Stephen GoossonFilmography

The Gallant Blade

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Larry Parks, Marguerite Chapman, Victor Jory, George Macready, Edith King

Synopsis: Columbia kept insisting upon placing its hottest new star Larry Parks in swashbucklers, and though Parks wasn't really suited to the genre, he always strived to please. Set in 17th-century France, the film stars Parks as Lt. David Picard, a peace-loving officer who is nevertheless handy with his Read More

Relentless

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Young, Marguerite Chapman, Willard Parker, Akim Tamiroff, Barton MacLane

Synopsis: Described by one critic as a western version of The 39 Steps, Relentless stars Robert Young as a cowboy on the lam. Framed for murder, Young must find the one man who can clear him, while a posse dogs his trail. He briefly becomes an outlaw, hoping to make contact with his quarry by befriending Read More

The Loves of Carmen

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Ron Randell, Victor Jory, Luther Adler, Arnold Moss

Synopsis: Perhaps it's just as well that Columbia elected to film Prosper Merimee's Carmen without Georges Bizet's music: after all, Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford weren't exactly Leontyne Price and Robert Merrill. The Loves of Carmen is a reasonably faithful rehash of Merimee's story of the tempestuous gypsy Read More

The Lady from Shanghai

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Ted de Corsia, Glenn Anders, Gus Schilling

Synopsis: The Lady From Shanghai, a complex, involving puzzle-within-a-puzzle mystery story, is a showcase for Orson Welles, showing his singular talents and sensibilities as few other films have. The story is superficially simple: a seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles) is hired as a crew member on the yacht of Read More

To the Ends of the Earth

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, Ludwig Donath, Vladimir Sokoloff

Synopsis: The relatively relaxed movie censorship in the postwar years enabled Columbia to produce To the Ends of the Earth, a film which dealt with the previously taboo subject of drug smuggling. T-man Dick Powell is sent to several foreign locales to track down an Opium ring. The villains are subversives Read More

The Return of October

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Terry Moore, Albert Sharpe, Dame May Whitty, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: In this whimsical fantasy, a young girl suddenly discovers that her horse is really a reincarnation of her beloved uncle who upon his death bed was heard to say that if could ever come back, he would want to be a race horse that wins the Kentucky Derby. When the girl's relatives learn of her Read More

The Sign of the Ram

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Susan Peters, Alexander Knox, Phyllis Thaxter, Peggy Ann Garner, Ron Randell

Synopsis: Susan Peters, a fine actress of the 1940s whose career was curtailed by an accident which left her wheelchair-bound, utilizes her handicap to her advantage in Sign of the Ram. Peters plays an invalid wife and mother who exercises dictatorial control over all around her. Peters' loved ones are Read More

The Mating of Millie

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Ron Randell, Willard Parker, Virginia Hunter

Synopsis: So often wasted in passive roles, Evelyn Keyes is virtually the whole show in The Mating of Millie. Keyes is cast as pretty businesswoman Millie McGonigle, who hopes to fill a gap in her life by adopting orphan boy Tommy Bassett (Jimmy Hunt, future star of 1953's Invaders from Mars). But this is Read More

The Black Arrow

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Louis Hayward, Janet Blair, George Macready, Edgar Buchanan, Rhys Williams

Synopsis: This commendably short adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow stars Louis Hayward in the title role. Returning from duty in the 15th-century War of the Roses, young Richard Shelton (Hayward) learns that his estate has been claimed by his usurping uncle Sir Daniel Brackley (George Macready Read More

The Corpse Came C.O.D.

Crew: Art Director

Actors: George Brent, Joan Blondell, Adele Jergens, Jim Bannon, Leslie Brooks

Synopsis: Reminiscent of the classic "screwball" comedy-mysteries of the prewar years, Columbia's The Corpse Came C.O.D stars Warner Bros. alumni George Brent and Joan Blondell as rival Hollywood-based reporters Joe Medford and Rosemary Durant. When movie star Mona Harrison (Adele Jergens) receives a dead Read More

It Had to Be You

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Cornel Wilde, Percy Waram, Spring Byington, Ron Randell

Synopsis: A precursor of sorts to the 1999 Julia Roberts vehicle The Runaway Bride, It Had to Be You stars Ginger Rogers as Victoria Stafford, a wealthy girl who has been engaged three times, and has three times chickened out at the altar just before saying "I do." Determined to wed her fourth fiancé Read More

The Guilt of Janet Ames

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Melvyn Douglas, Sid Caesar, Betsy Blair, Nina Foch

