Spec O'DonnellFilmography

Laurel and Hardy's Laughing 20's

Actors: Jay Jackson, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Vivien Oakland, Glenn Tryon

Synopsis: Five of Laurel and Hardy's best features from the silent film era are compiled in this collection by Robert Youngson. Included are From Soup To Nuts, Wrong Again, The Finishing Touch, and iberty. On hand are legendary comic foils like James Findlayson and Edgar Kennedy, both masters of the "slow Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: The Horse Trader

Actors: Elinor Donahue

Synopsis: Hoping to rid Mayberry of that old eyesore cannon in the town square, Sheriff Andy fabricates a tall tale about the cannon's "celebrated" history to a potential buyer. The scheme backfires when Andy's son Opie begins to imitate his father's propensity for stretching the truth. Casey Adams, later Read More

Has Anybody Seen My Gal?

Actors: Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Charles Coburn, Lynn Bari

Synopsis: Douglas Sirk directed this frothy musical comedy set in the 1920s starring Charles Coburn as Samuel Fulton, an elderly man with a multi-million dollar fortune. With no family of his own to whom he can leave his money, Fulton is pondering what to do with his estate. Years ago, he was in love with a Read More

Deadline for Murder

Actors: Joan Blair, Larry Blake, Renee Carson, André Charlot, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: In this crime drama, two crooks dupe their friend, a professional gambler, into nipping some important government documents. The crooks then hope to sell the documents to a foreign country. The gambler gets the papers, but then realizes that he has been tricked. He enlists the aid of a detective Read More

Murder in the Music Hall

Actors: Vera Ralston, William Marshall, Helen Walker, Nancy Kelly, William Gargan

Synopsis: Most of this Republic B-plus mystery yarn is set in a penthouse, next door to a music hall where a strange song-and-dance extravaganza is being staged. This production incorporates several ice-skating sequences--a good excuse as any for the presence of leading lady Vera Hruba Ralston, Republic's Read More

Honeymoon Ahead

Synopsis: In this musical, a chorus of convicts conspires to get a paroled crooner chucked back in the clink. Songs include: "Time Will Tell," "Now And Always," "Round The Bend," and "How Lovely." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Once Upon a Time

Actors: Cary Grant, Janet Blair, James Gleason, Ted Donaldson, Howard Freeman, William Demarest

Synopsis: Based on Norman Corwin's satirical radio play My Client Curley, Once Upon a Time is an engaging bit of whimsy, completely dominated by the personality of star Cary Grant. It all begins when fly-by-night Broadway producer Jerry Flynn (Grant) learns of a trained caterpillar (!) that dances to the Read More

It Ain't Hay

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Grace McDonald, Cecil Kellaway, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In one of their most genial comedies -- based on a Damon Runyon story -- Bud Abbott and Lou Costello have to help one friend (Cecil Kellaway) replace his beloved carriage horse, and another friend (Leightno Noble) put together a US Army camp show. Through a misunderstanding, they take what they Read More

Hers to Hold

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Joseph Cotten, Charles Winninger, Evelyn Ankers, Gus Schilling

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin is all grown up in Hers to Hold, the unofficial sequel to her "Three Smart Girls" films of the 1930s. Durbin plays Penelope Craig, the starry-eyed daughter of wealthy Judson and Dorothy Craig (Charles Winninger, Nella Walker). Developing a crush on much-older playboy Bill Morley Read More

Never a Dull Moment

Actors: Harry Ritz, Jimmy Ritz, Al Ritz, Frances Langford, Mary Beth Hughes, Jack LaRue, Stuart Crawford

Synopsis: In their last starring film, The Ritz Brothers play the Three Funny Bunnies, a trio of nightclub comedians. The plot contrives to have our heroes pose as tough Chicago gangsters, which gets them mixed up with genuine hoodlums Tony (George Zucco) and Joey (Jack LaRue), a sexy pickpocket named Flo Read More

Girl Crazy

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, June Allyson, Nancy Walker, Gil Stratton, Robert E. Strickland, Rags Ragland

