva Mme. Schumann-Heink (playing herself), singer Nino Donelli (Martini) hits the big time, and as a bonus falls in love with Read More

The Gilded Lily

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, C. Aubrey Smith, Luis Alberni

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, Marilyn David (Claudette Colbert) is a stenographer who has become good friends with Peter Dawes (Fred MacMurray), a newspaper reporter who takes the same subway as she does each morning. While Peter is crazy about Marilyn, she has her eye on Charles Gray (Ray Milland), a 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

Sylvia Scarlett

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Brian Aherne, Edmund Gwenn, Natalie Paley

Synopsis: This big-budget 1936 RKO Studios picture lost money, perhaps due to a cool box-office reception to the idea of leading lady Katharine Hepburn in drag, and a rare-for-its-day screen kiss between two women. Edmund Gwenn plays the title character's father Henry, who is obsessed with gambling. His Read More

The Key

Actors: William Powell, Edna Best, Colin Clive, Hobart Cavanaugh, Halliwell Hobbes

Synopsis: The Key is a story of the Irish "troubles" which avoids taking sides, but spends most of its screen time with the British occupation troops. William Powell stars as a soldier for hire who works on behalf of the British in the Dublin of the early 1920s. Powell is as celebrated for his boudoir Read More

The Cat's Paw

Actors: Harold Lloyd, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Nat Pendleton, Grace Bradley

Synopsis: Harold Lloyd plays Ezekial Cobb, a missionary's son who has spent his entire life in China. Cobb is sent to his father's home church in California, where it is hoped he will find a wife. A true babe in the woods, Cobb is befriended by politician Jake Mayo (George Barbier). Mayo is a cog in a Read More

Murder in Trinidad

Actors: Nigel Bruce, Heather Angel, Victor Jory, Murray Kinnell, Douglas Walton

Synopsis: What a shame that the 1934 Fox crime meller Murder in Trinidad is currently unavailable for viewing. In one of his best performances, Nigel Bruce is cast as Bertram Lynch, a slovenly, sweat-stained detective with a mind like a steel trap. Lumbering his way through a tropical outpost, Lynch Read More

Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back

Actors: Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, Warner Oland, Charles Butterworth, Una Merkel

Synopsis: This second and final "Bulldog Drummond" film to star Ronald Colman, finds the famed sleuth in the midst of a sinister plan orchestrated by Warner Oland. Damsel in distress Loretta Young reports that her wealthy and influential uncle is missing, but all those concerned insist that the uncle never Read More

The Mystery of Mr. X

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Elizabeth Allan, Ralph Forbes, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: MGM was seldom content to just film a mystery; the story had to be dressed up in some elaborate, unorthodox fashion. Mystery of Mr. X is given an additional visual boost by setting the story in 19th century London, allowing for a full array of the costumes and plush backgrounds of the era and Read More

Dancing Lady

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, May Robson, Winnie Lightner, Fred Astaire

Synopsis: Virtually everybody except President Roosevelt was in the lavish MGM backstage musical Dancing Lady. Joan Crawford stars as Janie Barlow, an impoverished dancer reduced to working in a seedy Manhattan burlesque house. While on a slumming party with his society friend, wealthy young Tod Newton (Franchot Tone Read More

Midnight Club

Actors: Clive Brook, George Raft, Helen Vinson, Alison Skipworth, Guy Standing

Synopsis: Everybody in The Midnight Club is seeing double, and it's all the handiwork of slick London criminal mastermind Colin Grant (Clive Brook). Anyone who wants to commit a crime and get away with it had better get in touch with Grant, who obligingly provides exact doubles of the criminals so as to Read More

Cavalcade

Actors: Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, Herbert Mundin, Ursula Jeans, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: The only Academy Award winning picture for Fox Studios (in its pre-20th Century-Fox era), Cavalcade is a stately film adaptation of the pageant-like stage hit by Noel Coward. The film concentrates on the years 1901 through 1933, as seen through the eyes of an upper-class British family and its Read More

Blonde Venus

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Dickie Moore, Gene Morgan, Francis Sayles

Synopsis: Marlene Dietrich stars as Helen Faraday, a German cabaret singer in the States whose husband, Ned, falls ill and his only hope is to receive expensive medical treatment at a clinic in Europe. Struggling to afford his care and to support their son Johnny, she works at a nightclub and succumbs to Read More

The Trial of Vivienne Ware

Actors: Joan Bennett, Donald Cook, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, ZaSu Pitts, Lillian Bond

Synopsis: Running a swift 55 minutes, Trial of Vivienne Ware packs in more sheer entertainment value than its longer, more prestigious "role model," The Trial of Mary Dugan. Joan Bennett plays the title character, a beleaguered young woman accused of murdering her nasty fiancee (Jameson Thomas). She is Read More

Night World

Actors: Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, Dorothy Revier, Russell Hopton

Synopsis: Night World is an astonishingly compact 57-minute extravaganza, all of which takes place at the upscale (but somewhat less-than-swank) nightclub owned by good-natured racketeer Happy MacDonald (Boris Karloff) (complete with a winning, grinning smile). In a story arc of no more than a couple of Read More

Merrily We Go to Hell

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Fredric March, Adrianne Allen