Synopsis: In this drama, a soldier's widow, whose husband died a hero in WW II, begins a quest to find the five men whose lives were saved when her husband sacrificed his own life by taking the brunt of a hand grenade blast. Her search begins two years after the war's end, and is an attempt to see if the Read More

Framed

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan, Edgar Buchanan, Karen Morley

Synopsis: A man down on his luck runs afoul of a beautiful but dangerous woman in this superior low-budget film noir. Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford), while trained as a mining engineer, has fallen on hard times and is driving a truck when his rig breaks down in a small town. He soon meets the seductive Read More

The Swordsman

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Larry Parks, Ellen Drew, George Macready, Edgar Buchanan, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Capitalizing on Larry Parks' "overnight" success in The Jolson Story, Columbia Pictures rushed their hottest new star from one picture to another, whether he was suited to the role or not. In The Swordsman, Parks makes a valiant stab at swashbucklery, playing an 18th-century Scottish aristocrat Read More

I Love Trouble

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Franchot Tone, Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, Glenda Farrell

Synopsis: Private detective Franchot Tone is hired by a prominent politician (Tom Powers) to run a background check on the politician's wife (Lynn Merrick). Meanwhile, another client (Janet Blair) engages Tone to locate her missing sister-in-law. The two assignments merge into one before long, and Tone is Read More

Johnny O'Clock

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dick Powell, Evelyn Keyes, Lee J. Cobb, Ellen Drew, Nina Foch

Synopsis: Three years after song-and-dance man Dick Powell reshaped his nice-guy image by playing hard-boiled gumshoe Phillip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet, he returned to film noir with this crime-based thriller. Johnny O'Clock (Dick Powell) and his partner Pete Marchettis (Thomas Gomez) operate a Read More

Dead Reckoning

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Bell, Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, William Prince, George Chandler, Charles Cane, Wallace Ford, Marvin Miller

Synopsis: In Dead Reckoning, Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) recites the film's plotline to a priest in the confessional. Murdock and Johnny Drake (William Prince) are Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, en route to Washington by train. Drake hops off and disappears, leading Murdock on a hectic manhunt. Read More

Down to Earth

Crew: Art Director

Actors: James Burke, Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks, Roland Culver, Jean Donahue, William Frawley, James Gleason, Edward Everett Horton, Marc Platt

Synopsis: A semi-sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Columbia's Down to Earth is a camp- and kitsch-lover's delight. More beautiful than ever, Rita Hayworth stars as Terpsichore, the Goddess of Dance. From her perch Up Above, Terpsichore discovers that Broadway producer Danny Miller (Larry Parks) intends to Read More

Her Husband's Affairs

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lucille Ball, Nana Bryant, Franchot Tone, Edward Everett Horton, Mikhail Rasumny, Gene Lockhart, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: Lucille Ball offers a seminal version of her Lucy Ricardo TV character in Her Husband's Affairs. Ball is cast as Margaret Weldon, the wife of advertising executive William Weldon (Franchot Tone). Though Weldon is successful, Margaret can't help but feel that he'd be more successful if she were to Read More

Gallant Journey

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fernando Alvarado, Conrad Binyon, Paul E. Burns, Tommy Cook

Synopsis: Producer/director William A. Wellman also co-scripted this biopic devoted to John J. Montgomery (Glenn Ford), the unsung 19th-century innovator of glider design. Montgomery's invention of a gold separator proves lucrative, but he pours its profits into financing his legal battles over patent Read More

The Fuller Brush Man

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Red Skelton, Janet Blair, Don McGuire, Hillary Brooke, Adele Jergens

Synopsis: MGM knew it had a valuable property in Red Skelton, but the studio never really knew how to handle his unique talents -- until he was loaned out to Columbia for the hilarious, money-spinning slapstick comedy The Fuller Brush Man. The star plays Red Jones, a born screw-up who can't seem to hold Read More

The Return of Monte Cristo

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Louis Hayward, Barbara Britton, George Macready, Una O'Connor, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: Louis Hayward, star of 1940's Son of Monte Cristo, returns to Alexandre Dumas territory in Columbia's Return of Monte Cristo. This time, Hayward plays the grandson of his namesake Edmond Dantes, who, it will be recalled, was cheated out of his fortune and falsely imprisoned, only to escape and Read More

Meet Me on Broadway

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Fred Brady, Spring Byington, Jinx Falkenburg, William Forrest, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Meet Me on Broadway is a pocket Columbia musical about aspiring performers and a shoestring production (though the dialogue is careful to include a reference to Columbia's Cover Girl, just to prove that the studio was capable of an "A" product). Fred Brady plays an overbearing director who has Read More