Synopsis: This second film version of the George and Ira Gershwin's Broadway hit Girl Crazy stars reigning MGM musical prince and princess Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The 1932 version of Girl Crazy de-emphasized the main plot, building up the comic subplot involving a timorous temporary sheriff and a Read More

Dangerously They Live

Actors: John Garfield, Nancy Coleman, Raymond Massey, Lee Patrick, Esther Dale, Moroni Olsen

Synopsis: In this wartime drama, a doctor discovers that one of his patients isn't as crazy as he thought, with dangerous consequences for the whole world. Dr. Michael Lewis (John Garfield) is an intern at a hospital where a woman named Jane (Nancy Coleman) is admitted. Jane was injured in a car wreck, and Read More

Gallant Lady

Synopsis: The lachrymose PRC drama Prison Girls was based on the Octavious Roy Cohen short story Gallant Lady, which was also the film's alternate title. In her first starring role in several years, Rose Hobart plays Rosemary Walsh, a woman doctor sentenced to a long jail term for a mercy killing. Escaping Read More

Prison Girl

Actors: Rose Hobart, Sidney Blackmer, Claire Rochelle, Lynn Starr, Jane Novak

Synopsis: In this drama, a woman performs a mercy killing and ends up in jail. To clear her name, she escapes and ends up hiding out with a kindly country doctor who helps her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour

Actors: Jimmy Lydon, Charles Smith, John Litel, Olive Blakeney, Diana Lynn

Synopsis: Adenoidal teenager Henry Aldrich (James Lydon) "gets glamour" when he wins first prize in a movie-magazine contest. Before he quite knows what's happening, Henry is whisked to Hollywood for a date with glamorous "sarong girl" Hilary Dane (Frances Gifford). All of this coincides with a local Read More

The Male Animal

Actors: Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: In this screen version of the James Thurber-Elliot Nugent Broadway play of the same name, Henry Fonda stars as bespectacled, bookish college professor Tommy Turner, who puts his career on the line by insisting upon standing up for his right to free speech. Determining to read a letter written by Read More

Sun Valley Serenade

Actors: Sonja Henie, John Payne, Glenn Miller, Milton Berle, Lynn Bari

Synopsis: Skating star Sonja Henie and the Glenn Miller Orchestra share the spotlight in Sun Valley Serenade. Henie plays a Norwegian refugee adopted by band pianist John Payne, who mistakenly thought that the full-grown Miss Henie was a 10-year-old little girl. Payne's girlfriend, Lynn Bari, is a soloist Read More

Ride, Kelly, Ride

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Marvin Stephens, Rita Quigley, Mary Healy, Richard Lane

Synopsis: Corn Cob Kelly (Marvin Stephens) is a young jockey whose ambition is dwarfed only by his ego. All set to ride in his first big race, Kelly is replaced at the last minute by a more experienced jockey. After eating several slices of humble pie, our hero manages to requalify for the contest Read More

Swing Your Lady

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Louise Fazenda, Penny Singleton, Leon Weaver, Ronald Reagan

Synopsis: This musical comedy is based on a modestly successful Broadway play and stars Humphrey Bogart as wrestling promoter Ed Hatch. Ed is in Kentucky with his dopey, muscle-bound client Joe "The Wrestling Hercules" Skopapoulous (Nat Pendleton). The two are further accompanied by Ed's assistant Shiner (Allen Jenkins Read More

The Patient in Room 18

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Eric Stanley, Patric Knowles, Rosella Towne, Jean Benedict

Synopsis: Choreographer Bobby Connolly and prolific screenwriter Crane Wilbur teamed up on the direction of Warner Bros.' The Patient in Room 18. Patric Knowles delivers a delightfully comic performance as Lance, an outwardly normal young man obsessed with detective stories. When his obsession threatens to Read More

Accidents Will Happen

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Gloria Blondell, Dick Purcell, Sheila Bromley, Addison Richards

