Sam Wood Filmography

Ambush

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, John Hodiak, Arlene Dahl, Don Taylor, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Ambush is a tight, well-paced western, expertly assembled by veteran director Sam Wood, whose last film this was. Robert Taylor stars as an Indian scout, sent to rescue a woman who is somewhere deep in Apache territory. The woman's sister, naturally, goes along for the ride: she is played by Arlene Dahl Read More

The Stratton Story

Crew: Director

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

Command Decision

Crew: Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Command Decision is a stagebound but consummately acted adaptation of William Wister Haines' Broadway play. Clark Gable, starring in the role essayed on Broadway by Paul Kelly, plays Air Force Brigadier General "Casey" Dennis. With time at a premium, Dennis sends waves of bomber squadrons into Read More

Ivy

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Sara Allgood, Joan Fontaine, Paul Cavanagh, Patric Knowles, Herbert Marshall, Isobel Elsom, Cedric Hardwicke, Lilian Fontaine

Synopsis: In this period drama, Joan Fontaine stars as Ivy Lexton, a woman with an unusual hunger for men. Though she already has a husband, Jervis (Richard Ney), and is having an affair with Roger Gretorex (Patric Knowles), Ivy becomes obsessed with Miles Rushworth (Herbert Marshall), and is determined to Read More

Heartbeat

Crew: Director

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Adolphe Menjou, Melville Cooper, Mikhail Rasumny, Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: A remake of the 1939 French film Battement de Couer, Heartbeat reunites star Ginger Rogers with her Kitty Foyle director Sam Wood. Ms. Rogers plays Arlette, a reform school alumnus who is recruited by Faginlike Professor Aristide, headmaster at a school for pickpockets. Before long, Arlette Read More

Saratoga Trunk

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Flora Robson, Jerry Austin, John Warburton

Synopsis: Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper paired off again after For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) with this overwrought melodrama based on the romance novel by Edna Ferber. Bergman plays Clio Dulaine, a beautiful half-Creole woman whose return to 1875 New Orleans from Paris creates a stir. Born out of wedlock Read More

Guest Wife

Crew: Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: This screwball comedy stars Claudette Colbert as Mary, the wife of bumbling but likeable banker Chris (Dick Foran). Foreign correspondent Joe (Don Ameche) Chris' best friend, is in danger of losing his job because he's not married (his boss insists that all his employees be married-and remember Read More

Casanova Brown

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Anita Louise, Patricia Collinge

Synopsis: When he finds out his ex-wife has just had his child and plans to give her up for adoption, a timid English instructor dashes to the child's rescue and attempts to care for her in a hotel room. Before too long, however, his new fiancee and his ex confront him and he must decide what he will do. Read More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff, Katina Paxinou, Arturo de Cordova, Vladimir Sokoloff

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a romantic drama set against the turbulent tapestry of the Spanish Civil War. Gary Cooper plays Robert Jordan, an idealistic American fighting with a Spanish guerilla band. He is assigned to blow up a crucial bridge in order to Read More

The Pride of the Yankees

Crew: Director

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

Kings Row

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Betty Field, Charles Coburn

Synopsis: A seemingly quiet Midwestern town is the hiding place for a number of sordid secrets in this melodrama based on Henry Bellamann's best-selling novel. Parris Mitchell (Scotty Beckett) is a young boy growing up in the town of King's Row, where he becomes close friends with Cassandra (Mary Thomas), a Read More

The Devil and Miss Jones

Crew: Director

Actors: Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, Robert Cummings, Edmund Gwenn, S.Z. Sakall, Spring Byington

Synopsis: The Devil and Miss Jones is a social comedy with left-wing undertones. John P. Merrick (Charles Coburn), the world's richest man, gets word that someone is trying to unionize a department store that he owns. To thwart this blatant act of democracy, Merrick changes his name and takes a menial job Read More

Our Town

Crew: Director

Actors: William Holden, Martha Scott, Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell

Synopsis: Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town is given the Hollywood treatment in this adaptation directed by Sam Wood featuring an evocative score by Aaron Copland and outstanding production design by William Cameron Menzies. Frank Craven is Mr. Morgan, the narrator and our guide through Read More

Rangers of Fortune

Crew: Director

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Albert Dekker, Gilbert Roland, Patricia Morison

Synopsis: Fred MacMurray stars as a US Army misfit who, with pals Albert Dekker and Gilbert Roland, roam the west in search of adventure. Arriving in a small town, they befriend the elderly newspaper editor (Arthur Allen) and his young granddaughter (Betty Brewer). The trio learns that the community is Read More

Kitty Foyle

Crew: Director

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, James Craig, Eduardo Ciannelli, Ernest Cossart

Synopsis: Though Ginger Rogers' starring vehicles always turned a profit for RKO Radio, many filmgoers thought of Rogers only in terms of "Fred Astaire's partner." Others considered her a delightful comedienne, but no great shakes as a dramatic actress. Thus it was both a personal and professional triumph Read More

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Donat, Greer Garson, Terry Kilburn, John Mills, Paul Henreid

Synopsis: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, based on James Hilton's novel, is a melodrama about a shy British teacher named Mr. Chipping (Robert Donat) who devotes his life to teaching "his boys" after the death of his lovely, energetic American wife Katherine (Greer Garson). Told via flashbacks, the film features an Read More

Raffles

Crew: Director

Actors: David Niven, Olivia de Havilland, Dame May Whitty, Dudley Digges, Douglas Walton

Synopsis: The fourth cinematic version of the novel Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, this romantic caper is a virtual remake of the 1930 version. David Niven stars as A.J. Raffles, a famed cricket player of English society's upper crust. Secretly, however, Raffles is a skilled cat burglar Read More

Lord Jeff

Crew: Director

Actors: Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, Charles Coburn, Herbert Mundin, Gale Sondergaard, Terry Kilburn, Peter Lawford

Synopsis: Director Sam Wood always seemed most comfortable with cozy family-oriented films like Lord Jeff. Freddie Bartholomew plays Geoffrey Braemer, a basically good kid who falls in with bad company. The orphaned Geoffrey is being used as part of jewel-theft scheme masterminded by his so-called aunt Read More

Stablemates

Crew: Director

Actors: Wallace Beery, Mickey Rooney, Arthur Hohl, Margaret Hamilton, Minor Watson

Synopsis: Stablemates is a typically treacly vehicle for Wallace Beery, who goes through his usual slobbery paces as an eternally inebriated ex-veterinarian named Tom Terry. Aspiring jockey Mickey (Mickey Rooney) idolizes Tom, who reciprocates by passing along horsemanship advice to the boy. The film's Read More

A Day at the Races

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Groucho Marx, Marx Brothers, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Allan Jones, Leonard Ceeley, Maureen O'Sullivan, Margaret Dumont

Synopsis: A Day at the Races was the Marx Brothers' follow-up to their incomparable A Night at the Opera. Groucho Marx is cast as Hugo Z. Hackenbush, a veterinarian who passes himself off as a human doctor when summoned by wealthy hypochondriac Emily Upjohn (Margaret Dumont) to take over the financially Read More

Navy Blue and Gold

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Young, James Stewart, Florence Rice, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: MGM's Navy Blue and Gold prettily dresses up some of the oldest cliches in the "military cadet" movie genre. The film charts the progress of three Annapolis "plebes," all played by actors in the age range of 24 to 30. Wisecracking Roger Ash (Robert Young) is a cynic, wide-eyed Richard Gates Jr. (Tom Brown Read More

Madame X

Crew: Director

Actors: Gladys George, John Beal, Warren William, Reginald Owen, William Henry

Synopsis: Sam Wood directed this fourth version of the Alexandre Bisson weeper, buffed to a high gloss by shimmering M.G.M. production values. Gladys George plays Jacqueline Fleuriot this time around, the wife of a diplomat who has an affair and is compelled to leave her husband and son. After abandoning Read More

Whipsaw

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Harvey Stephens, William Harrigan, Clay Clement

