Stanley RidgesFilmography

Paid in Full

Actors: Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, Diana Lynn, Eve Arden, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Lizabeth Scott and Diana Lynn are both effectively cast against type in Paid in Full. Scott plays Jane Langley, the spectacularly self-sacrificial older sister of selfish, reckless Nancy Langley (Lynn). Though she is in love with Bill Prentice (Robert Cummings), Jane gives him up to Nancy. And Read More

No Way Out

Actors: Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, Stephen McNally, Sidney Poitier, Mildred Joanne Smith

Synopsis: A pioneering film about racial tensions, No Way Out stars Richard Widmark as a criminal named Ray Biddle, who despises African-Americans. Sidney Poitier (in his screen debut) is the black doctor, Luther Brooks, assigned to take care of the wounded Ray. Dr. Brooks, hired by the police hospital as Read More

Studio One: The Man Who Had Influence

Actors: Robert Sterling, Eva Marie Saint, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: When the privileged son of a prominent politician is accused of murder, he learns an important lesson in the price of living a high-profile life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide Read More

Task Force

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jane Wyatt, Wayne Morris, Walter Brennan, Julie London

Synopsis: In pageant-like fashion, Warner Bros.' Task Force traces the history of the American aircraft carrier, as experienced by a group of naval air aces. Gary Cooper plays Admiral Jonathan L. Scott, who on the verge of retirement remembers his struggle to win recognition of the importance of aircraft Read More

The File on Thelma Jordon

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Paul Kelly, Joan Tetzel, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: No one is as good as Barbara Stanwyck when she's bad. Here Stanwyck plays Thelma Jordon, a woman who late one night shows up in the office of happily married Assistant DA Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) to seek help in solving the string of robberies at her wealthy aunt's estate. Before Cleve can Read More

Streets of Laredo

Actors: William Holden, William Bendix, MacDonald Carey, Mona Freeman, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Streets of Laredo is a streamlined and Technicolorful remake of Paramount's 1936 box-office champ The Texas Rangers. William Holden, William Bendix and MacDonald Carey star as roguish outlaws Jim Dawkins, Wahoo Jones and Lorn Remming. After rescuing a little girl named Rannie Carter from a wicked Read More

You're My Everything

Actors: Dan Dailey, Anne Baxter, Anne Revere, Shari Robinson, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Set in the 1920s and 1930s, 20th Century-Fox's You're My Everything borrows elements from several true-life showbiz stories, include the rise to fame of Fox's own Shirley Temple. Vaudeville hoofer Timothy O'Connor (Dan Dailey) sweeps proper New England gal Hannah Adams (Anne Baxter) off her feet. Read More

Studio One: Two Sharp Knives

Synopsis: Based on the writings of popular crime author Dashiell Hammett, this installment of the Emmy Award-winning Westinghouse Studio One series tells the tale of a slain murderer, and the subsequent hunt to capture the killer who slew him. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide Read More

An Act of Murder

Actors: Fredric March, Edmond O'Brien, Florence Eldridge, Geraldine Brooks, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: In this provocative drama, a stern hard-liner judge commits euthanasia to save his terminally ill wife from further suffering. He decides to kill her by driving the both of them off a cliff. He succeeds in ending her pain, but unfortunately he survives and ends up turning himself in with a full Read More

Possessed

Actors: Griff Barnett, Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Monte Blue, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks, Nana Bryant, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: We first meet Joan Crawford, star of the moody flashbackfest Possessed, wandering aimlessly through the city streets, moaning "David....David." She goes to pieces in public and is rushed to the mental ward, where a team of psychiatrists try to find out who she is and where she's been. Who she is Read More

Canyon Passage

Actors: Dana Andrews, Ward Bond, Lloyd Bridges, Hoagy Carmichael, Victor Cutler

Synopsis: Dana Andrews -- in one of the best performances of his career -- plays Logan Stuart, a bold, ambitious general store and freight company owner based in the mining settlement of Jacksonville, OR, in 1856. He and his best friend, local banker and express company owner George Camrose (Brian Donlevy) Read More