The Walls Came Tumbling Down

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Lee Bowman, J. Edward Bromberg, Edgar Buchanan, Marguerite Chapman, Noel Cravat

Synopsis: The Columbia mystery melodrama The Walls Came Tumbling Down is regarded in many circles as star Lee Bowman's finest hour-and-a-half. Bowman is cast as Winchellesque Broadway columnist Gilbert Archer, who insists upon investigating the death of an old friend, a priest. The police insist that the Read More

The Bandit of Sherwood Forest

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Cornel Wilde, Anita Louise, Jill Esmond, Edgar Buchanan, George Macready, Henry Daniell

Synopsis: The Technicolor swashbuckler Bandit of Sherwood Forest stars Cornel Wilde as Robert of Nottingham, son of the legendary Robin Hood (Russell Hicks). Robert elects to follow in his father's footsteps when oppression rears its ugly head in the form of a despotic Regent (Henry Daniell) and his partner Read More

Renegades

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Willard Parker, Larry Parks, Edgar Buchanan, Jim Bannon

Synopsis: Whenever budget-conscious Columbia laid out good money for Technicolor in the 1940s, it was usually for a musical or an "A" western. Renegades falls into the latter category. Fresh from The Jolson Story, Larry Parks stars as the son of a notorious, Scripture-spouting outlaw (Edgar Buchanan). Parks Read More

The Jolson Story

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Larry Parks, Evelyn Keyes, William Demarest, Bill Goodwin, Ludwig Donath

Synopsis: Though legendary entertainer Al Jolson was a highly visible presence on the U.S.O. circuit during World War II, he was generally regarded as a relic of an earlier time until his movie comeback in 1945's Rhapsody in Blue. Showing up 30 minutes into this biopic of George Gershwin, Jolson literally Read More

The Thrill of Brazil

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Evelyn Keyes, Keenan Wynn, Ann Miller, Allyn Joslyn, Tito Guizar

Synopsis: This A-minus musical stars Evelyn Keyes in the uncharacteristically comic role of Vicki Dean, the divorce-bound wife of theatrical impresario Steve Farraugh (Keenan Wynn). While mounting a big musical spectacular in Brazil, Farraugh simultaneously campaigns to win back his wife. The couple Read More

Perilous Holiday

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Ruth Warrick, Alan Hale, Edgar Buchanan, Audrey Long

Synopsis: Pat O'Brien makes the casual acquaintance of fellow American Ruth Warrick while on vacation in Mexico City. What Warrick doesn't know is that O'Brien is a treasury agent, out to get expatriate counterfeiters Alan Hale and Edgar Buchanan. What O'Brien doesn't know is that Warrick is also out to get Hale Read More

One Way to Love

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Willard Parker, Marguerite Chapman, Chester Morris, Janis Carter, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: In this comedy, a Chicago team of radio scriptwriters must split up when he takes a job with his bride-to-be's father, and the other must write commercial jingles. Their agent then appears and tells them they have a $1,000 per week assignment in Tinseltown provided they work together. They accept Read More

Mr. District Attorney

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Adolphe Menjou, Marguerite Chapman, Michael O'Shea, George Coulouris

Synopsis: Columbia's Mr. District Attorney was the second attempt to launch a film series based on the popular radio series of the same name. Adolphe Menjou plays the title role, DA Craig Warren, though top billing is bestowed upon Dennis O'Keefe as Warren's assistant Steve Bennett. Resenting his boss' Read More

Gilda

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready, Joseph Calleia, Steven Geray

Synopsis: When wealthy Ballin Mundson (George Macready) rescues down at his heels gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) and invites him to the Buenos Aires casino he owns, both men get more than they wagered on. Farrell convinces Mundson to hire him as casino manager, but is shocked when Mundson introduces Read More

Tars and Spars

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Janet Blair, Alfred Drake, Marc Platt, Jeff Donnell, Sid Caesar

Synopsis: The watery world of the Coast Guard provides the setting for this musical that is loosely based on the famed Guard show Tars and Spars and makes fun of war movies. The story centers on the exploits of a heroic sailor who has never been to sea. Look for former Coast Guard sailor Sid Caesar in his Read More

Over 21

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Alexander Knox, Charles Coburn, Jeff Donnell, Loren Tindall

Synopsis: Based on a play by Ruth Gordon, Over 21 represents the felicitous teaming of two middle-aged but attractive film favorites. Alexander Knox plays newspaper editor Max Wharton, who despite his age, patriotically signs up for Officer Candidate School. The humor arises from the fact that Wharton has Read More

The Fighting Guardsman

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Willard Parker, Anita Louise, Janis Carter, John Loder, Edgar Buchanan

