Tom DuganFilmography

The Belle of New York

Actors: Fred Astaire, Vera-Ellen, Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, Alice Pearce

Synopsis: A lesser Fred Astaire effort, Belle of New York is set during the turn of the century. Astaire plays a footloose and fancy-free playboy who falls in love with Salvation Army lass Vera-Ellen. To prove his worth to the girl, Astaire breaks down and gets a job. Naturally, there's plenty of Read More

You Never Can Tell

Actors: Dick Powell, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake, Joyce Holden, Albert Sharpe

Synopsis: The most delightful aspect of You Never Can Tell is the film's ability to successfully sustain its single joke for 78 minutes. The story begins when King, a German shepherd, falls heir to a fortune. Ellen Hathaway (Peggy Dow), trustee of King's estate, spends most of her time fending off would-be Read More

The Lemon Drop Kid

Actors: Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell, Lloyd Nolan, Jane Darwell, Andrea King, Fred Clark

Synopsis: Damon Runyon's Broadway fable The Lemon Drop Kid was filmed twice by Paramount Pictures, but only the 1934 version with Lee Tracy paid more than lip service to the original Runyon story. The second version, filmed in 1951, was completely retooled to accommodate the talents of Bob Hope. Known far Read More

Painting the Clouds with Sunshine

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Virginia Mayo, Gene Nelson, Lucille Norman, S.Z. Sakall

Synopsis: Painting the Clouds with Sunshine was a remake of the 1929 musical Gold Diggers of Broadway, which no longer exists for comparison (though its first remake, Gold Diggers of 1933, has been safely preserved). Carol (Virginia Mayo), Abby (Lucille Norman) and June (Virginia Gibson) arrive in Las Vegas Read More

Father Takes the Air

Actors: Raymond Walburn, Walter Catlett, Gary Gray, Florence Bates, Barbara Brown

Synopsis: In this entry in the "Henry Latham" series, set during WW II, an independent young woman takes control of a flying school after the owner is called for military duty. She is assisted by her father, his friend, and the mayor who were all fliers during WW I. They all have a rip-roarin' time until a Read More

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Betty Garrett, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: So baseball pictures never make money, eh? Try telling that to MGM, which raked in a box office gross of $4 million on their 1949 baseball musical Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Set in 1906, the film concerns the adventures and misadventures of The Wolves, a champion ball club. The team's success Read More

Tulsa

Actors: Susan Hayward, Robert Preston, Pedro Armendáriz, Lloyd Gough, Chill Wills

Synopsis: Tulsa was, in 1949, the most elaborate production released to date by the Eagle-Lion corporation-though all evidence, especially the technical credits, suggests that the film was put together at Universal-International, then merely distriibuted by Eagle-Lion (who made a fortune at the box office). Read More

On the Town

Actors: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin

Synopsis: Three sailors on a 24-hour pass -- Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) -- decide to soak up the sights and sounds of New York. Each one finds romance within those 24 hours: Gabey with aspiring dancer Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Chip with lady cabbie Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett Read More

It's a Great Feeling

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Bill Goodwin, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's future partner I.A.L. Diamond concocted the storyline for this Dennis Morgan/Jack Carson/Doris Day tunefest. Morgan and Carson, Warner Bros.' answer to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, appear as themselves. Attempting to line up a director for their next picture, the boys find themselves Read More

Dear Wife

Actors: William Holden, Joan Caulfield, Billy De Wolfe, Mona Freeman, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: A sequel to 1947's Dear Ruth, this movie has William Holden and Joan Caulfield portraying a young married couple with some definite in-law problems. When Caulfield's younger sister gets Holden to run for the State senate, a whole new kettle of worms is opened--his opponent is his Father-in-law. In Read More

Contact Man

Actors: Ray Milland, Audrey Totter, Thomas Mitchell, Geraldine Wall, George Macready

Synopsis: This modern-day "Faust" variation benefits from a superb cast. Thomas Mitchell plays Joseph Foster, an honest judge who wants to become governor. Blocked by corrupt political forces, Foster would practically have to make a deal with the Devil to reach his goal. Enter Nick Beal (Ray Milland), a Read More

Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven

Actors: Guy Madison, Diana Lynn, James Dunn, Lionel Stander, Florence Bates

Synopsis: Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven deserves a historical footnote as director William Castle's only comedy western. Future Wild Bill Hickok star Guy Madison plays Eddie Taylor, a lonesome cowboy who falls in love with city-gal Perry Dunkin (Diana Lynn). The couple "meets cute" in Brooklyn, where the two Read More

Good Sam

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ann Sheridan, Ray Collins, Edmund Lowe, Joan Lorring

Synopsis: Small-town department store manager Sam Clayton (Gary Cooper) is a born "Good Samaritan", which in his case translates as "sucker." Much to the dismay of his wife Lu (Anne Sheridan), who'd like to save up enough cash for a new house, Sam habitually gives his money away to one "deserving" soul or Read More

Half Past Midnight

Actors: Kent Taylor, Peggy Knudsen, Joe Sawyer, Walter Sande, Gil Stratton

Synopsis: In this mystery, a detective encounters a woman in a nightclub. He finds that she is being blackmailed by a dancer who is murdered that very night. Of course, the woman becomes the main suspect. She and the gumshoe team up and begin searching for the real killer. The police are in hot pursuit. It Read More

The Bride Goes Wild

Actors: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Hume Cronyn, Una Merkel

Synopsis: In this funny tale of deception and romantic fireworks, a rather prissy New England school marm finally gets a chance to achieve her dream and become a commercial artist when she is hired to illustrate the beloved "Uncle Bump's" latest children's book. She adores Bump's earlier works and is Read More

The Pilgrim Lady

Actors: William Benedict, Carlyle Blackwell, Veda Ann Borg, Paul E. Burns, Harry V. Cheshire

Synopsis: Beneath the proper, prurient exterior of a spinster college professor beats the passionate, seductive heart of a sexy romance novelist. When she finds her ribald first book approved for publication she finds herself facing a terrible dilemma. If word of her secret avocation leaks out, she could be Read More

The Senator Was Indiscreet

Actors: Rodney Bell, William Powell, Ella Raines, Whit Bissell, Oliver Blake, Arleen Whelan, Charles D. Brown, Claire Carleton, Peter Lind Hayes

Synopsis: Acclaimed playwright George S. Kaufman made his directorial debut with this broad political satire. Senator Melvin G. Ashton (William Powell) is a long-time congressman for whom the phrase "dumb as a log" would be fitting if one were not afraid of insulting the trees. After more than twenty years Read More

The Perils of Pauline

Actors: Betty Hutton, John Lund, Constance Collier, William Demarest, Billy De Wolfe

Synopsis: The third of four films bearing the title of The Perils of Pauline, this musical biopic purports to tell the life story of famed silent serial queen Pearl White. Right at the beginning, however, an introductory title informs the audience that what follows is merely "suggested" by incidents in White Read More

Song of the Thin Man

Actors: Leon Ames, Warner Anderson, William Bishop, Bruce Cowling, Bess Flowers

Synopsis: In the sixth and final Thin Man whodunit, Nick (William Powell) and Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) look into the mysterious killing of bandleader Tommy Drake (Phillip Reed). The police quickly hone in on the owner of a gambling ship, Phil Brant (Bruce Cowling), who was about to lose Drake's band to a Read More

The Fabulous Dorseys

Actors: Sara Allgood, William Bakewell, Charlie Barnet, Janet Blair

Synopsis: Based on the lives of big-band stars Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, this biographical chronicle begins with their childhood in an industrial Pennsylvania town. Encouraged in their musical talents by their father, the Dorsey brothers' sibling rivalry proves to be a stumbling block until the their father's Read More

Good News

Actors: June Allyson, Morris Ankrum, Tom Dugan, Connie Gilchrist, Jane Green

Synopsis: This second film version of the DeSylva/Brown/Henderson Broadway musical Good News may not be the best of the Arthur Freed-produced MGM musicals, but it's certainly one of the peppiest. The film is set at Tait college during the Roaring 20s. The wisp of a plot involves Tait football-star Peter Lawford Read More

Easy to Wed

Actors: Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball, Keenan Wynn, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: This Technicolor musical remake of the 1936 comedy classic Libeled Lady isn't quite up to the standards of the original, but on its own terms is quite entertaining. Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn expertly assume the roles originally played by William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow Read More

Cross My Heart

Actors: Betty Hutton, Sonny Tufts, Ruth Donnelly, Al Bridge, Iris Adrian

Synopsis: True Confession was one of the unfunniest of the "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, and its musical remake, Cross My Heart, isn't much of an improvement. Betty Hutton steps into the old Carole Lombard role as Peggy, a compulsive liar who'll do anything to help her attorney fiance Oliver Clarke (Sonny Tufts Read More