Mister Ace

Mr. Ace

Actors: George Raft, Sylvia Sidney, Stanley Ridges, Sara Haden, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: His movie career on a roll since the surprise success of 1946's Johnny Angel, George Raft was starred in the Benedict Bogeaus production Mister Ace. Raft plays Eddie Ace, the head man of a crooked political machine who intends to scuttle the gubernatorial campaign of female senator Margaret Read More

Because of Him

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Franchot Tone, Charles Laughton, Helen Broderick, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: As appealing as ever in 1946, Deanna Durbin was admittedly getting a bit long in tooth for her ingenue-like role in Because of Him. Durbin is cast as Kim Walker, an aspiring actress determined to become the protegee of famed Broadway actor/producer Sheridan (Charles Laughton). The only person not Read More

God Is My Co-Pilot

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Dane Clark, Raymond Massey, Alan Hale, Andrea King

Synopsis: Such was the prevailing mood among filmgoers in 1943 that God Is My Co-Pilot was allowed to show a spiritual shaft of light in the sky and several scenes of enemy pilots spitting up blood when shot down by American bullets. The film was based on the best-selling novel by fighter pilot Col. Robert Read More

Captain Eddie

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Lynn Bari, Charles Bickford, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Nolan

Synopsis: Famed WW1 aviator Eddie Rickenbacker once more entered the public's consciousness during WW2 when, while serving as an Air Force officer, he and several other pilots crashed into the Pacific. While the world anxiously awaited news of his fate, Rickenbacker and a handful of survivors floated for 19 Read More

The Phantom Speaks

Actors: Stanley Ridges, Lynne Roberts, Tom Powers, Charlotte Wynters

Synopsis: The ever-reliable Richard Arlen tops the cast of Republic's The Phantom Speaks. Arlen plays a reporter investigating a series of baffling crimes. It would seem that notorious criminal Tom Powers is the culprit...except that Powers has been executed. The audience learns early on that Powers has Read More

I'll Be Seeing You

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Spring Byington, Tom Tully

Synopsis: Ginger Rogers gives a dramatic performance in this moving romantic drama in which a woman named Mary Marshall, who was convicted of manslaughter (she defended herself when her lecherous boss attempted to rape her and she accidentally killed him), is granted a ten-day furlough for Christmas to Read More

The Story of Dr. Wassell

Actors: Gary Cooper, Laraine Day, Signe Hasso, Dennis O'Keefe, Carol Thurston

Synopsis: The genesis of The Story of Dr. Wassell is said to have been a story told by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to director Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper stars as Corydon M. Wassell, a real-life country doctor from Arkansas who worked as a medical missionary in China in the years prior to WWII. Read More

The Suspect

Actors: Charles Laughton, Ella Raines, Dean Harens, Rosalind Ivan, Stanley Ridges, Henry Daniell

Synopsis: The Suspect is a well turned out period melodrama, with an excellent leading performance by Charles Laughton. He plays an amiable, hopelessly henpecked shopkeeper who yearns for the affections of pretty stenographer Ella Raines. When he is pushed to brink by wife Rosalind Ivan, Laughton kills her Read More

The Master Race

Actors: George Coulouris, Osa Massen, Stanley Ridges, Carl Esmond, Lloyd Bridges, Nancy Gates

Synopsis: The Master Race argues persuasively that, although it appeared that the Nazis would lose WW2, it was foolish to assume that Hitler's legacy would not insinuate itself into the postwar era. Nazi bigwig Von Beck (George Coulouris) arrives in a small Belgian village on the eve of its liberation by Read More

Wilson

Actors: Alexander Knox, Charles Coburn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Thomas Mitchell, Ruth Nelson, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Producer Darryl F. Zanuck had high hopes that Wilson would immortalize him in the manner that Gone With the Wind did for David O. Selznick. The notion of bringing the life story of Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States, to the big screen was a labor of love for Zanuck, and Read More

False Faces

Actors: Stanley Ridges, Rex Williams, Veda Ann Borg, Janet Shaw

Synopsis: Republic's False Faces is a choice example of wartime "victory casting", with all the male cast members drawn from the ranks of the undraftable. Rex Williams plays morose saloon patron Craig Harding, who is on hand during a barroom brawl which leads to the death of songstress Joyce Ford (Veda Ann Read More

Air Force

Actors: John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Harry Carey, Charles Drake