Synopsis: Columbia Pictures' entree into the swashbuckling genre was the opulent 18th century costumer The Fighting Guardsman. Willard Parker stars as Baron Francois de Sainte Hermaine, who is in reality the Robin Hoodlike righter-of-wrongs Roland. Robbing the wealth-laden coaches of King Louis XVI (Lloyd Read More

Counter Attack

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Paul Muni, Marguerite Chapman, Larry Parks, Philip Van Zandt, George Macready

Synopsis: This drama is based on a Broadway play, One Against Seven, which in turn is based on the Russian play Pobyeda. Set during WW II, it centers on a Russian officer, a Russian woman, and seven German soldiers who have been trapped in the ruined cellar of a bombed out factory in a Nazi-controlled town. Read More

Kiss and Tell

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Shirley Temple, Jerome Courtland, Walter Abel, Katherine Alexander, Robert Benchley

Synopsis: If there were any doubts that little Shirley Temple was all grown up by 1945, those doubts were disippated by her appearance in Columbia's Kiss and Tell. Based on the mildly risque stage comedy by F. Hugh Herbert, the film casts Temple as impulsive teenager Corliss Archer, who is the only person Read More

Tonight and Every Night

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Lee Bowman, Janet Blair, Marc Platt, Leslie Brooks, Florence Bates

Synopsis: Based on a play by Leslie Storm, Tonight and Every Night is a musical wartime morale booster in which star Rita Hayworth is but one of a lively ensemble. Set in battle-scarred Britain, the action takes place in a seedy old music hall, which never misses a performance even at the height of the Read More

Snafu

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Conrad Janis, Robert Benchley, Vera Vague, Nanette Parks, Janis Wilson

Synopsis: There were some theatres in 1946 that refused to display the anagramatic title of this film on their marquees: it was, after all, no secret that the letters S.N.A.F.U. did not precisely stand for "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up" as the studio insisted. Based on a stage play by Louis Solomon and Read More

She Wouldn't Say Yes

Crew: Art Director

Synopsis: Rosalind Russell plays yet another independent career woman in She Wouldn't Say Yes. This time she's a psychiatrist who sees no need for a man in her life. Her resolve weakens a bit when she meets Lee Bowman, a dashing combat sketch artist suffering from wartime emotional problems. Bowman falls in Read More

A Thousand and One Nights

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Cornel Wilde, Evelyn Keyes, Phil Silvers, Adele Jergens, Dusty Anderson

Synopsis: Thousand and One Nights is an occasionally strident but generally successful satire of the popular Universal Jon Hall/Maria Montez epics. Cornel Wilde stars as a twentyish Aladdin, whose magic lamp yields two genies: Collosus-like Rex Ingram (repeated the role he played in 1940's Thief of Baghdad Read More

Together Again

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Charles Coburn, Mona Freeman, Elizabeth Patterson, Jerome Courtland

Synopsis: The title Together Again referred to the fact that frequent costarsIrene Dunne and Charles Boyer were once more united on film. Dunne plays the lady mayor of a small Vermont town. Boyer portrays a big-city sculptor, hired to erect a statue in the memory of Irene's husband, the former mayor. Dunne Read More

See Here, Private Hargrove

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Robert Walker, Donna Reed, Keenan Wynn, Robert Benchley, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Newspaper reporter Marion Hargrove's best-selling novel was adapted to the screen by MGM as a vehicle for Robert Walker. The story is basically a series of humorous anecdotes about Hargrove's tenure at boot camp in the early days of World War II. Keenan Wynn is terrific as Hargrove's topkick, and Robert Benchley Read More

Swing Fever

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marilyn Maxwell, William Gargan, Lena Horne, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: In most of his movie vehicles, bandleader Kay Kyser played a bandleader named Kay Kyser. In Swing Fever, however, Kyser is cast as aspiring songwriter Lowell Blackford. Though he isn't too successful at peddling his songs, Blackford does have one unique talent: The ability to hypnotize boxer Read More

Cry Havoc

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, Ann Sothern, Joan Blondell, Fay Bainter, Marsha Hunt

Synopsis: Allen R. Kerward's flagwaving stage play Proof thro' the Night was vastly improved in its screen adaptation, which was retitled Cry Havoc. Margaret Sullavan (making her first screen appearance in two years), Joan Blondell and Ann Southern are among the appropriately deglamorized actresses playing Read More

