Purnell Pratt Filmography

Ringside Maisie

Actors: Ann Sothern, George Murphy, Robert Sterling, Virginia O'Brien, Natalie Thompson

Synopsis: Broke and stranded once more, golden-hearted showgirl Maisie Revere (Ann Sothern) finds herself in upstate New York in general proximity with a prizefighting camp. She meets and ultimately falls in love with up-and-coming boxer Terry Dolan (played by Ann Sothern's future husband Robert Sterling). Read More

Life Begins for Andy Hardy

Actors: Lewis Stone, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Fay Holden, Ann Rutherford

Synopsis: Number ten in MGM's heart-warming (and immensely profitable) "Andy Hardy" series was the 1941 entry Life Begins for Andy Hardy. Upon his graduation from high school, Andy (Mickey Rooney) decides to seek his fortune in New York City without benefit of a college education, much to the consternation Read More

Grand Ole Opry

Actors: Leon Weaver, Frank Weaver, June Weaver, Lois Ranson

Synopsis: Though they may seem as corny as Kansas in August when seen today, the Weaver Brothers and Elviry was one of the most popular music-and-comedy aggregations on the Country-Western circuit in the early 1940s. The group consisted of Leon Weaver as Abner, Frank Weaver as Cicero (who never spoke, a la Read More

Colorado Sunset

Actors: Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, June Storey, Barbara Pepper, Larry "Buster" Crabbe

Synopsis: Gene Autry goes up against another "protection" racket in this tuneful series entry, which also features country & western singer Patsy Montana and the CBS-KMBC Texas Rangers. Doc Blair (Robert Barrat), a crooked veterinarian, is doing a good business terrorizing the local dairy farmers into Read More

My Wife's Relatives

Synopsis: My Wife's Relatives is an easy-to-take entry in Republic's "Higgins Family" series. It all begins when Joe Higgins (James Gleason), business manager of a prosperous candy-manufacturing firm, is ordered by his pompous boss Ellis (Purnell Pratt) to break up the romance between Ellis' son Bill (Henry Read More

Second Fiddle

Actors: Tyrone Power, Rudy Vallee, Edna May Oliver, Mary Healy

Synopsis: Sonja Henie, the Norwegian skating star, reportedly played second fiddle to no one at Fox in the late '30s, and this backstage musical extravaganza is all Henie. Taking a leaf from producer David O. Selznick, Consolidated Pictures send public relation expert Tyrone Power in search of an unknown to Read More

Rosalie

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Eleanor Powell, Frank Morgan, Edna May Oliver, Ray Bolger

Synopsis: More burdened with leaden production numbers than plot, Rosalie took Sigmund Romberg and George Gershwin's 1928 Broadway hit, threw out most of the songs, including "How Long Has This Been Going On?," but retained the spindly story of the incognito Princess Rosalie of Romanza (Eleanor Powell), who Read More

Come on Rangers

Actors: Roy Rogers, Mary Hart, Raymond Hatton, John Farrell MacDonald, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: This Roy Rogers musical western (his second starring vehicle for Republic) concerns itself with a group of Texas Rangers, forced to disband when Texas is admitted the Union. The state brings in members of the U.S. Cavalry to provide law enforcement in the Rangers' stead, yet the Cavalry officers Read More

Under Suspicion

Actors: Jack Holt, Katherine de Mille, Luis Alberni, Rosalind Keith, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: Jack Holt stars as Robert Bailey, a Henry Ford-like auto industrialist who decides to give his millions away to various charitable causes. Naturally, this arouses hostility amongst Bailey's friends, relatives and associates, some of whom have murder on their minds. When he elects to give away his Read More

King of Gamblers

Actors: Claire Trevor, Lloyd Nolan, Akim Tamiroff, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Helen Burgess

Synopsis: Akim Tamiroff, Paramount Pictures' resident crime lord, runs all illegal gambling activities in a major city. Reporter Lloyd Nolan struggles to get the goods on Tamiroff, but runs up against a stone wall until he meets nightclub singer Claire Trevor. Trevor is anxious to avenge the death of her Read More

High, Wide and Handsome

Actors: Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Dorothy Lamour, Elizabeth Patterson, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: High, Wide and Handsome almost defies classification: Perhaps it's best referred to as a historical musical western comedy melodrama. Irene Dunne plays an itinerant circus performer who marries oilman Randolph Scott. The couple heads to Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, where Scott is among the Read More