Synopsis: Ronald Reagan is his usual sprightly self as ambitious insurance claims adjuster Eric Gregg. While diligently investigating a phony insurance racket, Gregg remains blissfully unaware that his own wife Nona (Sheila Bromley) has become deeply indebted to the crooks. Once this fact surfaces, Gregg Read More

Life Begins in College

Actors: The Ritz Brothers [Al, Jimmy, Harry], Joan Davis, Tony Martin, Gloria Stuart, Fred Stone

Synopsis: The Ritz Brothers play three goofballs working their way through college by putting in time at a tailor shop. The college football team's star player is Nat Pendleton, a wealthy Native American who has donated a large amount of money to the school. As long as Pendleton is able to play, the Read More

Blonde Trouble

Actors: Eleanore Whitney, Johnny Downs, Lynne Overman, Terry Walker, Ben Baker

Synopsis: Johnny Downs takes a break from his usual campus musicals to play a small-town songsmith in Blonde Trouble. Attempting to make it big in New York, Downs falls victim to con artists, back-stabbing agents and vainglorious "artistes." But with the help of down-to-earth Eleanor Whitney, Downs pens a Read More

Love Is on the Air

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Eddie Acuff, Robert H. Barrat, Raymond Hatton, Willard Parker

Synopsis: The first of three remakes of the 1933 Paul Muni picture Hi, Nellie, Love is on the Air is historically important as the screen debut of Ronald Reagan. In the original Hi, Nellie, a Winchellesque newspaper reporter is demoted to writing the "advice to the lovelorn" column when he steps on too many Read More

Ever Since Eve

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Marion Davies, Patsy Kelly, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: A lovely stenographer, tired of men falling all over her, tries to make herself homely in this comedy. With her horn rim specs and tweed suits, she finds that she is actually able to get some work done. She begins working as a writer's secretary to help him make his deadline. When the writer Read More

Night Club Scandal

Actors: John Barrymore, Lynne Overman, Louise Campbell, Charles Bickford, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: A remake of 1932's Guilty as Hell, Night Club Scandal also borrows a page from 1934's Murder at the Vanities by depicting the "friendly adversary" relationship between a reporter (Lynne Overman) and a cop (Charles Bickford). Top-billed John Barrymore plays a respectable doctor married to a 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

Freshman Love

Actors: Frank McHugh, Patricia Ellis, Warren Hull, Joseph Cawthorn, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In this lively campus comedy, a stern rowing coach sets up a rigorous practice schedule for his team and insists they lead strictly disciplined lives (meaning no girls and no fun) so that they will become winners and thereby save his endangered job. Unfortunately, a seductive coed keeps leading Read More

Rose Bowl

Actors: Eleanore Whitney, Tom Brown, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, William Frawley, Ben Baker

Synopsis: Actual footage of the 1936 Rose Bowl game is cleverly (if not seamlessly) integrated into the action of this sports-oriented comedy. Longtime chums Paddy O'Reilly (Tom Brown) and Dutch Schultz (Benny Baker) may be heroes of the high-school gridiron, but they're persona non grata with the girls Read More

San Francisco

Actors: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: The MGM historical "spectacular" San Francisco was allegedly based on a three-sentence synopsis, submitted verbally to producer B.F. Zeidman by studio troubleshooter Bob Hopkins. The story begins on the Barbary Coast on New Year's Eve, 1906, as rakish but likeable political boss Blackie Norton (Clark Gable Read More

One Night of Love

Actors: Grace Moore, Tullio Carminatti, Lyle Talbot, Mona Barrie, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: After several false starts, opera star Grace Moore became a motion picture success in the sublimely assembled One Night of Love. Moore opens the film by losing a radio talent contest in New York. She disconsolately heads to Europe, where the best job she can come up with is singing in a Read More

Baby Face

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Arthur Hohl, John Wayne

Synopsis: Baby Face is a good example of the kind of spitfire lead female characters that appeared in the cinema of pre-code Hollywood. Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) works as a barmaid in her father's factory-town saloon where she learns to deal with the unwanted advances of male customers. When her father Read More