Synopsis: Myrna Loy plays the glamorous member of a trio of jewel thieves. G-Man Spencer Tracy goes undercover to join the gang when it transports its stolen jewels from Paris to New York. Loy falls in love with Tracy, has a change of heart, and quits the gang. But Tracy arrests her all the same when he Read More

The Unguarded Hour

Crew: Director

Actors: Franchot Tone, Loretta Young, Roland Young, Lewis Stone, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: The Unguarded Hour opens with prosecutor Sir Alan Deardon (Franchot Tone) in the midst of a murder trial. He gets his conviction, while his wife, Lady Helen (Loretta Young), sits furrow-browed on the sidelines. Helen had witnessed the murder and thus can prove that the condemned man (Dudley Read More

Let 'em Have It

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Arlen, Virginia Bruce, Alice Brady, Bruce Cabot, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: Produced independently by Edward Small, this surprisingly realistic gangster yarn stars stalwart Richard Arlen as Mal Stevens, an attorney recruited by the newly organized Federal Bureau of Investigation. After Mal and a couple of fellow recruits, Van Rensseler (Harvey Stephens) and Tex Logan Read More

A Night at the Opera

Crew: Director

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

Hollywood Party

Crew: Director

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Charles Butterworth, Polly Moran

Synopsis: Hollywood Party was planned as a lavish, star-studded MGM musical titled Hollywood Revue of 1933. Under the less-than-sterling guidance of "kicked upstairs" MGM producer Harry Rapf, production dragged on interminably, using up the talents of five directors (none of whom were credited) and Read More

Stamboul Quest

Crew: Director

Actors: Myrna Loy, George Brent, Lionel Atwill

Synopsis: The real-life career of the notorious female spy known as "Fraulein Doktor" inspired several films of the 1930s. Stamboul Quest stars Myrna Loy as a seductive espionage agent, working on behalf of the Kaiser in 1915 Istanbul. American medical student George Brent crosses Loy's path, and the two Read More

Hold Your Man

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Burgess, Muriel Kirkland

Synopsis: There's nothing wrong with Hold Your Man that a little editing wouldn't cure. Clark Gable plays a raffish young petty crook who hides out in hard-boiled Jean Harlow's apartment after he pulls off a robbery. Harlow enjoys Gable's company, and soon the two are living together. Gable puts his Read More

The Barbarian

Crew: Director

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Myrna Loy, Reginald Denny, Louise Closser Hale, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: In this drama, Diana (Myrna Loy) is a beautiful tourist from the United States who is visiting Cairo, accompanied by her Uncle Cecil (C. Aubrey Smith) and Aunt Powers (Louise Closser Hale). Diana is to meet her fiance Gerald (Reginald Denny) in Cairo, but she soon makes the aquaintance of Jamil Read More

Christopher Bean

Crew: Director

Actors: Marie Dressler, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi, Helen Shipman, Helen Mack

Synopsis: Based on the play by Sidney Howard (of Gone with the Wind and Dead End fame), Christopher Bean is a showcase for the magnificent Marie Dressler. She plays Abby, the poor but proud housekeeper of a small-town doctor (Lionel Barrymore), his wife (Beulah Bondi), and their children. Years before the Read More

Prosperity

Crew: Director

Actors: Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Anita Page, Norman Foster, Jacquie Lyn

Synopsis: A family full of financiers is saved from fiscal ruin by their resourceful matriarch. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Huddle

Crew: Director, Producer

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

Wallingford

Crew: Director

Actors: William Haines, Jimmy Durante, Ernest Torrence, Leila Hyams, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: Officially released as The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, this William Haines vehicle was snappily adapted by Charles MacArthur from the "Wallingford" short stories by George Randolph Chester. Haines of course plays the title character, a breezy con artist in league with personable Read More

The Man in Possession

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Charlotte Greenwood, Irene Purcell, C. Aubrey Smith, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: Robert Montgomery plays an aimless young man who secures a job as a bailiff's deputy. Montgomery is assigned to guard a house under writ, but when he falls for the lady of the house (Irene Purcell), the boy decides to serve as her butler to keep up her family's appearances. Throughout the film Read More