Synopsis: If only Merrily We Go To Hell was as interesting as its title! To escape an arranged marriage, heiress Joan Prentice (Sylvia Sidney) elopes with reporter Jerry Corbett (Fredric March). Unfortunately, Corbett is not only irresponsible, but also an abusive drunkard. To make matters worse, predatory Read More

The Squaw Man

Actors: Paul Cavanagh, Lupe Velez, Eleanor Boardman, Roland Young

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's third remake of his debut film, this was the first sound version of Edwin Milton Royle's stage western melodrama. The story centers on a British captain who heads into the American West after taking the blame for his embezzling, blue-blooded cousin to protect the reputation of Read More

Devotion

Actors: Ann Harding, Leslie Howard, Robert Williams, O.P. Heggie, Louise Closser Hale

Synopsis: Devotion is a stiff, static early talkie in which everybody speaks in stage British and suffers in dinner jackets. Ann Harding is desperately in love with London barrister Leslie Howard. To be nearer to him, she dons a disguise (wig and spectacles) and takes a job as the governess to Howard's son. Read More

Body and Soul

Actors: Elissa Landi, Charles Farrell, Humphrey Bogart, Myrna Loy, Donald Dillaway

Synopsis: This melodrama tells the tale of young American pilots who felt strongly about WWI before the US intervened. These men decided to do their part by working with the Royal Air Force. The German forces are using observation balloons to gather information about allied activities. Several American Read More

Good Intentions

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Marguerite Churchill, Regis Toomey, Earl Foxe, Eddie Gribbon

Synopsis: In this classy crime drama, the well-spoken, leader of a sophisticated gang of gangsters use their high social status to gain access to the vaults of the local rich people. The suave ring leader smoothly moves through the aristocratic social circles, charming all those who cross his path. He falls Read More

Up the River

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Claire Luce, Warren Hymer, Humphrey Bogart, William Collier, Sr.

Synopsis: The one-time-only combination of director John Ford and actors Spencer Tracy (in his first film) and Humphrey Bogart (in his second) should be recommendation enough for the offbeat comedy-drama Up the River. Tracy and Warren Hymer play Saint Louis and Dannemora Dan, two hard-boiled but likeable Read More

Men Without Women

Actors: Kenneth MacKenna, Frank Albertson, Paul Page, Warren Hymer, Walter McGrail

Synopsis: John Ford directed this undersea adventure from the early days of the sound era; it features talking sequences along silent passages with intertitles. After a brief shore leave in Singapore, where sailors have the opportunity to slake their thirsts for both liquor and women, the crew of a U.S. Read More

Born Reckless

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Lee Tracy, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: This drama is set during the mid Twenties when gangsters were a bit more genteel than their 1930s counterparts. Based on a true story, it profiles the experiences of a young gangster who, after getting caught during a robbery is given a choice: he can either go to prison or join the military and Read More

Hell's Angels

Actors: Ben Lyon, James Hall, Jean Harlow, John Darrow, Lucien Prival

Synopsis: No one was surprised in 1929 that aviation mogul Howard R. Hughes would produce a paean to World War I flying aces like Hell's Angels. Given Hughes' comparative inexperience as a moviemaker, however, everyone was taken slightly aback that the finished film was as good as it was. The very American Ben Lyon Read More

From Headquarters

Actors: Monte Blue, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Gladys Brockwell, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: Most of Monte Blue's talking-picture career was spent in small character roles, but he was still regarded as a bankable leading man when he appeared in the early Warner Bros. talkie From Headquarters. Blue is cast as gutsy U.S. Marine Captain Slappy Smith, assigned to rescue a passel of tourists Read More

The Black Watch

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Myrna Loy, David Rollins, Roy D'Arcy, Lumsden Hare, Walter Long

Synopsis: In this early talkie from director John Ford, a Scottish captain and his regiment are sent to India during WW I and assigned to quell a native uprising in the Northern mountains. Unfortunately, soon after arriving, he gets drunk and seemingly kills another officer during a barroom fight. He Read More

Mother Machree

Actors: Belle Bennett, Philippe DeLacy, Neil Hamilton, Victor McLaglen, Ted McNamara

Synopsis: Technically, Mother Machree was director John Ford's first sound film -- even though the sound was limited to a Fox Movietone musical score and sound-effects track. The story begins in a tiny Irish village at the turn of the century. Having lost her husband to a lightning storm, Ellen McHugh (Belle Bennett Read More

One of the Bravest

Actors: Ralph Lewis, Claire McDowell, Edward Hearn, Marion Mack

Synopsis: Another variation on Abie's Irish Rose, the low-budget One of the Bravest focuses on the romance between Irish fireman Dan Kelly (Edward Hearn) and Jewish lass Sarah Levin (Marion Mack, best remembered as Buster Keaton's vis-a-vis in The General). When money raised for the Fireman's Ball turns up Read More

Serving Two Masters

Synopsis: Josephine Earle stars in this drama about a wife whose husband won't allow her to help with his business ventures. When the husband is on the verge of financial ruin, she comes to his rescue with money she made as a dressmaker without his knowledge. Her financial prowess and common sense helps Read More

Walls of Prejudice