Bringing up Father

Actors: Wallace Chadwell, Joe Devlin, Mike Pat Donovan, Tom Dugan, Tim Ryan

Synopsis: Bringing Up Father was the first of a series of Monogram comedies based on the popular comic strip by George McManus. Joe Yule (aka Mickey Rooney's father) and Renie Riano star as Jiggs and Maggie, a shanty-Irish couple who suddenly become millionaires. While Jiggs remains his old, loveable self Read More

The Hoodlum Saint

Actors: William Powell, Esther Williams, Angela Lansbury, James Gleason, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: William Powell plays a cynical con man who graduates from penny-ante operations to a big-time charity racket. The scam involves collecting money on behalf of St. Dismas, bringing Powell in close contact with several men of the cloth. As the racket rolls on, Powell is touched by the sincerity of Read More

The Shadow Returns

Actors: Kane Richmond, Tom Dugan, Joseph Crehan, Pierre Watkin

Synopsis: The Shadow Returns was the first of three above-average Monogram features based on the popular radio melodrama The Shadow. Kane Richmond stars as wealthy man-about-town Lamont Cranston, who years ago in the Orient had learned the hypnotic power to "cloud men's minds," thereby transforming himself Read More

Accomplice

Actors: Richard Arlen, Veda Ann Borg, Tom Dugan, Michael Branden, Marjorie Manners

Synopsis: Accomplice was the "pilot" for a proposed PRC series based on Frank Gruber's short-tempered detective hero Simon Lash. Commendably, Richard Arlen plays Lash as written-brusque, nasty, antisocial. The plot gets under way when socialite Joyce Bonniwell (Veda Ann Borg) hires Lash to located her Read More

Johnny Comes Flying Home

Actors: Richard Crane, Faye Marlowe, Martha Stewart, Charles Russell, Roy Roberts

Synopsis: In this drama, three veteran pilots from WW II decide to start their own air freight business. In order to earn enough money, one of them takes a dangerous job as a test pilot. His very pregnant wife objects, but this does not stop him. Fortunately, another partner scams him and ends up doing the Read More

Trail of Kit Carson

Synopsis: Kit Carson appears in Trail of Kit Carson in the form of Allan "Rocky" Lane. The tall, dark and taciturn western hero spends most of his time searching for the murderer of the trailblazer partner. According to the official reports, Lane's pal died in an accident, but neither he nor we believe Read More

She Wouldn't Say Yes

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

Eadie Was a Lady

Actors: Ann Miller, Joe Besser, William Wright, Jeff Donnell, Jimmy Little

Synopsis: New chorus member Eadie Allen (Ann Miller) is the only thing that's good or lively or fresh in a run-down burlesque revue run by Tommy Farley (William Wright). He gives her a featured number and soon she's the star of the show, and he'd like to get to know her better because, conniver though he Read More

Those Endearing Young Charms

Actors: Robert Young, Laraine Day, Ann Harding, Marc Cramer, Anne Jeffreys

Synopsis: Robert Young stars as a WW2 pilot named Hank, who accompanies his pal Jerry (Bill Williams, in his film debut) on a furlough. Jerry introduces his girlfriend Helen (Laraine Day) to Hank, a notorious and unrepentent womanizer. In a twinkling, Hank tries to steal Helen away from Jerry-but succeeds Read More

Lady on a Train

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Ralph Bellamy, Edward Everett Horton, Dan Duryea, George Coulouris, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin offered her fans a change of pace in this mystery story seasoned with elements of comedy and music. Nikki Collins (Durbin) is a small-town girl visiting New York City to meet with Mr. Haskell (Edward Everett Horton), her family's attorney. As her train pulls into the station, she Read More

Don Juan Quilligan

Actors: William Bendix, Joan Blondell, Phil Silvers, Anne Revere, B.S. Pully

Synopsis: In this comedy, a barge captain with an Electra complex marries two women. He married the first because she laughed like his late mother. He married the other because she cooks like his mom. He soon finds himself in over his head. A good friend helps extricate him by devising an ingenious plot. Read More

The Kid Sister

Actors: Roger Pryor, Judy Clark, Constance Worth, Frank Jenks, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: In this comedy, a bookish kid sister reads a psychology book and comes to believe that, according to the book, she is finally "grown up." To demonstrate her new maturity she begins chasing her big sister's fiance. She then winds up locked in her room during a party held in the fiance's honor. She Read More

Earl Carroll Vanities

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Constance Moore, Eve Arden, Otto Kruger, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: Broadway producer Earl Carroll was a Ziegfeld-like entrepreneur who staged lavish revues featuring attractive young ladies. Carroll's annual "Vanities" provided story material for three Hollywood films: Murder at the Vanities (34), A Night at Earl Carroll's (40) and Earl Carroll Vanities (45). Read More

The Man Who Walked Alone

Actors: Dave "Tex" O'Brien, Kay Aldridge, Walter Catlett, Isabel Randolph

Synopsis: In this comedy drama a war hero returns home following a medical discharge and ends up entangled with a young woman speeding away from her wedding day in her fiance's car. Seeing the soldier, she gives him a ride and explains her predicament. Things get sticky when the cops capture them and accuse Read More

Tell It to a Star

Actors: Ruth Terry, Robert Livingston, Alan Mowbray, Franklin Pangborn, Isabel Randolph

Synopsis: In this musical, a humble cigarette girl dreams of auditioning for the handsome bandleader at the nightclub. Her many attempts keep failing until her uncle appears. To help her, he impersonates a colonel and uses his "influence" to get her singing with the band. Eventually their ruse is revealed Read More

Night Club Girl

Actors: Edward Norris, "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom, Judy Clark

Synopsis: Night Club Girl was designed as a feature-length "screen test" for new Universal contractee Vivian Austin. The plot is the old one about a couple of young showbiz aspirants who are given their Big Break by a hotshot journalist. In this instance, the aspirants are tapdancer Ellen (Austin) and Betty Read More

Up in Arms

Actors: Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews, Constance Dowling, Louis Calhern

Synopsis: It is said that producer Sam Goldwyn had a habit of addressing his new star of the 1940s, Danny Kaye, as "Eddie", confusing Kaye with Eddie Cantor. If true, it may be because Kaye's first starring film for Goldwyn, Up in Arms, was a remake of Cantor's Whoopee--which in turn was a musical version Read More

Gambler's Choice

Actors: Chester Morris, Nancy Kelly, Russell Hayden, Sheldon Leonard, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: Paramount's Pine-Thomas production unit continued its unbroken string of box-office successes with Gambler's Choice. Pine-Thomas perennial Chester Morris plays turn-of-the-century gambler Ross Hadley, owner of a posh gaming establishment in the heart of New York. Hadley's chief antagonist is his Read More

Swingtime Johnny

Actors: Maxene Andrews, LaVerne Andrews, Peter Cookson

Synopsis: If one were forced to choose, Swingtime Johnny may well be the best of the Andrews Sisters' 1940 "B"-musicals. Patty, Maxine and Laverne Andrews play three popular singers (what a stretch!) who do their bit for Uncle Sam by landing jobs in a defense factory. When they're not hammering and 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

In Society

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Kirby Grant, Marion Hutton, Ann Gillis

Synopsis: For their first film in a year, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello played it safe with a medley of old burlesque routines and slapstick setpieces -- and never mind a coherent plot. The boys play Eddie and Albert, a pair of plumbers hired to fix the pipes of a fancy society mansion. While a masquerade Read More

Hi, Beautiful

Actors: Martha O'Driscoll, Hattie McDaniel, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: Part of the series of Universal B-musicals teaming Martha O'Driscoll and Noah Beery Jr., this film is also a remake of the 1937 comedy Love in a Bungalow. Patty Callahan (O'Driscoll) offers residence in a model home to soldier Jeff (Beery) and soon falls in love with him. Although the pair are Read More

Ghost Catchers

Actors: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Gloria Jean, Martha O'Driscoll, Andy Devine, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: Colonel Breckinridge Marshall (Walter Catlett) of Clearwater, GA -- who puts on a big front but is actually only a step away from the poor house -- rents a luxurious townhouse in Manhattan in anticipation of the Carnegie Hall debut of his two daughters, singer Melinda (Gloria Jean) and Read More

Moon Over Las Vegas

Actors: Anne Gwynne, David Bruce, Vera Vague, Vivian Austin, Alan Dinehart

Synopsis: In this musical romance, a young couple is still in love, but find themselves facing insurmountable turmoil in their relationship. They separate and head for Vegas for a quickie divorce. The wife is counseled by another that to save the union, she must make her husband jealous. She does, romantic Read More

Home in Indiana

Actors: Walter Brennan, Lon McCallister, Jeanne Crain, June Haver, Charlotte Greenwood

Synopsis: In this touching drama, city-slicker Sparke Thorton goes to live on his aunt and uncle's horse farm in the country. The couple have basically retired from horse-breeding and only have one trotter left. Sparks fly when the young man meets the lovely Char and Cri-Cri, the two farm girls who Read More