A Tailor Made Man

Crew: Director

Actors: William Haines, Dorothy Jordan, Joseph Cawthorn, Marjorie Rambeau, William Austin

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1922, the 1917 stage farce The Impostor was reheated in 1931 as the William Haines vehicle A Tailor Made Man. Essaying his usual brash wisecracker, Haines plays John Paul Bart, a pants-presser who tries to crash High Society by borrowing the dress suit owned by millionaire Read More

It's a Great Life

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Vivian Duncan, Lawrence Gray, Jed Prouty, Benny Rubin

Synopsis: The vaudeville and Broadway "sister act" of Vivien and Rosetta Duncan, best known for their characterizations of Eva and Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, star in the creaky backstage musical melodrama It's a Great Life. The ladies are cast as travelling entertainers Babe and Casey Hogan, who work their Read More

Way for a Sailor

Crew: Director

Actors: John Gilbert, Wallace Beery, Leila Hyams, Jim Tully, Polly Moran

Synopsis: In his second talkie, former silent screen lover John Gilbert plays Jack, a sailor in the merchant marine who takes time out from carousing with pals Tripod (Wallace Beery) and Ginger (Jim Tully) to woo and marry Joan (Leila Hyams), the lovely pay clerk, whom he has promised to quit the sea for Read More

Paid

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Armstrong, Marie Prevost, Kent Douglass, John Miljan

Synopsis: Paid was the third film version of the Bayard Veiller stage play Within the Law. Joan Crawford is cast as a shopgirl falsely arrested for stealing and sent to jail for three years. She swears vengeance on the store owner (Purnell Pratt), and to that end sets up a shady but legal racket wherein she Read More

They Learned About Women

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Based loosely on Waite Hoyt and Mickey Cochrane, major league baseball players moonlighting as vaudeville entertainers, this early musical comedy starred Gus Van and Joe Schenck, genuine vaudeville headliners famous for their humorous ethnic ballads. On their way to winter practice, Jack Glennon Read More

Sins of the Children

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Elliott Nugent, Leila Hyams, Clara Blandick

Synopsis: This touching drama follows the exploits of a big-hearted businessman. The financier is just about to close a major deal when he is forced to move to the desert to help his tubercular son recover. It takes two years, and during that time, the businessman's partner has written him off as a business Read More

The Girl Said No

Crew: Director

Actors: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler

Synopsis: Screenland magazine summed up the William Haines vehicle The Girl Said No thusly: "The star plays another of his cut-up roles that make the critics gnash their teeth and the audience chortle." Had this review been printed in the 1990s, the character played by Haines might have been labelled a Read More

So This Is College

Crew: Director

Actors: Elliott Nugent, Cliff Edwards, Sally Starr, Polly Moran

Synopsis: In this campus musical, the 1928 big game between USC and Stanford provides the impetus for music and mayhem. The story centers upon two USC teammates, Eddie and Biff, who share just about everything, even their girl friend, Babs. The trouble is, they don't know they are both dating Babs until Read More

Telling the World

Crew: Director

Actors: William Haines, Anita Page, Eileen Percy, Frank Currier, Polly Moran

The Latest from Paris

Crew: Director

Actors: Norma Shearer, George Sidney, Ralph Forbes, Tenen Holtz, William Bakewell

Synopsis: The Latest from Paris takes place in New York's garment district, where business rivals Blogg (George Sidney) and Littauer (Tenen Holz) have been carrying on a feud for years. In the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, heroine Ann Dolan (Norma Shearer) works for Blogg, while her sweetheart Joe Adams (Ralph Forbes Read More

Racing Romeo

Crew: Director

Actors: Red Grange, Walter Hiers, Trixie Friganza, Jobyna Ralston, Ben Hendricks, Jr.