The Little Foxes

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, Richard Carlson, Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: Playwright Lillian Hellman first wrote of the horrible Hubbard family in her 1939 play The Little Foxes. In this lavish 1941 film version, Bette Davis takes over for Broadway's Tallulah Bankhead in the role of conniving turn-of-the-century Southern aristocrat Regina Hubbard Giddens. Regina's Read More

Meet John Doe

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington

Synopsis: The first of director Frank Capra's independent productions (in partnership with Robert Riskin), Meet John Doe begins with the end of reporter Ann Mitchell's (Barbara Stanwyck) job. Fired as part of a downsizing move, she ends her last column with an imaginary letter written by "John Doe." Angered Read More

Homicide Bureau

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Rita Hayworth, Marc Lawrence, Richard Fiske, Moroni Olsen

Synopsis: On the verge of superstardom, Rita Hayworth played in scores of minor dramas like Homicide Bureau, an entertaining little crime story released a scant three months before her big breakthrough, Howard Hawk's Only Angels Have Wings. She plays J.G. Bliss, a girl scientist assigned to help the city's Read More

Juvenile Court

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Paul Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Frankie Darro, Hally Chester, Don Latorre

Synopsis: Rising star Rita Hayworth puts in a little box-office duty in the Columbia "B" Juvenile Court. The star of the proceedings is Paul Kelly as crusading public defender Gary Franklin, who hopes to establish a Police Athletic League to give street kids a new chance in life. His toughest charge is Read More

Who Killed Gail Preston?

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Don Terry, Rita Hayworth, Robert Paige, Wyn Cahoon, Gene Morgan

Synopsis: Who Killed Gail Preston? gets off to a rousing start with a nocturnal prison break which turns out to be the prelude for a nightclub musical number, masterminded by bandleader Traynor (Robert Paige). Gail Preston (Rita Hayworth), Traynor's vocalist, is much-despised by practically everyone, so it Read More

I Am the Law

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Barbara O'Neil, Wendy Barrie, Otto Kruger

Synopsis: I Am the Law is arguably the best of the late-1930s films inspired by the racket-busting career of New York district attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Edward G. Robinson switches to the right side of the law as the Dewey counterpart, here named John Lindsay (!) A feisty, no-nonsense law professor, Lindsay Read More

Holiday

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Both film versions of Phillip Barry's stage comedy Holiday have their merits, but the 1938 version has the added advantage of supercharged star power. Katharine Hepburn and Doris Nolan play Linda and Julia Seton, two daughters of a very well-to-do family. Linda feels a bit lost in the shuffle as Read More

You Can't Take It with You

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore Read More

Start Cheering

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Joan Perry, Charles Starrett

Synopsis: Start Cheering is Columbia Pictures' idea of a college musical: Practically everyone in the cast is past the age of 30. Charles Starrett plays a movie star who wearies of Hollywood and decides to get a college education. He enrolls incognito in a small university, much to the discomfort of his Read More

Girls' School

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Anne Shirley, Nan Grey, Dorothy Moore, Gloria Holden, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: In this comedy, wealthy girls attend boarding school to learn proper etiquette. The well-mannered character of the class is disrupted when one of the proper young women plans to elope with a handsome young simpleton. Unfortunately she is outfoxed by a young teacher who elopes with the boy before Read More

She Married an Artist

Crew: Art Director

Actors: John Boles, Luli Deste, Frances Drake, Helen Westley, Alex D'Arcy

Synopsis: The plot of She Married an Artist is summed up by the title, as was often the case in such 1930s romantic comedies. European import Lulli Deste plays Toni, the wife of commercial artist Lee Thornwood (John Boles). Because Thornwood's portraits of comely model Sally Dennis (Frances Drake) are in Read More

There's Always a Woman

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Joan Blondell, Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Frances Drake, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Capitalizing on the success of MGM's Thin Man series, virtually every major studio of the 1930s came up with its own husband-and-wife detective team. Columbia's entry was There's Always a Woman, starring Melvyn Douglas and Joan Blondell. Douglas and Blondell are the married proprietors of an Read More

Paid to Dance

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Don Terry, Jacqueline Wells, Rita Hayworth, Arthur Loft, Paul Stanton

Synopsis: Marked Woman was the most famous of the late-1930s films based on New York DA Thomas Dewey's attack on vice lord Lucky Luciano; Paid to Dance was among the least famous. All-purpose Columbia leading lady Jacqueline Wells plays Joan Bradley, a long-suffering hoofer in the seedy dime-a-dance joint Read More

When You're in Love

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Grace Moore, Cary Grant, Aline MacMahon, Henry Stephenson, Thomas Mitchell