The Thin Man Goes Home

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Gloria de Haven, Lucile Watson, Anne Revere, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: This fifth entry in MGM's off-and-on "Thin Man" series maintains the high production and story values of the first four. Per the title, retired private detective Nick Charles (William Powell) pays a visit to his home town of Sycamore Springs, with wife Nora (Myrna Loy) in tow. Poor Nick is Read More

Greenwich Village

Actors: Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, William Bendix, Vivian Blaine, Felix Bressart

Synopsis: Those willing to accept Carmen Miranda as a "typical" 1920s type will be able to swallow the rest of the lavish but rather silly 20th Century-Fox musical Greenwich Village. Most of the action takes place in a New York speakeasy managed by tough guy Danny O'Mara (William Bendix). Providing Read More

The Crystal Ball

Actors: Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, Virginia Field, William Bendix, Gladys George

Synopsis: Overloaded with unreleased films in 1942 and 1943, Paramount Pictures cleaned house by diverting several pictures to United Artists. One such effort was The Crystal Ball, wherein beauty contest loser Toni Gerard (Paulette Goddard) takes a job as a sideshow fortune teller. Subbing for the ailing Read More

Johnny Come Lately

Actors: James Cagney, Grace George, Marjorie Main, Hattie McDaniel, Marjorie Lord, Edward McNamara

Synopsis: For his first independently-produced starring effort, James Cagney chose the sentimental drama Johnny Come Lately. Cagney plays itinerant newspaperman Tom Richards, who wanders into a small corruption-ridden town. Striking up a friendship with elderly Vinnie McLeod (Grace George in her only movie Read More

No Place for a Lady

Actors: William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay, Phyllis Brooks, Dick Purcell, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: William Gargan and Margaret Lindsay, stars of Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, were reunited for the like-minded comedy/mystery No Place for a Lady. Gargan plays private eye Jess Arno, while Lindsay is Jess' ever-faithful, long-suffering fiancee June Terry. The plot gets under way when a valuable Read More

Bataan

Actors: Robert Taylor, George Murphy, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Nolan, Lee Bowman, Robert Walker

Synopsis: In 1942, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer and the United States Office of War Information collaborated on Bataan with the official goal to increase public understanding of World War II. The first war film to take place entirely on the battlefield -- with no scenes of the soldiers on leave, depictions of the Read More

Flight for Freedom

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Fred MacMurray, Herbert Marshall, Walter Kingsford

Synopsis: Flight for Freedom was an "a clef" version of the Amelia Earhart story. Rosalind Russell plays the Earhart-like aviatrix Tonie Carter, who spends the early part of the film fighting against the aviation industry's prejudice against woman pilots. Tonie establishes a reputation as "the Lady Read More

Captains of the Clouds

Actors: James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias

Synopsis: James Cagney made his first Technicolor appearance in the morale-boosting aviation flick Captains of the Clouds. Cagney plays Brian MacLean, a hotshot Canadian bush pilot who delights in stealing jobs-and women-away from his competitors. Brian is forced to shape up in a hurry when he's assigned to Read More

The Major and the Minor

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Diana Lynn, Robert Benchley, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: A woman's attempt to disguise herself as an underage girl mushrooms into a series of humorous deceptions in this romantic comedy. Ginger Rogers stars as Susan Applegate, a young woman living in New York who, nearly broke and sick of the city, decides to head home to Iowa. Lacking the money for a Read More

Happy Go Lucky

Actors: Mary Martin, Dick Powell, Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Rudy Vallee

Synopsis: In this lighthearted musical comedy, Marjory Stuart (Mary Martin) is a girl who works in the hatcheck room at a Manhattan nightclub and dreams of being a rich socialite herself. Toward that end, Marjory wants to land a rich husband, so she saves up her money and takes a cruise to the Caribbean Read More

Star Spangled Rhythm

Actors: Victor Moore, Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, Anne Revere, Walter Abel

Synopsis: Star-Spangled Rhythm is a typical wartime all-star musical-comedy melange, this time from Paramount Pictures. The slender plot involves the efforts by humble studio doorman Pop Webster (Victor Moore) to pass himself off as a big-shot Paramount executive for the benefit of his sailor son Jimmy (Eddie Bracken Read More

Yokel Boy

Actors: Albert Dekker, Joan Davis, Eddie Foy, Jr., Alan Mowbray, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a country bumpkin spends most of his free time watching movies and becomes such an expert that he can accurately predict which ones will be hits and which will fail at the box-office. An employee at a failing Hollywood studio finds the fellow and takes him back to Tinsel Read More

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Actors: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, Irene Manning

Synopsis: Yankee Doodle Dandy is no more the true-life story of George M. Cohan than The Jolson Story was the unvarnished truth about Al Jolson -- but who the heck cares? Dandy has song, dance, pathos, pageantry, uproarious comedy, and, best of all, James Cagney at his Oscar-winning best. After several Read More

Moonlight in Havana

Actors: Allan Jones, Jane Frazee, Marjorie Lord, William Frawley, Don Terry

Synopsis: Cult-favorite director Anthony Mann's second filmic effort was the unprepossessing Universal mini-musical Moonlight in Havana. Allan Jones stars as hotshot baseball player Johnny Norton, in Havana for spring training. It turns out that Johnny has a beautiful singing voice, but only when he's 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 Glass Key

Actors: Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, Bonita Granville, William Bendix, Richard Denning

Synopsis: Dashiel Hammett's The Glass Key, a tale of big-city political corruption, was first filmed in 1935, with Edward Arnold as a duplicitous political boss and George Raft as his loyal lieutenant. This 1942 remake improves on the original, especially in replacing the stolid Raft with the charismatic Alan Ladd Read More

Meet the Stewarts

Actors: William Holden, Frances Dee, Grant Mitchell, Marjorie Gateson, Anne Revere

Synopsis: This lighthearted romantic comedy stars William Holden as working stiff Michael Stewart and Frances Dee as wealthy socialite Candace Goodwin. Falling in love with Michael, Candace agrees to marry him on his terms-namely, that they survive on his salary alone. Inevitably, Candace has trouble Read More

It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog

Actors: Carole Landis, Allyn Joslyn, Margo Woode, Henry Morgan, Jean Wallace, Reed Hadley

Synopsis: This 20th Century-Fox cheapie stars Carole Landis as a pretty detective and Allyn Joslyn as a fast-talking reporter ever on the verge of losing his job. Landis is entrusted with a large, troublesome Doberman pinscher named Rodney, who is docile only around her. After numerous Disney-like Read More

Moontide

Actors: Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: Forced to flee Paris during the Occupation, the great French leading man Jean Gabin starred in a brace of Hollywood films, the best of which was the first, 20th Century-Fox's Moontide. Cast to type, Gabin plays Bobo, a brooding itinerant dock-worker who gets mixed up in a drunken brawl. Upon Read More

They All Kissed the Bride

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Helen Parrish, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is the kissable bride of the title--but when the film opens, matrimony is the farthest thing from her mind. Crawford becomes a big-time executive upon inheriting her father's trucking business, which leaves her no time for such trivialities as romance. To enhance her business Read More

Navy Blues

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Jack Oakie, Martha Raye, Jack Haley, Herbert Anderson, Jackie Gleason

Synopsis: The 1940 peacetime draft spawned a whole slew of military and naval comedies, the most successful of which was Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates. In this vein, Warners' Navy Blues features several studio contractees (including Ann Sheridan and Jack Carson), a few borrowed comedians (Jack Oakie, Jack Haley Read More

Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, Mona Barrie, Paul Hurst

Synopsis: Ralph Bellamy made his fourth and final appearance as literary sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring. On this occasion, Ellery and his police-inspector father (Charley Grapewin) are summoned to a private hospital by its owner, philanthropist Mrs. Stack (Blanche Yurka). Read More

Don't Get Personal

Actors: Hugh Herbert, Mischa Auer, Jane Frazee, Anne Gwynne, Robert Paige

Synopsis: Three different Universal pictures made between 1922 and 1941 bore the catchall title Don't Get Personal. The 1941 film stars Hugh Herbert as a ditzy pickle manufacturer whose favorite radio program stars Jane Frazee and Robert Paige. The couple plays a bickering husband and wife on the air, and Read More

Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, James Burke

Synopsis: Like the first entry in Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery depicts its amateur-criminologist hero as an oafish ignoramus. This time around, Chinese ventriloquist Gordon Cobb (Noel Madison), is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues Read More

Unexpected Uncle

Actors: Anne Shirley, James Craig, Charles Coburn, Ernest Truex

Synopsis: From first frame to last, foxy Charles Coburn thoroughly dominates the proceedings in the bubbly RKO Radio comedy Unexpected Uncle. Living in retirement in Florida, ex-tycoon Seton (Charles Coburn) gets bored with sitting around doing nothing, and decides to extend himself to others for the first Read More