Rookies

Crew: Director

Actors: Karl Dane, George K. Arthur, Marceline Day, Louise Lorraine

Synopsis: Gangly Karl Dane and diminutive George K. Arthur were teamed up for the first time in MGM's Rookies. Clearly conceived to cash in on the success of Paramount's Wallace Beery-Raymond Hatton service comedy Behind the Front, this Dane-Arthur vehicle finds our mismatched heroes cast as a sergeant and Read More

The Fair Co-Ed

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Marion Davies, Johnny Mack Brown, Jane Winton, Thelma Hill, Lillian Leighton

Synopsis: In the spirit of female stars both before and after her, 30-year-old Marion Davies plays a girl a decade younger than herself (actually the men are guilty of this too -- both Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd played college students while in their early 30s). Davies, fortunately, was athletic enough Read More

Fascinating Youth

Crew: Director

Actors: Ivy Harris, Mona Palma

Synopsis: Fascinating Youth was designed as a showcase for the winners of Paramount's Junior Star contest of 1926. Newcomer Charles "Buddy" Rogers heads the cast as Teddy Ward, the son of a wealthy hotelier (Ralph Lewis). Disturbed by Teddy's hedonistic lifestyle, Ward Sr. orders the boy to take over Read More

One Minute to Play

Crew: Director

Actors: Red Grange, Mary McAllister, Charles Ogle, George Wilson, Ben Hendricks, Jr.

Synopsis: Real-life college gridiron hero Red Grange heads the cast of the football drama One Minute to Play. Though his father wants him to attend Parmalee College, Red Wade (Grange) opts for Claxton U because the latter school has a better football team. Once he's enrolled, however, he is persuaded by his Read More

Re-Creation of Brian Kent

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Harold Bell Wright, a popular author during the silent era, was known for his sentimental and unsophisticated stories. This film, based on one of his novels, was a good representation of his written work. Brian Kent (Kenneth Harlan) regrets stealing money from a Chicago bank and decides to kill Read More

The Mine with the Iron Door

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This epic Western-melodrama was based on the popular novel by Harold Bell Wright. Two old prospectors, Thad Grove (Charlie Murray) and Bob Hill (Bert Woodruff) find an infant in the cabin belonging to Sonora Jack (Mitchell Lewis), a notorious bandit. The girl, Marta, grows to womanhood (to be Read More

Female

Crew: Director

Actors: Betty Compson, Warner Baxter, Noah Beery, Sr., Dorothy Cumming, Freeman Wood

Synopsis: Dalla (Betty Compson) is an untamed orphan of the South African veldt. She falls in love with Colonel Valentia, a noted English hunter (Warner Baxter), but his refined friends make fun of her crude ways. Hurt by their taunts, she decides to wed wealthy Boer Barend DeBeer (Noah Beery), under the Read More

Bluff

Crew: Director

Actors: Agnes Ayres, Antonio Moreno, Clarence Burton, Fred J. Butler

Synopsis: Agnes Ayres, who'd once been topbilled over Rudolph Valentino, was beginning the slow downward slide when she starred in Bluff. Ayres plays a young woman who must raise a great deal of money in a hurry to afford medical treatment for her brother. Thus she poses as a world-reknowned fashion Read More

Next Corner

Crew: Director

Actors: Conway Tearle, Dorothy Mackaill, Lon Chaney, Ricardo Cortez, Louise Dresser

Synopsis: American engineer Robert Maury (Conway Tearle) travels to Paris with his wife, Elsie (Dorothy Mackaill). He leaves her there while he goes to Argentina on business. Elsie, like most neglected wives (at least in films), uses this opportunity to get into mischief -- she dresses exotically and draws Read More

His Children's Children

Crew: Director

Actors: Bebe Daniels, Dorothy Mackaill, James Rennie, George Fawcett

Synopsis: It was impossible for director Sam Wood to include all of Arthur Train's sprawling novel in this picture. Instead he seems to have turned it into a rather simplistic morality play about a flapper's redemption -- the sort of subject which was common in the 1920s. Old Peter B. Kayne (George Fawcett) Read More