Join the Marines

Actors: Paul Kelly, June Travis, Purnell Pratt, Reginald Denny, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: This service comedy from the Republic Studio mills was perhaps the most aggressively titled of the "Marine Corps" film cycle of the mid-1930s (Come on Leathernecks, Pride of the Marines et. al.) Paul Kelly plays Phil Donlan, a pugnacious ex-cop and ex-Olympic athlete who is run out of New York in Read More

Night of Mystery

Actors: Grant Richards, Roscoe Karns, Helen Burgess, Ruth Coleman, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: A remake of 1929's The Greene Murder Case, Paramount's Night of Mystery was the first "Philo Vance" thriller not to use the words "Murder Case" in the title. The story is set in the Greene Mansion in midtown New York, where a passel of greedy relatives attend the wealthy and reclusive Mrs. Tobias Read More

Murder Goes to College

Actors: Roscoe Karns, Marsha Hunt, Astrid Allwyn, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: A sort of follow-up to the studio's earlier College Scandal, Paramount's Murder Goes to College once again combines homicide with higher learning. When the titular murder occurs, detective Hank Hyer (Lynne Overman) shows up to investigate, with vacationing reporter Sim Perkins (Roscoe Karns) Read More

Forlorn River

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, June Martel, John Patterson, Harvey Stephens, Chester Conklin

Synopsis: Paramount's "Zane Grey" series continued rolling onward with 1937's Forlorn River. Larry "Buster" Crabbe, a regular in the Grey films, stars as Nevada, who in the company of his sidekick Weary Pierce (Sid Saylor) searches high and low for the outlaw gang run by Les Setter (Harvey Stephens). It's Read More

The Plainsman

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Ellison, Charles Bickford, Helen Burgess

Synopsis: One is immediately aware that The Plainsman is a Cecil B. DeMille production in the opening scene, wherein President Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.), on the verge of signing crucial legislation which will determine the future of the American West, is dragged away from his Cabinet by a scolding Read More

Let's Make a Million

Actors: Edward Everett Horton, Charlotte Wynters, Porter Hall, J.M. Kerrigan, Margaret Seddon

Synopsis: In this comedy, a WWI veteran gets married after receiving his bonus money from the government. His meddlesome aunts then attempt to tell him how the tidy sum should be spent. He listens and reluctantly invests in oil. Trouble ensues when con men appear in town and attempt to sell every one phony Read More

The Return of Sophie Lang

Actors: Gertrude Michael, Guy Standing, Ray Milland, Elizabeth Patterson, Colin Tapley

Synopsis: The sequel to 1934's The Notorious Sophie Lang, The Return of Sophie Lang once more stars Gertrude Michael in the title role. Before reforming, Ms. Lang was a jewel thief; now she is the scrupulously honest traveling companion of an elderly dowager (Elizabeth Patterson). When the old lady's Read More

Dancing Feet

Actors: Ben Lyon, Joan Marsh, Eddie Nugent, Isabel Jewell, James Burke

Synopsis: Dancing Feet stars Joan Marsh as Judy, a society deb who lands a job as a dime-a-dance girl to spite her wealthy grandfather (Purnell Pratt). While her fiancé Peyton (Ben Lyon) stews, Judy strikes up a friendship with Jimmy (Eddie Nugent), a bellhop who aspires to become a vaudeville dancer. Judy Read More

Wedding Present

Actors: Joan Bennett, Cary Grant, George Bancroft, Conrad Nagel, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: In this newspaper farce, an editor loses his voice and his job after he tires of being tormented by the practical jokes of one of two reporters. The joker ends up the new editor. Soon after taking the job, his personality changes dramatically and soon he has become a pompous and excessively harsh Read More

Hollywood Boulevard

Actors: John Halliday, Marsha Hunt, Robert Cummings, C. Henry Gordon, Frieda Inescort

Synopsis: Hollywood Boulevard is a trenchant look at the underside of Tinseltown. Though the nominal hero is a disillusioned screenwriter played by Robert Cummings (whose dialogue anticipates the lines spoken by William Holden in 1950's Sunset Boulevard), the focus of the story is John Halliday as a Read More

Straight from the Shoulder

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Katherine Locke, David Holt, Andy Clyde, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: Curt Hayden (Ralph Bellamy), a witness from the mob, is hidden away in a remote mountain cabin for his own safety. Accompanying Hayden is his young son Johnny (David Holt), who resents his father for planning to remarry. But Johnny loyally rushes to his dad's defense when a pair of gunmen invade Read More