Tight Shoes

Actors: John Howard, Binnie Barnes, Broderick Crawford, Anne Gwynne, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: This comedy-drama is adapted from a story by Damon Runyon and centers on a mobster with unusually large feet. The trouble begins when the big-footed crook buys a too-tight pair of shoes from a salesman and decides to use the store as a front for an illegal gambling operation. After buying the Read More

Swing It Soldier

Actors: Ken Murray, Frances Langford, Don Wilson, Blanche Stewart, Elvia Allman

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a pregnant disc jockey misses her husband who is fighting overseas. Stressed out by the situation and her job, she decides to take some time off and convinces her twin sister to trade places with her. The switcheroo causes the soldier her husband appointed as her unofficial Read More

We Go Fast

Actors: Lynn Bari, Alan Curtis, Sheila Ryan, Don DeFore, Ernest Truex

Synopsis: This 20th Century-Fox programmer revolves around the misadventures of two not-overly-bright motorcycle patrolmen. Waitress Rose Coughlin (Lynn Bari) causes a rift between cycle cops Bob Brandon (Alan Curtis) and Herman Huff (Don Defore) when she falls in love with both. Rose then jilts the two of Read More

You're the One

Actors: Bonnie Baker, Albert Dekker, Jerry Colonna, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Bandleader Orrin Tucker and his featured vocalist "Wee" Bonnie Baker are the stars of the Paramount pocket musical You're the One. It all begins when showbiz agent Joe Frink (Edward Everett Horton) tries to get Baker a singing job with baton-wielder Luke Laramie (Albert Dekker). Part of the scheme Read More

The Monster and the Girl

Actors: Ellen Drew, Robert Paige, Paul Lukas, Joseph Calleia, Onslow Stevens

Synopsis: One of the most schizophrenic films ever to come out of the Paramount "B" mill, The Monster and the Girl starts out as a white-slavery melodrama and ends up as a horror picture! Emerging from the fog, heroine Susan Webster (Ellen Drew) tells her woeful tale to the audience. A young innocent from Read More

Where Did You Get That Girl?

Actors: Leon Errol, Helen Parrish, Charles Lang, Eddie Quillan, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a motley band of musicians have only their extreme poverty in common. They end up writing a hit and getting a recording contract. The trouble is, the composer's works are never played without another band member doctoring them up to make them swingier. Fortunately, the Read More

The Richest Man in Town

Actors: Frank Craven, Edgar Buchanan, Eileen O'Hearn, Roger Pryor, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: Fresh from his Broadway triumph as "The Stage Manager" in Our Town, veteran actor-playwright Frank Craven heads the cast of Columbia's The Richest Man in Town. Craven is cast as wealthy banker Abb Crothers, who has carried on a lifelong feud with newpaper publisher Pete Martin (Edgar Buchanan). Read More

Dive Bomber

Actors: Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray, Ralph Bellamy, Herbert Anderson

Synopsis: Lieutenant Commander Joe Blake (Fred MacMurray), Lt. Tim Griffin (Regis Toomey), and Lt. Swede Larson (Louis Jean Heydt) are longtime US Navy flying buddies, about to be transferred to different posts when Larson suffers a blackout during high-altitude maneuvers and cracks up. Navy doctor Douglas Read More

A Dangerous Game

Actors: Richard Arlen, Andy Devine, Jeanne Kelly, Edward S. Brophy, Marc Lawrence

Synopsis: Dangerous Game was a 61-minute entry in the off-and-on Universal "B" adventure series starring Richard Arlen and Andy Devine. The emphasis is on laughs as the pair infiltrate a suspicious lunatic asylum. Amidst the genuine assorted nuts (all of whom behave "cuckoo" in 2-reel comedy fashion) are Read More

The Bugle Sounds

Actors: Wallace Beery, Marjorie Main, George Bancroft, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: By 1941, Wallace Beery was pretty much confined to playing two characters: The reprobate with the heart of gold, or the old-line martinet who resents the incursions of progress. In The Bugle Sounds, Beery opted for characterization #2, playing entrenched Cavalry sergeant Hap Doan. Accustomed to Read More

Ringside Maisie

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

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

A Little Bit of Heaven

Actors: Gloria Jean, Robert Stack, Hugh Herbert, C. Aubrey Smith, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: Teenaged soprano Gloria Jean plays the Little-Miss-Fixit heroine in Universal's Little Bit of Heaven. The most precocious member of an impoverished 10th Avenue family, little Midge (Gloria Jean) makes an impulsive appearance on a "man in the street" radio interview show. Catapulted to stardom Read More

Half a Sinner

Actors: Heather Angel, Constance Collier, Walter Catlett, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: A young, naive schoolteacher gets in over her head when the advances of a suitor grow too ardent. To escape his unwanted attentions she steals a rich man's car and takes off. In her haste she does not check the car. If she had, she would have seen the murdered corpse of a gangster stuffed into the Read More

Isle of Destiny

Actors: William Gargan, Wallace Ford, June Lang, Gilbert Roland, Etienne Girardot

Synopsis: Originally slated for released through Grand National Pictures, Isle of Destiny was redirected to RKO Radio when Grand National folded in late 1939. June Lang stars as Virginia Allerton, a famous aviatrix who crashlands in a remote South Sea Island (a la Amelia Erhardt!) and is promptly kidnapped Read More

Johnny Apollo

Actors: Tyrone Power, Dorothy Lamour, Lloyd Nolan, Edward Arnold, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Tyrone Power plays the college-grad son of jailed-embezzler Edward Arnold. Power tries to find work, only to be turned away because of his father's reputation. When he decides to use a phony name, he is still fired, because his ex-convict boss feels that Power is being unfair to his Read More

Lucky Partners

Actors: Ronald Colman, Ginger Rogers, Jack Carson, Spring Byington, Cecilia Loftus

Synopsis: Lewis Milestone directs the lightweight romantic comedy Lucky Partners, based on a story by Sacha Guitry. David Grant (Ronald Colman) is an artist in New York's Greenwich Village. After he wishes good luck to passing ingenue Jean Newton (Ginger Rogers), she is immediately offered a beautiful Read More

Who Killed Aunt Maggie?

Actors: John Hubbard, Wendy Barrie, Edgar Kennedy, Elizabeth Patterson, Onslow Stevens

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Medora Field, Who Killed Aunt Maggie? would appear to be an attempt by Republic Pictures to launch a new series of comedy-mysteries a la MGM's The Thin Man. When a much-despised matriarch (Elizabeth Patterson) is murdered-or apparently murdered-all of her relatives and Read More

The Ghost Breakers

Actors: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, Paul Lukas, Willie Best

Synopsis: Paramount followed up its successful Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard co-starrer The Cat and the Canary (1939) by warming up another venerable "old dark house" stage play, Paul Dickey and Charles Goddard's The Ghost Breaker, pluralizing the title to accommodate both stars. This time Hope plays radio Read More

Too Many Husbands

Actors: Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, Melvyn Douglas, Harry Davenport, Dorothy Peterson

Synopsis: The W. Somerset Maugham play Home and Beauty was successful Americanized as Too Many Husbands (British title: My Two Husbands). Led to believe that her husband Fred MacMurray has drowned in a shipwreck, socialite Jean Arthur marries Melvyn Douglas. In time-honored Enoch Arden fashion, MacMurray Read More

The Farmer's Daughter

Actors: Martha Raye, Charlie Ruggles, Richard Denning, Gertrude Michael, William Frawley

Synopsis: Imagine the dismay of those hapless TV station managers who've booked the 1940 Martha Raye vehicle The Farmer's Daughter in the belief that they've actually gotten hold of the same-named 1947 Loretta Young picture. Hardly in the same league as its namesake, the 1940 film casts Raye as Patience Read More

The Fighting 69th

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, George Brent, Jeffrey Lynn, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Officially, America had no intention of entering the Second World War in 1940: Why, then, were there so many "preparedness" pictures like The Fighting 69th? This film, based on the experiences of military priest Father Duffy (Pat O'Brien), is set during World War I. The US 69th division was a Read More

Virginia City

Actors: Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins, Randolph Scott, Humphrey Bogart, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Promoted as a follow-up to the popular 1939 western Dodge City (which, indeed, was left wide open for a sequel in its closing scenes), Virginia City bears only surface resemblance to the earlier film. Indeed, the only discerning links between the two pictures are the western setting and the Read More

So You Won't Talk

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Frances Robinson, Vivienne Osborne, Bernard Nedell, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: In this comedy of mistaken identity, a bookish literary reviewer bows to the desires of his lover and shaves off his whiskers. Suddenly he finds himself in trouble, for without the mustache, he is the spitting image of a gangster who has just been released from prison. When the mobster's gang sees Read More