Synopsis: On December 6, 1941, a squadron of nine B-17 bombers takes off for Hickam Field, HI. The crew of the Mary Ann, including two new men, assistant radio man Private Chester (Ray Montgomery) and gunner Sergeant Joe Winocki (John Garfield), assembles for the flight, and in the first 20 minutes, the Read More

Tarzan Triumphs

Actors: Johnny Weissmuller, Johnny Sheffield, Frances Gifford, Stanley Ridges, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: World War II rears its ugly head in this patriotic (if somewhat nonsensical) Tarzan picture. When a Nazi pilot (Rex Williams) crash lands in the jungle, he is nursed back to health by Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) and Boy (Johnny Sheffield). The isolationist ape man is vaguely aware that the Nazi is Read More

This Is the Army

Actors: George Murphy, Joan Leslie, Ronald Reagan, George Tobias, Alan Hale, Charles Butterworth, Julie Oshins

Synopsis: The splashy, star-studded This is the Army is based on the Irving Berlin Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was a reworking of Berlin's WW1 "barracks musical" Yip Yip Yaphank. In both instances, the cast was largely comprised of genuine servicemen, many of them either recently Read More

The Big Shot

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Irene Manning, Richard Travis, Susan Peters, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Just because Humphrey Bogart had been promoted to the A-list by way of The Maltese Falcon (1941), that didn't mean that he was completely free of such minor potboilers as The Big Shot. Bogart stars as mob leader Duke Berne, a three-time loser who tries in vain to reorganize his old gang upon being Read More

To Be or Not to Be

Actors: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill

Synopsis: Ernst Lubitsch directs the 1942 political satire classic To Be or Not to Be, which marked the final screen appearance of comedienne Carole Lombard. In Warsaw at the beginning of WWII, Maria Tura (Lombard) and husband Joseph (Jack Benny) perform anti-Nazi plays with their theater troupe until they Read More

The Lady Is Willing

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Fred MacMurray, Aline MacMahon, Arline Judge, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Mitchell Leisen directed this romantic comedy with melodramatic overtones, starring Marlene Dietrich in a sympathetic role as famed stage star Elizabeth Madden. Elizabeth longs for motherhood but has no husband. Her desire appears to be fulfilled when she finds an abandoned baby, but she doesn't Read More

Eagle Squadron

Actors: Robert Stack, Diana Barrymore, John Loder, Eddie Albert, Nigel Bruce

Synopsis: With America's Air Force not completely mobilized in mid-1942, Universal paid tribute to those foresighted Yankee flyboys who joined England's Royal Air Force before America's entry into WW2 in Eagle Squadron. Robert Stack stars as Chuck Brewer, one of several US flyers participating in RAF Read More

Eyes in the Night

Actors: Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Katherine Emery, Horace McNally, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Edward Arnold made the first of his two screen appearances as Bayard Kendrick's blind detective Captain Duncan McLain in MGM's Eyes in the Night. The plot is set in motion by Norma Lawry (Ann Harding), whose stepdaughter Barbara (Donna Reed) has been keeping company with washed-up actor Paul Read More

Mr. District Attorney

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Florence Rice, Peter Lorre, Stanley Ridges, Minor Watson

Synopsis: There were two separate 1940s film series inspired by Philips H. Lord's radio weekly Mr. District Attorney; the first was produced by Republic, the second by Paramount's Pine-Thomas unit. Republic's inaugural entry, appropriately titled Mr. District Attorney, eschews the sobriety of the radio Read More

The Sea Wolf

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Alexander Knox, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: The fifth film version of Jack London's The Sea Wolf stars Edward G. Robinson as "premature fascist" Wolf Larsen. The captain of the scavenger ship Ghost, Larsen is a heartless tyrant who can tolerate no sign of weakness in anyone. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" is Larsen's Read More

Sergeant York

Actors: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, Ward Bond, Margaret Wycherly, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: When World War I hero Alvin York agreed to sell the movie rights to his life story to Warner Bros., it was on three conditions: (1) That the film contains no phony heroics, (2) that Mrs.York not be played by a Hollywood "glamour girl" and (3) That Gary Cooper portray York on screen. All three Read More