Synopsis: In this tuneful, romantic drama, an Australian opera star (Grace Moore) wants to perform in a major U.S. festival but cannot enter the country unless she is married. To this end, she hires a handsome artist (Cary Grant) temporarily marry her. At first it is all strictly business, but in time, the Read More

I'll Take Romance

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Grace Moore, Melvyn Douglas, Helen Westley, Stuart Erwin, Walter Kingsford

Synopsis: Opera diva Grace Moore plays (what a stretch!) an opera diva in I'll Take Romance. Moore reneges on an agreement to open the opera season in Buenos Aires, opting instead for a better-paying job in Paris. Melvyn Douglas, acting on behalf of the Buenos Aires company, pretends to fall in love with Moore Read More

Lost Horizon

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Ronald Colman, Edward Everett Horton, H.B. Warner, Jane Wyatt, Sam Jaffe, John Howard, Margo

Synopsis: It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the Read More

It's All Yours

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Madeleine Carroll, Francis Lederer, Mischa Auer, Grace Bradley

Synopsis: In this romance, a secretary is awarded a legacy. Later she meets a male secretary who begins protecting her from an avaricious baron endeavoring to steal her money. The two rivals engage in fisticuffs, and the secretary loses. Fortunately, he wins the love of the girl. He then reveals that his Read More

The Awful Truth

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Robert (Tex) Allen, Cecil Cunningham, Mary Forbes, Alex D'Arcy

Synopsis: Leo McCarey directed this classic screwball comedy in which Cary Grant and Irene Dunne play Jerry and Lucy Warriner, a couple whose marriage is starting to fall apart. Jerry informs Lucy that he's taking a vacation alone in Florida; instead, he holes up with his buddies and plays poker for a week Read More

The Shadow

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Charles Quigley, Marc Lawrence

Synopsis: No relation to the radio program of the same name, The Shadow is a lightning-paced murder mystery with a Big Top background. Rita Hayworth plays Mary Gillespie, the young owner of a travelling circus in danger of losing financial control of her show to hissable bareback rider Peter Martinet (Donald Kirke Read More

Girls Can Play

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Charles Quigley, Rita Hayworth, John Gallaudet, George McKay

Synopsis: In this crime drama, an evil ex-con makes his living selling cheap booze masked under expensive labels. He runs a drugstore as a front and also sponsors a girl's baseball team. The story is split between the gangster's illegal activities and the action on the baseball field where the lovely Read More

Theodora Goes Wild

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell, Thurston Hall, Spring Byington, Rosalind Keith, Elizabeth Risdon

Synopsis: After six years' worth of tragic and noble roles, Irene Dunne began a new phase in her career as a top comedienne in Theodora Goes Wild. She plays a prim small-town schoolteacher, raised in an oppressive environment by two maiden aunts. Seeking surreptitious adventure, Dunne writes a steamy Read More

Pennies from Heaven

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Nydia Westman, Bing Crosby, Madge Evans, Edith Fellows, Donald Meek, John Gallaudet, Louis Armstrong, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: In his only visit to Columbia Pictures, Paramount's resident crooner Bing Crosby stars in a sentimental musical drama. In jail on a trumped-up charge, Crosby meets a condemned prisoner, and promises the doomed man to look after his little girl (Edith Fellows) when he gets out. The girl's Read More

Craig's Wife

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Rosalind Russell, John Boles, Billie Burke, Jane Darwell, Dorothy Wilson

Synopsis: After several light comedy roles, Rosalind Russell proved her salt as a dramatic film actress in this 1936 adaptation of George Kelly's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife. Russell plays Harriet Craig, whose obsession with keeping her house and its furnishings spotless has driven away most of Read More

The King Steps Out

Crew: Art Director, Set Designer

Actors: Grace Moore, Franchot Tone, Walter Connolly, Raymond Walburn, Victor Jory

Synopsis: Josef Von Sternberg, past directorial master of movie exotica, came down to earth with The King Steps Out, a major studio musical. Set in 19th century Vienna, the plot concerns a sprightly young lady (opera star Grace Moore) who wishes to rescue her sister from marrying their cousin, the "wicked" Read More

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglas Dumbrille, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in Read More

She Couldn't Take It

Crew: Art Director

Actors: George Raft, Joan Bennett, Walter Connolly, Billie Burke, Lloyd Nolan

Synopsis: When he's shipped off to prison on a tax-evasion charge, millionaire Van Dyke (Walter Connolly) breathes a sigh of relief: at least he'll be free of his dizzy, spendthrift wife (Billie Burke) and spoiled-rotten daughter Carol (Joan Bennett). Once behind bars, Van Dyke strikes up a friendship with Read More