Saturday's Children

Actors: John Garfield, Anne Shirley, Claude Rains, George Tobias, Roscoe Karns, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: This third film version of Maxwell Anderson's play Saturday's Children stars Claude Rains as the impecunious but proud father of a large brood. Rains' daughter Anne Shirley marries idealistic John Garfield, a would-be inventor who works for Shirley's father. Feeling that he's been tricked into Read More

Cross Country Romance

Actors: Gene Raymond, Wendy Barrie, Hedda Hopper, Billy Gilbert, G.P. Huntley

Synopsis: Eleanor Browne's novel Highway to Romance was the source for this moneyspinning RKO Radio comedy. Obviously inspired by It Happened One Night, the story is set in motion by runaway heiress Diane (Wendy Barrie), who hopes to escape from her impending marriage. Stowing away in the trailer owned by Read More

Stardust

Actors: Linda Darnell, John Payne, Roland Young, Charlotte Greenwood, William Gargan

Synopsis: 17-year-old Linda Darnell received her first big break in the appropriately titled 20th Century-Fox production Star Dust. Discovered by talent scout Thomas Brooke (Roland Young), teenager Carolyn Sayre (Darnell) is brought to Hollywood, where she is turned down for a contract because she is Read More

The Boys from Syracuse

Actors: Allan Jones, Joe Penner, Martha Raye, Rosemary Lane, Charles Butterworth

Synopsis: Considering that it was adapted from a Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and George Abbott, The Boys From Syracuse must rank as a disappointment, though it manages to remain entertaining throughout its surprisingly brief 74-minute running time. Like its theatrical predecessor, the Read More

Naughty But Nice

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell, Gale Page, Helen Broderick

Synopsis: It's Swing Music vs. the Classics in the easy-to-take Warners tunefest Naughty But Nice. Dick Powell dons the obligatory spectacles as a staid music professor Hardwick, who harbors a desire to become a songwriter. With the help of aspiring lyricist Linda McKay (Gale Page), Hardwick pens a little Read More

$1,000 a Touchdown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye, Eric Blore, Susan Hayward, John Hartley

Synopsis: This film should have been a press agent's dream: Hollywood's two greatest "big mouths," Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye, together in the same picture. Brown and Raye play a show business couple who inherit a near-bankrupt college. They decide to build up the school's scraggly football team in hopes Read More

Mystery of the White Room

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Helen Mack, Constance Worth, Joan Woodbury, Mabel Todd

Synopsis: A typical, fast-paced Grade-B murder mystery, Mystery of the White Room was based on the then revolutionary medical breakthrough of corneal transplantation. After being rebuked by hospital administrator Dr. Morton (Addison Richards) for failing to follow procedure, Dr. Clayton (Bruce Cabot) and Read More

The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt

Actors: Ida Lupino, Warren William, Robert Wilcox, Rita Hayworth, Virginia Weidler, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: Regarded as the best of Columbia's "Lone Wolf" B-picture series, The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt stars Warren William as Michael Lanyard, a onetime criminal known as the Lone Wolf. He is determined to remain reformed for the sake of his daughter (Virginia Weidler), but a gang of foreign spies abducts Read More

You Can't Get Away with Murder

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, Billy Halop, John Litel, Henry Travers

Synopsis: A young punk hooks up with a mobster and helps him rob a gas station in this crime drama. From there the crimes become more serious and the boy is very happy until something goes wrong and the gangster shoots someone using the stolen gun of the boy's sister's lover. The innocent lover is given the Read More

When Tomorrow Comes

Actors: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Barbara O'Neil, Onslow Stevens, Nydia Westman

Synopsis: Following up their successful film Love Affair, Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne team up again for the romantic melodrama When Tomorrow Comes, based on a story by James M. Cain. Philip (Boyer) is a concert pianist who stops into a restaurant for lunch and meets waitress Helen Lawrence (Dunne). He Read More

Missing Evidence

Actors: Preston S. Foster, Irene Hervey, Inez Courtney, Chick Chandler, Noel Madison

Synopsis: G-Man Bill Collins (Preston Foster) swings into action when a crooked sweepstakes racket begins insinuating itself upon the honest citizenry of the US. The crooks have flooded the market with counterfeit lottery tickets, reducing many an unwary speculator to poverty. When he's not tracking down Read More

The House of Fear

Actors: William Gargan, Irene Hervey, Dorothy Arnold, Alan Dinehart, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: A remake of Paul Leni's The Last Warning (1929), this "Crime Club" series entry once again presents the spectacle of an actor murdered in mid-performance and in front of a sellout crowd. This time the unfortunate thespian is John Wofford (Don Douglas), whose body subsequently disappears. To solve Read More

Million Dollar Legs

Actors: Betty Grable, John Hartley, Donald O'Connor, Jackie Coogan, Dorothea Kent

Synopsis: No relation to the 1932 W.C. Fields comedy of the same name, Million Dollar Legs is a college picture starring most of Paramount's younger contract players. The college is in financial trouble, so the students pin their hopes on a race horse--the "million dollar legs" of the title. As it turns Read More

They Made Me a Criminal

Actors: John Garfield, Gloria Dickson, Bobby Jordan, Claude Rains, Ann Sheridan, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop

Synopsis: They Made Me a Criminal opens in New York, depicting the latest victory in the ring for Johnny Bradfield (John Garfield), a young boxer who seems headed for a championship. When a reporter finds Bradfield drunk and carousing with women, and learns that the squeaky-clean image that he has Read More

Daughters Courageous

Actors: John Garfield, Claude Rains, Fay Bainter, Donald Crisp, May Robson

Synopsis: This family drama features the same cast and crew from the highly successful Four Daughters, but it isn't actually a sequel. Whereas the first film was a chronicle of the Lemp family, this one centers on the Masters family. This film is also characterized by a much happier ending than its Read More

The Housekeeper's Daughter

Actors: Joan Bennett, Adolphe Menjou, John Hubbard, William Gargan, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In this comedy, a gangster's moll gets tired of the mob scene and returns to her mother's house. Her mom is a wealthy family's housekeeper. One of the rich children dreams of being a reporter; he is eager to get his first big scoop. He gets his chance when he stumbles upon a series of clues to a Read More

I'm from Missouri

Actors: Gladys George, Gene Lockhart, Judith Barrett, William Henry

Synopsis: In this comedy, a Missouri mule breeder faces financial ruin after the market collapses. He takes his best mule to a Kansas livestock show where he impresses a representative from the British army. He, his wife, and his best mules then sail to England to sell them. Soon the Missouri couple are Read More

Love Affair

Actors: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman, Astrid Allwyn

Synopsis: Leo McCarey's classic tale of romance stars Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer as two strangers who fall in love on an ocean voyage. Charles Boyer is Michel Marnet, engaged to be married to Lois Clarke (Astrid Allwyn). Irene Dunne is Terry McKay, also engaged to be married, in this case to Kenneth Read More

Laugh It Off

Actors: Johnny Downs, Constance Moore, Marjorie Rambeau, Cecil Cunningham, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: Laugh it Off was one of two Johnny Downs vehicles released within the same week in December of 1939 (the other was Bad Boy). Downs plays Stephen Hannis, a Broadway bandleader who aspires to become a lawyer. He gets his big break when he champions the cause of a group of elderly ex-chorus dancers Read More

The Lady and the Mob

Actors: Fay Bainter, Ida Lupino, Lee Bowman, Henry Armetta, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: How could anyone dislike a film with the title Lady and the Mob? Sweet Fay Bainter stars as eccentric dowager Hattie Leonard, who takes it upon herself to smash a dry-cleaning racket. When the crooks and the cops laugh at her efforts, the resourceful Hattie sets about to organize her own 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

Sing You Sinners

Actors: Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Ellen Drew, Donald O'Connor, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Chronic gambler Joe Beebe (Bing Crosby) is a source of great consternation for his loving mother (Elizabeth Patterson), who wishes that Joe would follow the example of his responsible, strait-laced brother David (Fred MacMurray). Meanwhile, the youngest member of the Beebe clan, 13-year-old Mike Read More

Sons of the Legion

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Billy Lee, Billy Cook, Evelyn Keyes, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Sons of the Legion is a showcase for Paramount's juvenile-talent pool-specifically, Donald O'Connor, Billy Lee and Billy Cook. The plotline is motivated by the formation of a Boy Scout-like organization, formed by members of the American Legion. Billy (Lee) and Davy (Cook) would like to join the Read More

There's Always a Woman

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

Four Daughters

Actors: Claude Rains, May Robson, Priscilla Lane, Lola Lane, Rosemary Lane

Synopsis: Fannie Hurst's Sister Act was the source for this money-making Warners weeper. The four daughters of the title are played by the Lane Sisters--Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola--and by Gale Page. All are musical prodigies, and all are daughters of master-musician Claude Rains. To help make ends meet, Rains Read More