Murder with Pictures

Actors: Lew Ayres, Gail Patrick, Joyce Compton, Paul Kelly, Onslow Stevens

Synopsis: Gail Patrick plays a young woman framed for murder. Luckily the newsman on the courtroom beat is ace photographer Lew Ayres. He senses Patrick is innocent (the fact that she's a knockout has something to do with this) and vows to track down the guilty party. The Least Likely Suspect spills the 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 Man Who Reclaimed His Head

Actors: Claude Rains, Joan Bennett, Lionel Atwill, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: This truly offbeat filmization of Jean Bart's stage drama The Man Who Reclaimed His Head has been misleadingly released to TV as part of the "Shock Theater" package, even though the film is more melancholy than horrific. At the height of WW I, the trembling, near-lunatic Paul Verin (Claude Rains) Read More

It's in the Air

Actors: Jack Benny, Ted Healy, Una Merkel, Nat Pendleton, Mary Carlisle

Synopsis: Jack Benny is cast against type as a small-time con man in this lightweight MGM programmer. Whenever he manages to outsmart himself, Calvin (Benny) returns to his ever-patient wife Alice (Una Merkel) to bail him out. In dutch with the law again -- this time he's managed to offend the IRS! Read More

Magnificent Obsession

Actors: Irene Dunne, Robert Taylor, Charles Butterworth, Betty Furness, Sara Haden

Synopsis: A man who has ruined a woman's life attempts to make good on his debt to her (and his conscience) in this sudsy drama based on a best-selling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas. Bobby Merrick (Robert Taylor) is an alcoholic ne'er-do-well whose recklessness causes the death of Dr. Hudson, a respected Read More

Ladies Crave Excitement

Actors: Norman Foster, Evelyn Knapp, Esther Ralston, Eric Linden, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: Perhaps the best of Mascot Pictures' feature-film releases, Ladies Crave Excitement is also one of the fastest 69 minutes ever put on film. Norman Foster and Eddie Nugent play Don and Bob, a pair of ace newsreel cameraman for The March of Events, forever keeping one step ahead of their Read More

A Night at the Opera

Actors: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Kitty Carlisle, Walter Woolf King, Edward Keane, Sig Rumann, Allan Jones

Synopsis: Although some purists hold out for Duck Soup (1933), many Marx Brothers fans consider A Night at the Opera the team's best film. Immediately after the credits roll, we are introduced to Groucho Marx as penny-ante promoter Otis B. Driftwood. After a sumptuous dinner with a beautiful blonde at a Read More

Red Salute

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Young, Hardie Albright, Ruth Donnelly, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: Anti-Communist politics and screwball romance make strange bedfellows in this comic tale that plays like a cross between the previous year's It Happened One Night (1934) and a less-sober version of a later generation's The Way We Were (1973). Barbara Stanwyck stars as Drue Van Allen, a college Read More

Rendezvous at Midnight

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Valerie Hobson, Catherine Doucet, Irene Ware, Helen Jerome Eddy

Synopsis: Rendezvous at Midnight shifts from "low" to "drive" when corrupt city commissioner Myles Crawford (Arthur Vinton) is murdered. His assistant, Bob Edmonds (Ralph Bellamy), originally assigned to investigate the commissioner's administration, now tries to solve his murder. The prime suspect is Read More

$1,000 a Minute

Actors: Roger Pryor, Leila Hyams, Edgar Kennedy, Edward S. Brophy, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: Two rich and wealthy millionaires who have a lot of money bet that reporter Robert Pryor can't spend $720,000 in twelve hours. If you're asking "Why $720,000?", the answer is: because this Republic programmer is titled $1000 a Minute . Anyway, a couple of cops spot Pryor flashing a roll of bills Read More

The Secret Bride

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Warren William, Glenda Farrell, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: The Secret Bride is Ruth Vincent (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of Governor Vincent (Arthur Byron). Attorney general Robert Sheldon (Warren William) falls in love with Ruth and they marry, but Sheldon insists that their marriage be kept secret. It seems that the Governor has been accused of Read More