She Married Her Boss

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Melvyn Douglas, Michael Bartlett, Raymond Walburn, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: "She" is secretary Claudette Colbert and "Her Boss" is Melvyn Douglas. Once married, Colbert discovers that Douglas expects her to work as usual. She must also contend with his wealthy, snooty family, whose most hateful member is his spoiled brat of a daughter (Edith Fellows) by a previous Read More

Crime and Punishment

Crew: Set Designer

Actors: Edward Arnold, Peter Lorre, Marian Marsh, Tala Birell, Elizabeth Risdon

Synopsis: The story goes that Peter Lorre wanted to star in a film version of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, but was certain that Columbia Pictures chieftain Harry Cohn would turn the project down flat. So Lorre hired a secretary to type up a synopsis of the story in words of one syllable then Read More

The Black Room

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Boris Karloff, Marian Marsh, Thurston Hall, Katherine de Mille

Synopsis: A curse pronounced upon land baron DeBerghmann has devastating long-range consequences for his twin sons Gregor and Anton. Twenty years later, Anton (Boris Karloff) has developed into a debauched and much-hated despot, disposing of his enemies by dumping their bodies into the titular "black room" Read More

One Night of Love

Crew: Art Director

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

It Happened One Night

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Claire McDowell, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Jameson Thomas

Synopsis: Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite her father (Walter Connolly)'s Read More

Lady for a Day

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Warren William, May Robson, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell, Ned Sparks

Synopsis: May Robson plays Apple Annie, a slatternly Broadway apple peddler. Annie has a curious setup whereby she is able to finagle other street merchants and beggars to pony up part of their weekly earnings to her--yet she never seems to spend any of the money on herself. This is because Annie has a Read More

Platinum Blonde

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Loretta Young, Robert Williams, Jean Harlow, Louise Closser Hale, Donald Dilloway, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: A rather bleak comedy-drama from Frank Capra, Platinum Blonde basically starts where Capra's later and much more buoyant It Happened One Night (1934) ends: the marriage between a brash newspaperman and a society dame. But where the latter comedy was enhanced by the director's patented optimism Read More

Just Imagine

Crew: Art Director, Set Designer

Actors: El Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan, John Garrick, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: Made in 1930, this well-known sci-fi musical chronicles the adventures of a lightning-struck man who awakens to find himself in futuristic New York City, circa 1980. He finds it a strange new world where fantastically attired people are ascribed numbers rather than names and all marriages must be Read More

Such Men Are Dangerous

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Warner Baxter, Catherine Dale Owen, Albert Conti, Hedda Hopper, Claud Allister

Synopsis: In this drama an unattractive, dour German businessman leaps out of a flying plane after learning that his wife only married him for his fortune. It appears that he has died, but in reality he has traveled to the Alps where he has his face surgically reconstructed. As he becomes more handsome, he Read More

The Princess and the Plumber

Crew: Set Designer

Actors: Charles Farrell, Maureen O'Sullivan

Synopsis: In this comedy, a plumbing magnate's son, who has started on the bottom rung of his father's business, is hired to fix the pipes in an old European castle. The castle is being let by a destitute prince and his daughter. In order to restore his fortune and prestige, the prince wants her daughter to Read More

Movietone Follies of 1930

Crew: Art Director

Actors: El Brendel, Marjorie White, Frank Richardson, Noel Francis, William Collier, Jr.

Synopsis: In the first years of the talkies, every studio drew up plans to release annual "all-star" musical spectacles, but only Fox Pictures truly stuck to the notion. A follow-up to Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, Movietone Follies of 1930 once again offers a maximum of production numbers and the barest Read More

Oh! For a Man!

Crew: Art Director

Synopsis: This sprightly romantic comedy chronicles the delightfully unlikely and tempestuous relationship between an opera diva and a sneak thief. They meet after he breaks into her home and attempts to chloroform her. She awakens and arrogantly warns him that the drug could destroy her beautiful voice. Read More

Are You There?

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Beatrice Lillie, Olga Baclanova, John Garrick, George Grossmith

Synopsis: Are You There? is a characteristically lumpy but enjoyable early-talkie musical from Fox Studios. Broadway luminary Beatrice Lillie stars as a looney lady detective with a penchant for disguises. This plot device allows her to parade her astonishing versatility in a wide array of Read More

Evangeline

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Dolores Del Rio, Roland Drew, Alec B. Francis, Donald Reed, Paul McAllister

Synopsis: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem Evangeline briefly abandoned the curriculum of English Literature 101 for the purposes of this part-talkie screen adaptation. Dolores Del Rio stars as the title character, an Acadian lass whose marriage to kinsman Gabriel (Roland Drew) is forestalled by Read More