They Died With Their Boots On

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy, Regis Toomey, Charles Grapewin, Gene Lockhart, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Though history is distorted almost beyond recognition in Warner Bros.' They Died With Their Boots On, audiences in 1941 ate it up like cotton candy. In the gospel according to Warners, General George Armstrong Custer (Errol Flynn) is neither an arrogant fool nor a rabid Indian hater. Instead, he Read More

Black Friday

Actors: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges, Anne Nagel, Anne Gwynne

Synopsis: Told in flashback as Dr. Ernest Sovac (Boris Karloff) is marched into the gas chamber, Black Friday concerns kindly college professor George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), who is seriously injured when he is caught in the middle of a gangster shootout. Kingsley's best friend Sovac performs an Read More

I Stole a Million

Actors: George Raft, Claire Trevor, Dick Foran, Henry Armetta, Victor Jory

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a grizzled cabbie is scammed out of his life savings by a fake finance company. He tries to no avail to get police assistance. Finally he becomes a wanted criminal and escapes to California where he meets the girl who will become his wife. She helps him go straight by helping Read More

Espionage Agent

Actors: Joel McCrea, Brenda Marshall, Jeffrey Lynn, George Bancroft, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Unlike many another pre-WW II spy melodramas, Espionage Agent clearly identifies the villains as Germans. Joel McCrea plays Barry Corvall, the son of a recently deceased US diplomat. Boarding a Berlin-bound train, Corvall attempts to swipe a briefcase stuffed with documents which will prove that Read More

Union Pacific

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston, Lynne Overman, Brian Donlevy

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille takes us back to the 1860s, then rebuilds the first intercontinental railroad in Union Pacific. The real-life spectacle is occasionally interrupted by the fictional adventures of railroad overseer Joel McCrea, postmistress Barbara Stanwyck (with an incredible Irish brogue), and Read More

Dust Be My Destiny

Actors: John Garfield, Priscilla Lane, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Billy Halop

Synopsis: John Garfield once more plays a social outcast who's had nothing but lousy breaks. Released from prison for a crime he didn't commit, Garfield is promptly arrested as a vagrant and sent to a work farm. He falls in love with Priscilla Lane, stepdaughter of the farm's no-good foreman. Garfield Read More

Each Dawn I Die

Actors: James Cagney, George Raft, Jane Bryan, George Bancroft, Victor Jory, "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom

Synopsis: Otis Ferguson has said of Each Dawn I Die that "the story is of the kind you would have to see to disbelieve." And to be sure, the film is nothing more than a sampler of '30s prison-film conventions. But with the brilliant acting by James Cagney and the fast-paced and hard-edged direction of William Keighley Read More

Land of Liberty

Synopsis: Originally designed for exhibition at the 1939 World's Fair, Land of Liberty is a 137-minute compendium of filmclips from past American historical epics. The project was sponsored by the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc. and supervised by Cecil B. DeMille, who also edited Read More

Silver on the Sage

Synopsis: A Bar-20 cattle drive ends in rustling in this fine Hopalong Cassidy Western from producer Harry Sherman. Windy (George "Gabby" Hayes) makes the mistake of accusing the buyer, Lazy-J owner Tom Hamilton (Frederick Burton), of the theft, but Lucky (Russell Hayden) suspects the foreman Dave Talbot (Stanley Ridges Read More

Nick Carter, Master Detective

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Rita Johnson, Henry Hull, Stanley Ridges, Donald Meek

Synopsis: Pulp-novel detective Nick Carter was created in the 1880s, but most film versions of the character have been updated to modern times. Such was the case with MGM's three-episode "Nick Carter" series, which got off to a good start with Nick Carter, Master Detective. Walter Pidgeon plays the title Read More

Let Us Live

Actors: Maureen O'Sullivan, Henry Fonda, Ralph Bellamy, Alan Baxter, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Despite its comparatively upbeat ending, Let Us Live is one of the darkest and gloomiest films of the late 1930s. As working stiff Brick Tennant, Henry Fonda is once more cast as a misunderstood victim of society. Held up during a robbery-murder, Brick is himself convicted of the crime on the Read More