School for Girls

Actors: Sidney Fox, Paul Kelly, Lois Wilson, Toby Wing, Lucille La Verne

Synopsis: Produced by M.H. Hoffman's Liberty Pictures, School for Girls is based on Reginald Wright Kauffman's story Our Undisciplined Daughters. It all begins when innocent heroine Annette Eldridge (Sidney Fox) gets mixed up with a slimy jewel thief. Taking the rap for her boyfriend, Annette ends up doing Read More

Black Fury

Actors: Paul Muni, Karen Morley, William Gargan, Barton MacLane, John Qualen

Synopsis: Like many 1930s Warner Bros. films, Black Fury drew its inspiration from the headlines. The story is adapted from a true-life incident from 1929, wherein a striking Pennsylvania coal miner was beaten to death by three company detectives; this served as the focus for Henry R. Irving's stage play Read More

The Winning Ticket

Actors: Leo Carrillo, Louise Fazenda, Ted Healy, Irene Hervey, James Ellison

Synopsis: In this lively comedy, a humble Italian barber wins the Irish sweepstakes. Unfortunately, he has misplaced the ticket. Mayhem ensues as the family turns things topsy-turvy to find it. The baby then becomes the prime suspect for hiding it. Things get hilarious as the adults try to get the infant to Read More

Waterfront Lady

Actors: Ann Rutherford, Frank Albertson, John Farrell MacDonald, Barbara Pepper, Grant Withers

Synopsis: In her first starring role, 18-year-old Ann Rutherford plays Joan, a singer in a cheap waterfront café. Gambling-ship proprietor Ronny (Frank Albertson), on the lam from the police after accidentally shooting a treacherous underling (Grant Withers), falls in love with Joan, and he with her. Under Read More

Diamond Jim

Actors: Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur, Binnie Barnes, Cesar Romero, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Screenwriter Preston Sturges never lets the facts get in the way of a good story in this colorful filmed biography of turn-of-the-century millionaire Diamond Jim Brady. The hearty Edward Arnold stars as Brady, who parlays a small-time railroad supply firm into a thriving financial empire. Once Read More

Frisco Waterfront

Actors: Ben Lyon, Helen Twelvetrees, Rod La Rocque, Russell Hopton, James Burke

Synopsis: Frisco Waterfront stars Ben Lyon as California gubernatorial candidate Glenn Burton. A freak election-day accident at the voting booth injures both Burton and his hated opponent Dan Elliot (Rod La Roque). While hovering between life and death on the operating table, Burton flashes back to his rise Read More

Behind Green Lights

Actors: Norman Foster, Judith Allen, Sidney Blackmer, Purnell Pratt, Theodore Von Eltz

Synopsis: Ruthless criminal attorney Raymond Cortell (Sidney Blackmer) is not above bending and twisting the law to suit his purposes, making him a well-paid pariah amongst his peers. Practically the only person who believes that Cortell's tactics are ethical is his faithful assistant Mary (Judith Allen) Read More

The Casino Murder Case

Actors: Paul Lukas, Alison Skipworth, Donald Cook, Rosalind Russell, Arthur Byron

Synopsis: S. S. Van Dine's intelligent, insufferable amateur sleuth Philo Vance is the protagonist of The Casino Murder Case. Paul Lukas plays Vance, who is brought to the mansion of a wealthy, eccentric widow (Alison Skipworth) by a mysterious unsigned letter. Several murders are committed in the elderly Read More

Death Flies East

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Florence Rice, Raymond Walburn, Geneva Mitchell

Synopsis: Two of Hollywood's duller actors, Conrad Nagel and Florence Rice, star in this overly complicated melodrama from Columbia Pictures. The latter plays Evelyn Vail, a nurse convicted of poisoning a patient. Out on parole, Evelyn decides to fly to Sing-Sing and confront death row inmate Carl Peters Read More

Lazy River

Actors: Jean Parker, Robert Young, Ted Healy, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: Based on Lea David Freeman's play Ruby, Lazy River takes place somewhere in the Mississippi River Valley. Jean Parker plays Sarah, a young Bayou girl who tries to guide three ex-convicts to moral redemption. Two of Sarah's charges, Gabby (Ted Healy) and Tiny (Nat Pendleton), seem to be beyond Read More

Name the Woman

Actors: Richard Cromwell, Arline Judge, Rita La Roy, Charles Wilson, Thomas E. Jackson

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1928, Columbia's Name the Woman is set in motion when an overenthusiastic cub reporter (Richard Cromwell) implicates an innocent woman (Arline Judge) in a well-publicized murder case. Realizing his mistake, the reporter teams up with poor woman to nab the real killer. This Read More