The Trespasser

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Gloria Swanson, Robert Ames, Purnell Pratt, William Holden, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: The Trespasser was Gloria Swanson's first all-talking picture. All talk is right. Swanson plays a humble secretary who marries the son (Robert Ames) of a domineering millionaire (William Holden--no, not that William Holden). The father-in-law bullies Swanson into giving up his son; she agrees to Read More

Midnight Madness

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Jacqueline Logan, Clive Brook, Walter McGrail

Let 'er Go Gallegher

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Harrison Ford, Elinor Fair

Synopsis: Long before Richard Harding Davis' "Gallegher" stories were serialized for television by Walt Disney, popular silent-screen juvenile actor Frank Coghlan Jr. played the title role in Let 'Er Go Gallegher. A street urchin who aspires to be a detective, Gallegher (Coghlan) gets more than he bargained Read More

Man-Made Women

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Leatrice Joy, H.B. Warner, Seena Owen

Synopsis: The piquant Leatrice Joy starred in this frothy marital comedy about a wife who leaves her boring husband (John Boles) to be the companion of a kept woman (Seena Owen). The latter, however, leaves in a huff when she suspects that her gentleman friend (H.B. Warner) may be paying a bit too much Read More

Skyscraper

Crew: Art Director

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Alan Hale, Sue Carol, Alberta Vaughn

Synopsis: A pre-Hopalong Cassidy William Boyd stars in the virile Cecil B. DeMille production Skyscraper. Boyd is cast as Blondy, a New York steel riveter with a fondness for girls and practical jokes, though not necessarily in that order. Blondy decides to change his carefree ways when he falls in love Read More

Blonde for a Night

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Marie Prevost, Harrison Ford, Franklin Pangborn, Lucien Littlefield, T. Roy Barnes

Synopsis: Previously teamed for a number of boudoir farces like Getting Gertie's Garter and Up in Mabel's Room, star Marie Prevost and director E. Mason Hopper once more pooled their talents in Blonde for a Night. Prevost plays the dowdy brunette wife of roving husband Harrison Ford, who prefers to spend Read More

Cop

Crew: Art Director

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Alan Hale, Jacqueline Logan, Robert Armstrong, Tom Kennedy

Synopsis: Future "Hopalong Cassidy" William Boyd essays the title role in Pathe's The Cop. It all begins when likeable police sergeant Alan Hale Sr. is bumped off by surly scar-faced underground chieftain Robert Armstrong. Unfortunately, the authorities aren't able to pin the crime on Armstrong, so Read More

The Patent Leather Kid

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Molly O'Day, Arthur Stone, Lawford Davidson, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Such was Richard Barthelmess' popularity in 1927 that audiences were willing to sit through all 12 reels (approximately 130 minutes) of The Patent Leather Kid. Barthelmess plays a cocky prizefighter who isn't the least bit concerned when America enters World War 1. Doing his best to avoid the Read More

The Sea Hawk

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Milton Sills, Enid Bennett, Lloyd Hughes, Wallace MacDonald, Marc MacDermott

Synopsis: This 12-reel silent adaptation of The Sea Hawk is far more faithful to the Rafael Sabatini original than the 1940 Errol Flynn version. Milton Sills stars as Sir Oliver Tressilien, a wealthy English baronet who is framed for the murder of his fiancée's brother. The instigator of this outrage is Sir Read More

East Is West

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Constance Talmadge, Warner Oland, Frank Lanning

Synopsis: Although it sounds ludicrous to slap a black wig on vivacious blonde Constance Talmadge and try to pass her off as a Chinese maiden, somehow it worked in this picture, which was based on the famed play by Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymes. Talmadge didn't look particularly Asian -- and it really Read More

Oliver Twist

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Jackie Coogan, Lon Chaney, Gladys Brockwell, George Siegmann, Lionel Belmore

Synopsis: Ostensibly a vehicle for Jackie Coogan, the 1922 Oliver Twist refuses to realign the Charles Dickens novel to accommodate the personality of its star. This Frank Lloyd-directed silent film is one of the most faithful of all cinematic adaptations of the Dickens work. The orphaned Oliver, labelled a Read More

The Love Light

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Mary Pickford, Evelyn Dumo, Fred C. Thompson, Edward Phillips

Synopsis: A visually stunning if somewhat overblown melodrama, The Love Light was directed by Mary Pickford's close friend and confidante, screenwriter Frances Marion. Pickford is Angela, a young Italian lighthouse keeper who can only watch while both her brothers (Jean De Briac and Eddie Phillips) and a Read More