Married Before Breakfast

Actors: Robert Young, Florence Rice, June Clayworth, Barnett Parker, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: Directed by Edwin L. Marin, Married Before Breakfast follows the hectic life of young inventor Tom Wakefield (Robert Young). After a leading razor company pays Wakefield (Young) $250,000 in order for him not to publicize his latest invention, a hair-removing shaving cream that rendors razors Read More

True Confession

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, John Barrymore, Una Merkel, Porter Hall

Synopsis: Carole Lombard stars as Helen Bartlett, a compulsive liar who always tips the audience to an oncoming whopper by sticking her tongue in her cheek. Helen is married to a Kenneth Bartlett, a scrupulously honest lawyer whose integrity has always held him back professionally. Hoping to help Kenneth Read More

Nobody's Baby

Actors: Patsy Kelly, Lyda Roberti, Lynne Overman, Robert Armstrong, Rosina Lawrence

Synopsis: Three former stalwarts of producer Hal Roach's two-reel comedies, actresses Patsy Kelly and Lyda Roberti and director Gus Meins, combine their talents in the Roach feature film Nobody's Baby. Kelly and Roberti play nurses-in-training Kitty and Lena, who reluctantly come into possession of a cute Read More

She Had to Eat

Actors: Jack Haley, Rochelle Hudson, Arthur Treacher, Eugene Pallette, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: A naive gas station attendant's life takes a turn for the better when he is adopted by an eccentric, boozy travelling millionaire who crosses the country in his own train. Accompanied by his beloved pet bunny, the former gas station jockey boards the train. Soon afterward, he is kidnapped by Read More

Pick a Star

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Patsy Kelly, Jack Haley, Rosina Lawrence, Mischa Auer, Lyda Roberti

Synopsis: Film collectors take note: Hal Roach's Pick a Star is not a Laurel and Hardy picture, though the popular comic duo does make a brace of amusing cameo appearances halfway through the film. A remake of Buster Keaton's Free and Easy, this is the story of how small-town gas-station owner Joe Jenkins (Jack Haley Read More

Don't Get Personal

Actors: Sally Eilers, James Dunn, Pinky Tomlin, Spencer Charters, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, two college boys get expelled because they could not pay tuition. They decide to scare up some cash by auctioning off their services in Central Park. A pretty woman makes the highest bid. She hires the boys to drive her and her car to Ohio. The adventure culminates with Read More

Pennies from Heaven

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

The Calling of Dan Matthews

Actors: Richard Arlen, Charlotte Wynters, Douglas Dumbrille, Mary Kornman, Donald Cook

Synopsis: The Calling of Dan Matthews is a modernized and sanitized version of Harold Bell Wright's muckraking novel. Minister Dan Matthews (Richard Arlen) wants to rid his community of its seamy "Old Town" district, a breeding ground for prostitution and other crimes. Most of the property in question is Read More

Neighborhood House

Synopsis: This was one of Charley Chase's last comedies for producer Hal Roach. Here, Charley is determined to attend his local movie theater's "Bank Night" (a common promotion in the '30s, which involved a contest with a cash prize). He leaves a stack of work to make it home on time and after dinner, he Read More

Mister Cinderella

Actors: Jack Haley, Betty Furness, Arthur Treacher, Raymond Walburn, Robert McWade

Synopsis: Hotel barber Joe Jenkins (Jack Haley), who's obsessed with newspaper stories about high-society celebrities, is dragooned into posing as eccentric millionaire Aloysius Merriweather (Monroe Owsley) at a fancy weekend party. At first thrilled at the prospect of hobnobbing with the 400, Joe is less Read More

Wife vs. Secretary

Actors: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, May Robson, Hobart Cavanaugh

Synopsis: Magazine publisher Clark Gable is happily married to Myrna Loy. Clark's devoted, super-efficient secretary Jean Harlow may have once harbored a secret desire for her boss, but she's perfectly content with boyfriend James Stewart. Accompanying Gable on a crucial business trip, Jean answers the 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

Divot Diggers

Actors: George "Spanky" McFarland, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas, Eugene "Porky" Lee, Darla Hood

Synopsis: After several years away from the Our Gang series, the gang's longtime mentor Robert F. McGowan briefly resumed his directorial activities with the sidesplitting Divot Diggers. The action takes place at an expansive California golf course, where the Our Gang kids merrily play their own ragtag Read More

The Bride Comes Home

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Robert Young, William Collier, Donald Meek

Synopsis: After It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert seemed to make a career out of playing plucky heiresses with minds of their own, which sums up her character well in this romantic comedy. When her wealthy father goes broke, Jeanette Desmereau (Claudette Colbert) decides she should find a job of her Read More

Chinatown Squad

Actors: Lyle Talbot, Valerie Hobson, Hugh O'Connell, Andy Devine, E. Alyn Warren

Synopsis: Dore Schary, several years removed from his tenure as head of MGM, was screenwriter for the modest Universal actioner Chinatown Squad. Lyle Talbot plays Ted Lacey, a disgruntled ex-cop reduced to driving a sightseeing bus in Chinatown. When a man who has been collecting funds for the Chinese Read More

Red Salute

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

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

Rendezvous

Actors: William Powell, Rosalind Russell, Binnie Barnes, Lionel Atwill, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: This espionage thriller with romantic comedy touches was loosely based on the book American Black Chamber by the real-life head of the U.S. Secret Service during World War I, Herbert O. Yardley. Bill Gordon (William Powell) is a newspaper puzzle editor who becomes a lieutenant in 1917 when he Read More

Three Kids and a Queen

Actors: May Robson, Frankie Darro, Charlotte Henry, William Benedict, Billy Burrud

Synopsis: The indomitable May Robson is firmly in the driver's seat of this Runyonesque comedy-drama. While riding through Central Park, peppery millionairess Mary Jane Baxter (Robson) is thrown from her carriage and rescued by three scruffy orphans (Frankie Darro, Billy Benedict, Billy Burrud). The kids Read More

I Live My Life

Actors: Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Frank Morgan, Aline MacMahon, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Feeling stifled by her wealthy existence, flighty heiress Kay (Joan Crawford) falls in love with poor archaeologist Terry (Brian Aherne). The couple seems happiest when they're yelling at one another, indicating perhaps that screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz was none too fond of either character. Read More

Another Face

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Wallace Ford, Brian Donlevy, Phyllis Brooks, Erik Rhodes, Molly Lamont

Synopsis: Charming but ruthless fugitive gangster Dutra (Brian Donlevy) demands that a doctor (Oscar Apfel) perform plastic surgery upon him. Emerging from the bandages with a new face, Dutra murders the doctor, changes his name to Dawson, and heads to California, secure in the belief that no one who can Read More

The Case of the Missing Man

Actors: Roger Pryor, Joan Perry, Thurston Hall, Arthur Hohl, George McKay

Synopsis: The title character in this Columbia quickie is an elusive jewel thief who doesn't like to be photographed. Erstwhile journalist Roger Pryor didn't know that when he snapped a photo of the thief as he sped away from the scene of his latest heist. Thing of it is, Pryor's picture isn't all that Read More

The Affair of Susan

Actors: ZaSu Pitts, Hugh O'Connell, Walter Catlett, Tom Dugan, Inez Courtney

Synopsis: Susan (ZaSu Pitts) is a plain-Jane wallflower who spends a day at Coney Island. Here she catches the eye of equally shy (and twice as homely) Hugh O'Connell. Though both hero and heroine spend every penny and then some riding the rides and trying their luck at the arcade; it hardly matters since Read More

Princess O'Hara

Actors: Jean Parker, Chester Morris, Leon Errol, Vince Barnett, Henry Armetta

Synopsis: This obscure Damon Runyon adaptation stars Jean Parker as Princess O'Hara, the spirited granddaughter of Central Park horse-carriage driver King O'Hara (Ralph M. Remley). When King's beloved horse dies, Princess tries to purchase a new nag, and that's how she inadvertently gets her hands on a Read More

The Gilded Lily

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, C. Aubrey Smith, Luis Alberni

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, Marilyn David (Claudette Colbert) is a stenographer who has become good friends with Peter Dawes (Fred MacMurray), a newspaper reporter who takes the same subway as she does each morning. While Peter is crazy about Marilyn, she has her eye on Charles Gray (Ray Milland), a Read More

One New York Night

Actors: Franchot Tone, Una Merkel, Conrad Nagel, Harvey Stephens, Steffi Duna

Synopsis: In this western, a cowpoke from Wyoming rides into the big city to look for a wife. Instead he finds himself investigating the mysterious death of a man in the hotel room next to his. In the corpse's room, the cowpoke found a lost bracelet. He and the hotel phone operator use this clue to solve Read More

Girl of My Dreams

Actors: Mary Carlisle, Sterling Holloway, Eddie Nugent, Arthur Lake, Creighton Chaney