Young America

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Doris Kenyon, Ralph Bellamy, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: Though Spencer Tracy is top-billed in Young America, the film is by no means a star vehicle. Tommy Conlon and Raymond Borzage (the son of director Frank Borzage) play budding juvenile delinquents Arthur and Nutty. After their latest misdemeanor, the boys are paroled by Judge Blake (Ralph Bellamy) Read More

Exposure

The Big Broadcast

Actors: Stuart Erwin, Bing Crosby, George Burns, Sharon Lynne, Gracie Allen, George Barbier, Leila Hyams

Synopsis: This early musical is a bit slim on story but features a number of vintage performances by a stellar cast, including some of the most popular radio stars of the day. George (George Burns) manages a radio station that is on the brink of bankruptcy. Leslie McWhinney (Stuart Erwin), a carefree Read More

Hello Trouble

Actors: Russell Simpson, Otto Hoffman, Wallace MacDonald, Alan Roscoe

Synopsis: In his first Western for 1932, Buck Jones went mostly for laughs playing a former Texas ranger inheriting an Arizona ranch together with an uppity girl (Lina Basquette). The will stipulates that neither may sell without the other's consent but Lina is inclined to take an offer from smooth-talking Read More

Show Girl in Hollywood

Actors: Alice White, Jack Mulhall, Blanche Sweet, Ford Sterling, John Miljan

Synopsis: This wonderful Warner Bros. epic was one of the earliest talkie musicals with a Hollywood background -- and the last of its kind until 1933's Sitting Pretty. Alice White stars as pert chorine Dixie Dugan, a character she'd played in 1928's Show Girl (and one which would spin off into a Read More

The Grand Parade

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Fred Scott, Richard Carle, Marie Astaire, Russell Powell

Synopsis: No one suffered more magnificently in the early-talkie era than the inimitable Helen Twelvetrees. In Grand Parade, the actress is cast as Molly, the sweetheart of minstrel-show performer Jack Kelly (Fred Scott). Rising to the top of his profession, Kelly plummets to the bottom thanks to his Read More

The Sophomore

Actors: Eddie Quillan, Sally O'Neil, Stanley Smith, Jeanette Loff, Russell Gleason

Synopsis: In this comedy, a college sophomore gets into deep trouble when he gambles away his tuition money on the first day of school. Now to pay for his education, he must work as a soda jerk at a local fountain. There he meets and falls in love with a pretty coed. Because the shop's owner also loves her Read More

In the Headlines

Synopsis: While investigating a double murder, reporters Grant Withers and Marian Nixon fall in love. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Hot News

Actors: Bebe Daniels, Neil Hamilton, Spec O'Donnell, Ben Hall

Danger Street

Actors: Warner Baxter, Martha Sleeper, Duke Martin, Spec O'Donnell

Vamping Venus

Actors: Charlie Murray, Thelma Todd, Spec O'Donnell

Call of the Cuckoo

Actors: Max Davidson, Lillian Elliott, Spec O'Donnell, Charley Chase, Stan Laurel

Synopsis: Jewish comic Max Davidson stars in this Hal Roach farce that would most likely have been completely forgotten had not Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Charley Chase turned up in cameo appearances. Davidson, wife Lillian Elliott, and son Spec O'Donnell are attempting to sell their house, which is Read More

We're All Gamblers

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Cullen Landis, Philo McCullough, Gertrude Claire

Synopsis: The second of Thomas Meighan's three 1927 vehicles, We're All Gamblers was also the first of two collaborations between Meighan and director James Cruze. Based on Lucky Sam McCarver, a play by Sidney Howard, the story concerns a refugee of the Lower East Side who rises to the uppermost rungs of Read More

Casey at the Bat

Actors: Wallace Beery, Ford Sterling, ZaSu Pitts, Sterling Holloway, Spec O'Donnell

Synopsis: Because of its heavy reliance on slapstick (a no-no for features in the late '20s), this picture, very loosely based on the Ernest Thayer poem, got mixed reviews. But with comedians like Wallace Beery, Ford Sterling, ZaSu Pitts, and Sterling Holloway in the cast, it's a surprise that anyone Read More