Midnight Alibi

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Ann Dvorak, Helen Chandler

Synopsis: In this drama, a gambler must hide-out from the mob and ends up in a spinster's apartment. The old woman, is unused to company as she has spent her life in seclusion after a failed romance in her youth. When the crime lord is killed, the gambler, his younger brother, is arrested for the murder. To Read More

Crimson Romance

Actors: Ben Lyon, Sara Maritza, Erich Von Stroheim, Hardie Albright, James Bush

Synopsis: Often written off as just another Poverty Row effort featuring a fallen-from-grace Erich Von Stroheim, Mascot Pictures' Crimson Romance is actually a slick, entertaining little drama about broken dreams and dashed ideals. When World War I breaks out, a pair of German/American lads (Ben Lyon and Hardie Albright Read More

The Hell Cat

Actors: Robert Armstrong, Ann Sothern, Ben Baker, Minna Gombell, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: Scrappy society belle Geraldine (Ann Sothern) is The Hell Cat in this peppy Columbia potboiler. Fed up with the intrusions of brash newspaper reporter Dan Collins (Robert Armstrong), Geraldine punches him in the nose -- whereupon he promptly punches her back. Feeling humiliated, Geraldine plots a Read More

The Witching Hour

Actors: Guy Standing, Judith Allen, Tom Brown, Olive Tell

Synopsis: In this courtroom thriller, a hypnotic psychic uses his gift for dubious ends by running a gambling den. The trouble begins when he accidentally hypnotizes his daughter's beau while threatening to kill a corrupt politician. The mesmerized lad actually commits the crime. He is later defended by a Read More

The Chief

Actors: Ed Wynn, Dorothy Mackaill, Charles "Chic" Sale, William "Stage" Boyd, Effie Ellsler

Synopsis: Somebody at MGM had the bright idea in 1933 to build a series of feature films around the talents of popular radio comedians. This bright idea fizzled after a handful of misbegotten epics starring the likes of Jack Pearl, aka Baron Munchausen, and Ed Wynn. The Wynn film was titled The Chief, a Read More

Pick-Up

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, George Raft, William Harrigan, Lillian Bond, Clarence H. Wilson

Synopsis: In this romantic drama, an ex-con conceals her criminal past and starts a new life with a kindly cab driver. Together, the two friends leave the city and move to the suburbs where she helps him set up an auto mechanic business. Though they are in love, they cannot marry for she is still legally Read More

I Cover the Waterfront

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ben Lyon, Ernest Torrence, Hobart Cavanaugh, Maurice Black

Synopsis: Max Miller's best-seller forms the basis of this romantic melodrama about cynical, hard-drinking reporter Joe Miller (Ben Lyon), who exploits his romance with Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert) to hand in a sensational story to his newspaper. Julie's father Eli (Ernest Torrence) is a decrepit Read More

Midshipman Jack

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Betty Furness, Frank Albertson, Arthur Lake, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: In this romance, an enrollee at the US Naval Academy finds it difficulty adjusting to the unending rules and regulations. Then he falls in lover with the commandant's daughter and almost loses his chance for a commission. Fortunately, he turns it all around, does well, and becomes an instructor Read More

Love, Honor and Oh Baby!

Actors: George "Slim" Summerville, ZaSu Pitts, George Barbier, Lucille Gleason, Veree Teasdale

Synopsis: Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts star as Mark and Connie, a pair deceptively innocent-looking con artists. Connie has made a career out of orchestrating huge lawsuits, splitting the settlements with her equally shifty lawyer Mark. Their current scheme involves the framing of pompous J. B. Ogden (George Barbier Read More

The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi

Actors: Mary Carlisle, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Charles Starrett, Florence Lake, Eddie Tamblyn

Synopsis: This musical romance is set upon a college campus and centers on a coquettish coed who promises her dates more than she cares to deliver until she meets the fraternity rowing star. The flirt is also pursued by another. Songs include: "Fraternity Walk," "It's Spring Again" (George Waggner, Ed Read More

A Shriek in the Night

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot, Arthur Hoyt, Purnell Pratt, Harvey Clark

Synopsis: The second of two low-budget murder melodramas starring Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot, A Shriek in the Night is not quite as good as the first (The Thirteenth Guest), but it far outclasses most other poverty-row thrillers of its period. The titular nocturnal shriek is heard just before a wealthy Read More