Synopsis: Long before its "Teen Agers" series of the 1940s, Monogram Pictures went to college in the minor musical Girl of My Dreams. Heading the somewhat over-aged student body are BMOC Larry Haynes (Edward Nugent) and track-star Don Cooper (a handsome young Lon Chaney Jr., here still billed as Creighton Chaney Read More

Murder in the Fleet

Actors: Robert Taylor, Jean Parker, Ted Healy, Una Merkel, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: Having gained considerable audience attention for his appearance in the 1935 "Crime Does Not Pay" 2-reeler Buried Loot, new MGM contractee Robert Taylor was awarded with his first starring feature, the modestly budgeted Murder in the Fleet. Taylor is cast as Lt. Tom Randolph, one of several naval Read More

Let's Talk It Over

Actors: Chester Morris, Mae Clarke, Frank Craven, John Warburton, Irene Ware

Synopsis: In this comedy, a wealthy socialite pursues a carefree playboy who isn't at all interested in her. After all her regular attention-getting ploys fail, the woman fakes a drowning accident in the hopes that he will save her. She is instead rescued by a brutish sailor whom she begins introducing to Read More

No More Women

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen, Sally Blane, Minna Gombell

Synopsis: The rivalry between two deep-sea diver is chronicled in this adventure. The trouble begins when a young woman inherits one of the diver's boats and promptly hires his rival to help out. At first they swear to stay away from her, but they cannot and many arguments ensue culminating in a fistfight Read More

Palooka

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Stuart Erwin, Robert Armstrong, Mary Carlisle

Synopsis: Based on the popular comic strip by Ham Fisher, this fast-paced and funny boxing outing follows the exploits of a boxing manager and the up-and-coming fighter he mentors to. The film is also known as Joe Palooka. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The President Vanishes

Actors: Janet Beecher, Paul Kelly, Peggy Conklin, Rosalind Russell

Synopsis: Based upon a novel anonymously written by Rex Stout, The President Vanishes has as its title character a peace-loving man with distinct anti-interventionist views. As the picture opens, President Stanley Craig (A.S. Byron) finds himself in a bit of a bind: he fervently believes that the United Read More

The Circus Clown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Patricia Ellis, Dorothy Burgess, William Demarest, Donald Dilloway, Gordon Westcott

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown plays a dual role in Circus Clown, as would-be circus entertainer Happy Howard and his rustic old father. When dad, a former circus man himself, disapproves of Happy hitting the sawdust trail, the boy does so anyway, smitten by a beautiful female bareback rider. So naïve is our hero Read More

The Cat's Paw

Actors: Harold Lloyd, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Nat Pendleton, Grace Bradley

Synopsis: Harold Lloyd plays Ezekial Cobb, a missionary's son who has spent his entire life in China. Cobb is sent to his father's home church in California, where it is hoped he will find a wife. A true babe in the woods, Cobb is befriended by politician Jake Mayo (George Barbier). Mayo is a cog in a Read More

The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi

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

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

Grand Slam

Actors: Paul Lukas, Loretta Young, Frank McHugh, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Paul Lukas plays a nightclub headwaiter who rises to fame as a bridge expert. He marries hat check girl Loretta Young, likewise a card fanatic. Lukas and Young find themselves vying for the national bridge championship, which results in the expected frictions. All is forgiven in the climactic Read More

Trick for Trick

Actors: Ralph Morgan, Victor Jory, Sally Blane, Tom Dugan, Luis Alberni

Don't Bet on Love

Actors: Lew Ayres, Ginger Rogers, Charles Grapewin, Shirley Grey, Merna Kennedy

Synopsis: A man's addiction to betting on the horses severely disrupts his love life in this comedy. He, a plumber, and his fiancee, a manicurist, are getting ready for their nuptials when she learns that he is planning a honeymoon at the racetrack. She immediately calls off the wedding. The man is a Read More

Skyway

Actors: Arthur Vinton, Jed Prouty, Alice Lake, Jack Pennick

Synopsis: Monogram's Skyway stars Ray Walker in his usual role as a brash troublemaker who can't hold down a job. This time he's a hot-shot aviator who loses a bank-clerk job, much to the chagrin of his sweetheart Kathryn Crawford, the bank-president's daughter. Making matters worse, Walker is being held Read More

Doctor X

Actors: Lionel Atwill, Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, Preston S. Foster, Arthur Edmund Carewe

Synopsis: Fay Wray screams when she first lays eyes on Lionel Atwill in Doctor X, but don't let that fool you. Atwill plays Fay's father this time around, and he may very well not be the diabolical "Moon Murderer" whom the police are seeking. Dr. Xavier (Atwill) maintains a research lab in a remote Long Read More

Big Timer

Synopsis: Ben Lyon plays an aspiring boxer in this pre-code drama. Cookie Bradford (Lyon) toils at a diner and works out at the gym while waiting for his big break. His one supporter is the gym owner's daughter, Honey (Constance Cummings). When her father dies suddenly, she decides to take over his Read More

Big City Blues

Actors: Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, Inez Courtney, Evelyn Knapp, Guy Kibbee, Humphrey Bogart

Synopsis: Based on the play New York Town by Ward Morehouse, Mervyn LeRoy directs the black-and-white 1932 comedy drama Big City Blues. A small-town innocent from Indiana, Bud Reeves (Eric Linden) inherits money and goes to New York to get in all sorts of trouble. He meets up with his cousin Gibby (Walter Read More

By Whose Hand?

Actors: Ben Lyon, Barbara Weeks, William V. Mong, Ethel Kenyon, Ken Thomson

Synopsis: In this crime drama an escaped killer hunts the man who squealed upon him. He stalks the man onto a train bound for San Francisco. The stoolie is killed. As a result another passenger, who witnessed the killing becomes determined to catch the cold-blooded killer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Pride of the Legion

Synopsis: In this police drama, a cop, known for being a rock under pressure, endeavors to cope with the aftermath of a psychologically traumatic experience at work. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Blessed Event

Actors: Lee Tracy, Mary Brian, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Ned Sparks

Synopsis: Blessed Event is one of several early-1930s films inspired by the meteoric rise to fame of gossip columnist Walter Winchell--and like most such films, its title is based on a Winchell tag line. Lee Tracy plays a glib-tongued reporter who is conducting a feud with popular singer Dick Powell (making Read More

The Phantom of the West [Serial]

Actors: Tom Tyler, Dorothy Gulliver, William Desmond, Tom Santschi, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: Mascot Pictures' second all-talkie sound serial, Phantom of the West starred Tom Tyler as Jim Lester, a young man attempting to prove the innocence of the father of Mona Cortez (Dorothy Gulliver) in the murder of his own paterfamilias. Cortez (Frank Lanning) escapes from prison but leaves a note Read More

The Wide Open Spaces

Woman Hungry

Actors: Lila Lee, Raymond Hatton, Fred Kohler, Ken Thomson

Synopsis: In this western, three rambunctious young cowboys head for the hills after spending a night painting a town red and terrorizing its residents. During their flight, they find a woman from the East alone at her brother's home. They are preparing to rape her, but they do not count on her ingenuity. Read More

Vanishing Legion [Serial]

Actors: Harry Carey, Frankie Darro, Edwina Booth, Philo McCullough, William Desmond, Joe Bonomo, Yakima Canutt, Rex

Synopsis: Filmed at Newhall, CA, with exteriors shot at Universal City, Mascot Pictures' The Vanishing Legion became the little company's signature serial. Producer Nat Levine had managed to sign veteran cowboy star Harry Carey, blonde starlet Edwina Booth, and Olive Fuller Golden, Carey's wife, all of whom Read More

The Hot Heiress

Actors: Ben Lyon, Ona Munson, Walter Pidgeon, Tom Dugan, Holmes Herbert

Synopsis: Class distinction rears its ugly head in this otherwise tuneful little musical from the pens of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Ona Munson plays Julie Hunter, a society belle who falls in love with Hap Harrigan (Ben Lyons), a lowly construction worker. But their different stature in life makes a Read More

Bright Lights

Synopsis: In this light-hearted musical, an early color film, a successful actress tires of the bustle and hustle of her tawdry life and settles down to what she thinks is the blissful mundaneness of married life. Unfortunately, the actual drudgery of wifedom takes her by surprise and domestic turmoil Read More

The Galloping Ghost [Serial]

Synopsis: The star of the 12-episode Mascot serial The Galloping Ghost can be only one man: legendary college football star (Red Grange). Cast as the star gridiron attraction at mythical Clay College, Red is thrown off the team in disgrace when he attempts to cover for his pal Buddy (Francis X. Bushman Read More

Star Witness

Actors: Walter Huston, Charles "Chic" Sale, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane

Synopsis: Star Witness starts out as a homey family comedy and develops into a rather gutsy thriller. Chic Sale plays a cantankerous Civil War veteran who, while visiting his family, witnesses a gangland shooting. The rest of the family also gets a good look at the gang boss (Ralph Ince) and everyone agrees Read More