Old Ironsides

Actors: Esther Ralston, Charles Farrell, Wallace Beery, George Bancroft, George Godfrey

Synopsis: Long derided by film historians as a talented but visually unimaginative director, James Cruze made up for any and all past artistic sins with his rousing Old Ironsides. Per its title, this 11-reel silent film is set at the time of Stephen Decatur's defeat of the Barbary pirates in Tripoli. Read More

Hard Boiled

Actors: Tom Mix, Helene Chadwick, William E. Lawrence, Charles "Heinie" Conklin, Emily Fitzroy

Synopsis: Tom Mix plays an Eastern dandy who finds himself banished to a Western ranch in this routine silent Western which boasted of an above-average supporting cast. The sophisticated Helene Chadwick, a discovery of producer Samuel Goldwyn, is the rancher whom Mix constantly provokes, while William E. Lawrence Read More

Sparrows

Actors: Mary Pickford, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Roy Stewart, Mary Louise Miller, Charlotte Mineau

Synopsis: Sparrows, Mary Pickford's 1926 release, superbly combines the two elements--sentiment and adventure--that characterized Pickford's best work. At first glance, the film seems to be a horror picture, as satanic potato farmer Grimes (Gustav Von Seyfertitz) crushes a child's doll with his thumb and Read More

Private Izzy Murphy

Actors: Patsy Ruth Miller, Vera Gordon, Nat Carr, George Jessel

Synopsis: Broadway entertainer Georgie Jessel beat his "friendly rival" Al Jolson to the screen by one year in the wartime comedy drama Private Izzy Murphy. Of Jewish-Irish heritage, merchant Izzy (Jessel) falls in love with 100-percent Irish colleen Ellen Connaghan (Patsy Ruth Miller). To make her proud of Read More

The Devil's Cargo

Actors: Wallace Beery, Pauline Starke, Claire Adams, William Collier, Jr., Raymond Hatton

Synopsis: The subject matter to this Victor Fleming-directed drama is typically virile -- it takes place in Sacramento during the Gold Rush days of 1849. And the star who stands out the most is also the most manly: big Wallace Beery. John Joyce (William Collier Jr.) arrives in Sacramento with his sister Read More

Little Annie Rooney

Actors: Mary Pickford, William Haines, Walter James, Gordon Griffith, Carlo Schipa, Hugh Fay

Synopsis: Thirty-two year old Mary Pickford returned to form as America's Sweetheart as Little Annie Rooney, a tough teenager from the streets who gets into mischief with her little gang of ruffians. She has a boyfriend, Joe Kelly (William Haines), whom she is sweet on. But when her father (Walter James) is Read More

Dressmaker from Paris

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Ernest Torrence, Allan Forrest, Mildred Harris

Synopsis: While on leave of absence in Paris, American Air Force officer Billy Brent (Allan Forrest) meets Fifi (Leatrice Joy), a midinette, or dressmaker's apprentice. Although they are attracted to each other, Brent is suddenly called to the front and they lose touch. Years later, Brent is back home in Read More

Foolish Virgin

Actors: Elaine Hammerstein, Robert W. Fraser, Gladys Brockwell, Phyllis Haver

Synopsis: Robert Fraser plays a double role in this routine melodrama co-starring Elaine Hammerstein, Gladys Brockwell, and Phyllis Haver. Mary Adams (Hammerstein) is the schoolteacher who falls for a lecherous lawyer. She marries the man who saves her from the barrister, but she soon believes he is guilty Read More

The Country Kid

Actors: Wesley Barry, Spec O'Donnell, Bruce Guerin, Kate Toncray, Helen Jerome Eddy

Synopsis: Child actor Wesley Barry (who was actually 16 when he made this picture) played in several Mary Pickford films and his starring role in this drama almost seems like a male version of any number of Pickford roles. Ben Applegate (Barry) is left in charge of the farm after the death of his father and Read More