Yellow Jack

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Andy Devine, Henry Hull

Synopsis: The Sidney Howard/Paul de Kruf Broadway play Yellow Jack was transferred to the screen by MGM in 1938. The film is set at the turn of the century, when yellow fever was the Number One killer in Latin America. Army doctors Lewis Stone, Charles Coburn and Stanley Ridges gather in Cuba to attempt to Read More

There's That Woman Again

Actors: Melvyn Douglas, Virginia Bruce, Margaret Lindsay, Stanley Ridges, Gordon Oliver

Synopsis: There's That Woman Again was the second and last entry in Columbia's own spin on MGM's "Thin Man" series. Virginia Bruce and Melvyn Douglas star as Sally and Bill Reardon, husband-and-wife private eyes (Bruce took over from Joan Blondell, who costarred with Douglas in 1938's There's Always a Read More

The Mad Miss Manton

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Wealthy socialite Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is taking her pooches for a walk in the dead of the night when she stumbles upon a dead body and a car fleeing the scene of the crime. She alerts the police but the corpse has disappeared by the time they arrive, and the lieutenant, knowing of her Read More

If I Were King

Actors: Ronald Colman, Basil Rathbone, Frances Dee, Ellen Drew, C.V. France

Synopsis: If I Were King is a delightful costume adventure tale set in 14th century France, during the reign of Louis XI, and inspired by the legend of the rebel poet François Villon, whose exploits were filmed earlier as The Beloved Rogue (1927) with John Barrymore, and later transformed into the musical Read More

Internes Can't Take Money

Actors: Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck, Lloyd Nolan, Stanley Ridges, Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton

Synopsis: Pulp fiction writer Max Brand's 1936 creation Dr. Kildare made his screen debut in the amiable person of Joel McCrea in this well-received Paramount production. Aided by Janet (Barbara Stanwyck, young Dr. Kildare saves the life of gangster boss Hanlon (Lloyd Nolan), who awards the intern $1,000 Read More

Sinner Take All

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Margaret Lindsay, Joseph Calleia, Stanley Ridges, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: Sinner Takes All shines with the production gloss only MGM could create; the prettiness of the images helps to hide the plot holes in this modest murder mystery. The members of an aristocratic family are murdered one by one, in retribution for the misdeeds of the family's black sheep. Margaret Lindsay Read More

Winterset

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Margo, Eduardo Ciannelli, John Carradine, Edward Ellis

Synopsis: Maxwell Anderson combined the Sacco-Vanzetti story with elements of the still-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, and the result was the blank-verse theatrical piece Winterset. Burgess Meredith, Margo and Eduardo Cianelli repeat their Broadway roles, respectively playing the grown son of an Read More

The Scoundrel

Actors: Noël Coward, Julie Haydon, Stanley Ridges, Martha Sleeper, Hope Williams

Synopsis: This modern "Flying Dutchman" story stars actor/playwright Noel Coward as a class-A heel. Coward uses his position as a powerful publisher to break as many hearts as is humanly possible. When Coward does his usual hatchet job on poet Julie Haydon, she plants a curse on his head, praying that he'll Read More

Crime Without Passion

Actors: Claude Rains, Margo, Whitney Bourne, Stanley Ridges, Paula Trueman

Synopsis: Crime Without Passion is an odd, almost existential murder yarn. Famed attorney Claude Rains, incensed that his mistress (Margo) has been seeing other men, kills the girl--or at least thinks he does. Rains believes he is "above" such irritations as conscience and morality, and calmly arranges to Read More

The Sign of the Cross

Actors: Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Elissa Landi, Charles Laughton, Ian Keith

Synopsis: Director Cecil B. DeMille returned to Paramount Pictures for this typically epic production, which became his first box office hit after the close of the silent era. Fredric March stars as Roman Prefect Marcus Superbus, a noble military leader of the year 64 A.D. Emperor Nero (Charles Laughton) Read More

Success

Actors: Brandon Tynan, Naomi Childers, Mary Astor, Dore Davidson, Lionel Adams

Synopsis: Moving Picture World sung the praises of this drama, adapted from the stage play by Adeline Leitzbach and Theodore Leibler Jr. "This picture has a soul," it raved, "a soul that will spell big money for the wise exhibitors." What it was, in reality, was the same old story of a drunken actor hitting Read More