They Learned About Women

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

The Bad One

Actors: Dolores Del Rio, Edmund Lowe, Don Alvarado, Adrienne D'Ambricourt

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a dancer works in a sleazy Marseilles portside dive that is really the front for a bordello. While dancing one night she meets a sailor and agrees to be his bride. Unfortunately, one of her former suitors suddenly shows up and a terrible fight ensues. The sailor kills his rival Read More

The Medicine Man

Actors: Jack Benny, Betty Bronson

Synopsis: Jack Benny wasn't even 39 yet when he starred in the maudlin backstage drama The Medicine Man. Benny plays Dr. John Harvey, the worldly and none-too-honest title character, who while passing through a small town falls in love with winsome Mamie Goltz (Betty Bronson), the victim of what one Read More

Night Work

Synopsis: In this heartwarming drama, an amiable department store worker gets more than he bargained for when he accidentally slips a $10 tip he'd received into the hands of a nurse looking for donations to an orphanage on the way to the bank. By doing this, he unwittingly committed himself to supporting Read More

Drag

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Lucien Littlefield, Alice Day

Synopsis: No, Richard Barthelmess doesn't don women's apparel in the 1929 talkie The Drag. Barthelmess plays a Vermont newspaper editor, happily married to Alice Day. That is, he was happy until the day his wife's troublesome in-laws (Lucien Littlefield, Katherine Ward) came to visit. Wifey's parents stay Read More

Sonny Boy

Actors: Davey Lee, Al Jolson, Betty Bronson, Edward Everett Horton, Gertrude Olmstead

Synopsis: A custody battle for a little boy forms the basis of this domestic comedy, a talkie that is so early that title cards are interspersed amongst the dialog. The parents are in the midst of a bitter divorce when the boy's mother talks her sister into kidnapping him because she is terrified that her Read More

Broadway Babies

Actors: Alice White, Charles Delaney, Fred Kohler, Marion Byron

Synopsis: The popularity of the Universal musical Broadway resulted in a whole slew of minor films with similar titles. In First National's Broadway Babies, the eponymous "babies," Delight Foster, Navarre King and Florine Chandler, are portrayed respectively by Alice White,Sally Eilers and Marion Byron. Read More

The Million Dollar Collar

Actors: Tom Dugan, Matty Kemp

Synopsis: That intrepid German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin is his usual ruff-n-ready self in this adventure that has him trying to deal with jewel thieves who have hidden a priceless diamond necklace in his collar. They lose the dog, after a terrible car crash. Fortunately, Rin is saved by fellow who takes him Read More

Kid Gloves

Synopsis: One of those transitional Vitaphone productions with a few dialogue scenes and a canned music score, the underworld melodrama The Kid Glove starred one of the period's busiest actors, Conrad Nagel, in the title role of a prohibition hijacker. When lovely Ruth Darrow (Lois Wilson) is hurt in the Read More

Hearts in Exile

Actors: Dolores Costello, Grant Withers, James Kirkwood, George Fawcett, David Torrence

Synopsis: In this romance set in Russia, a fisherman's daughter is jilted by her true love and instead marries a baron. Time passes and the two men meet each other in Siberia where they have both been exiled. When the poorer man has the opportunity to come home, he changes places with the baron so that he Read More

The Drake Case

Actors: Gladys Brockwell, Forrest Stanley, Robert W. Frazer, James Crane, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: An innocent maid stands accused of killing her employer in this courtroom melodrama from the silent era. During the trial it is revealed that the maid was actually the ex-wife of her wealthy late boss' new husband, but that doesn't necessarily mean she committed the crime. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Read More

Friend From India

Actors: Elinor Fair, Franklin Pangborn, Ethel Wales, Louis Natheaux, Edgar Norton

Synopsis: Produced by Cecil B. DeMille, Friend from India was directed by, of all people, prissy character actor Franklin Pangborn, who also played the leading role. The star plays an impoverished young man who is forced to impersonate a Hindu prince. This leaves our hapless hero wide open for the assaults Read More

Sharp Shooters

Actors: George O'Brien, Lois Moran, Noah Young, Tom Dugan, William Demarest

Synopsis: George O'Brien stars as George, a footloose sailor who adheres to a philosophy of "love 'em and leave 'em." While on leave in Morocco, George makes the acquaintance of fiery French dancer Lorette (Lois Moran), who of course falls madly in love with him. Regarding Lorette as just another diversion Read More

The Midnight Taxi

Actors: Antonio Moreno, Helene Costello, Tom Dugan, William Russell, Myrna Loy

Synopsis: Anticipating Robert DeNiro by nearly fifty years, New York cabdriver "Taxi" Driscoll (Antonio Moreno) prefers to drive his dilapidated hack in the dead of night. Unlike DeNiro, Driscoll picks up extra folding money by agreeing to transport bootleg booze. It isn't long before our none-too-ethical Read More

Dressed to Kill

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Mary Astor, Ben Bard, R.O. Pennell, Robert Perry

Synopsis: Most of Dressed to Kill takes place at a swank nightclub which serves as an Underworld rendezvous. Heroine Jean (Mary Astor) hopes to recover the bonds that her imprisoned sweetheart is accused of stealing. To do this, Jean sidles up to mob boss Mile-Away Barry (Edmund Lowe), figuring that he was Read More

Lights of New York

Actors: Helene Costello, Cullen Landis, Gladys Brockwell, Mary Carr, Wheeler Oakman

Synopsis: Contrary to popular belief, no one speaks into microphones hidden in vases in this, the first 100% "all-talking" feature film, although an oversized telephone prop is rather conveniently placed near the actors in one long sequence. Although not nearly as crude as its tattered reputation, Lights Read More

Melody of Love

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Mildred Harris, Jane Winton, Tom Dugan, Jack Richardson

Synopsis: Universal's first 100% all-talkie, Melody of Love was completed with the aid of borrowed Movietone sound equipment from Fox studios (it was largely filmed at night, when Fox was shutdown). Walter Pidgeon stars as Tin Pan Alley composer Jack Clark, who when WWI breaks out signs up for the army with Read More

Soft Living

Actors: Madge Bellamy, Johnny Mack Brown, Mary Duncan, Joyce Compton, Thomas Jefferson

Synopsis: Madge Bellamy stars as Nancy Woods, the secretary to a successful divorce lawyer. Soured on matrimony by the examples set in her boss' office, Nancy decides to marry for money then dump her husband and live off the alimony. When she entraps millionaire Stockney Webb (Johnny Mack Brown) as her Read More

Shadows of the Night

Actors: Lawrence Gray, Louise Lorraine, Dog: Flash, Tom Dugan, Warner P. Richmond

Synopsis: As an answer to Warner Bros.' immensely successful canine star Rin-Tin-Tin, MGM launched Flash, a police dog. In Shadows of the Night Flash assists police sergeant Jimmy Sherwood (Lawrence Gray) in catching the feared Feagan gang. Louise Lorraine, formerly of Universal oaters, appeared briefly to Read More

The Swell-Head

Actors: Ralph Graves, Johnny Walker, Eugenia Gilbert, Mildred Harris, Mary Carr

Synopsis: Also known as Swell-Head, this enjoyable Columbia programmer starred former Mack Sennett leading man Ralph Graves, who also directed. To finance a critical operation for his invalid mother, Lefty Malone (Graves) steps into the boxing ring. He soon ascends to the championship, his ego expanding to Read More

The Kid Sister

Actors: Marguerite de la Motte, Ann Christy

Synopsis: Small town girls get a taste of the world when they go fortune seeking in the big city. The big sister goes first and gets a job as a chorus girl. Though in a glittery life fraught with temptation, the girl remains pure in body and spirit. Later her little sister comes to join her. One night Read More

By Whose Hand?

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Eugenia Gilbert

Synopsis: By Whose Hand? is a swift little thriller expertly assembled by up-and-coming Columbia Pictures. Ricardo Cortez stars as a society swell who, unbeknownst to all but insurance investigator J. Thornton Baston, is actually the daring Agent X-9. More troubleshooter than spy, Cortez is assigned to Read More

My Friend from India

Heart of Salome

Actors: Alma Rubens, Walter Pidgeon, Holmes Herbert, Robert Agnew, Erin La Bissoniere, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: The "Salome" of this heavy-breathing melodrama is Helene (Alma Rubens), who is betrayed by her wealthy lover Monte Carroll (Walter Pidgeon). Seeking revenge, Helene links up with the villainous Count Boris (Holmes Herbert). For the girl's sake, Boris orders the kidnapping of Monte and prepares to Read More

Meet Danny Wilson

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr, Tommy Farrell

Synopsis: Some observers have suggested that Meet Danny Wilson could just as well have been titled Meet Frank Sinatra. A star vehicle if ever there was one, the film casts Sinatra as Danny, a would-be singer, playing cheap saloons while waiting for the Big Break. Danny and his buddy Mike Ryan (Alex Nicol) Read More