Victor VarconiFilmography

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Return of the Hero

Synopsis: Wounded in the French-Algerian war, Sgt. Andre Doniere (Jacques Bergerac) heads back to France in the company of his friend Marcel (Marcel Dalio), who lost a leg saving Andre's life. Although Doniere's return is eagerly awaited by his adoring fiancée, Sybil (Lilyan Chauvin), he is consumed by Read More

The Man Who Turned to Stone

Actors: Victor Jory, Ann Doran, Charlotte Austin, William Hudson, Paul Cavanagh

Synopsis: The secret to immortality is thus: to rejuvenate tired bones and muscles and retain that youthful feeling forever, simply place nubile young women in a vat filled with chemicals, attach wires to their heads and suck out their life forces Warning: If after the first dosage subsequent treatments are not promptly administered, irreversible petrification will occur in all cases. Read More

Samson and Delilah

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: Samson and Delilah is Cecil B. DeMille's characteristically expansive retelling of the events found in the Old Testament passages of Judges 13-16. Victor Mature plays Samson, the superstrong young Danite. Samson aspires to marry Philistine noblewoman Semadar (Angela Lansbury), but she is killed Read More

Unconquered

Actors: Gary Cooper, Paulette Goddard, Howard Da Silva, Boris Karloff, Katherine de Mille, Ward Bond

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's first postwar production, the $5 million Technicolor historical spectacular Unconquered lacks only the kitchen sink. The story begins in England in the 1760s, as Abigail Martha Hale (Paulette Goddard), unjustly accused of a crime against the Crown, is sentenced by the Lord Chief Read More

Where There's Life

Actors: Bob Hope, Signe Hasso, William Bendix, George Coulouris, Vera Marshe

Synopsis: Bearing traces of such earlier hits as My Favorite Blonde and The Ghost Breakers, Where There's Life is one of the best of Bob Hope's postwar vehicles. The inimitable Mr. Hope is cast as New York radio personality Michael Valentine, who's poised to marry his long-time fiancee Hazel O'Brien (Vera Marshe Read More

Pirates of Monterey

Actors: Rod Cameron, George Lewis, George Magrill

Synopsis: Pirates of Monterey is set during the early 19th century, at a time when California was asserting its independence from Mexico. Rod Cameron plays Phillip Kent, a devil-may-care mercenary hired to transport a shipment of rifles to the American army detachment at Monterey. Along the way, he is Read More

Scotland Yard Investigator

Actors: C. Aubrey Smith, Stephanie Bachelor, Forrester Harvey, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: This Republic programmer is based on a true story, though its plot complications are anything but founded in reality. Set in London, the story is motivated by master criminal Carl Hoffmeyer (Erich Von Stroheim), who cooks up an intricate, apparently foolproof scheme to steal the Mona Lisa, on loan Read More

Dakota

Actors: John Wayne, Vera Ralston, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Mike Mazurki

Synopsis: According to Hollywood lore, both John Wayne and director Frank Borzage refused to work with Vera Hruba Ralston, the Czech-born inamorata (and future wife) of Republic Pictures owner Herbert I. Yates. Yates somehow managed to convince Wayne to change his mind, but Borzage was replaced by contract Read More

The Story of Dr. Wassell

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

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

The Hitler Gang

Actors: Robert "Bobby" Watson, Martin Kosleck, Victor Varconi, Luis Van Rooten

Synopsis: Though it takes several liberties with facts and motivations, The Hitler Gang is a reasonably absorbing chronicle of Hitler's rise to power. An obscure German corporal in WW1, Adolf Hitler (played by Robert Watson, better known for his comic portrayals of Der Fuhrer), embittered by the Versailles Read More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

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

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

My Favorite Blonde

Actors: Bob Hope, Madeleine Carroll, Gale Sondergaard, George Zucco, Lionel Royce, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: Each of Bob Hope's "My Favorite" films (My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, My Favorite Spy) was, by accident or design, a parody of a dead-serious movie genre. 1942's My Favorite Blonde, for example, was a takeoff of Alfred Hitchcock in general and Hitchcock's 39 Steps in particular. Read More

Reap the Wild Wind

Actors: Ray Milland, John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Raymond Massey, Robert Preston

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolor historical spectacle Reap the Wild Wind was to have starred Gary Cooper, but Cooper's prior commitment to Goldwyn's Pride of the Yankees compelled DeMille to recast the leading role with John Wayne. The film, set in the mid-19th century, centers around Key West Read More

They Raid by Night

Actors: Lyle Talbot, June Duprez, Victor Varconi, George Neise

Synopsis: Directed by serial specialist Spencer Gordon Bennet, They Raid by Night is a PRC "special" dealing with the activities of the commandos in WWII. Lyle Talbot plays Capt. Robert Owen, the head of a three-man commando squad who parachute into Norway to rescue an Allied general (Paul Baratoff) from a Read More

Forced Landing

Synopsis: In this war drama, a commercial pilot joins the air corps of a South Pacific island, and there he finds that he must contend with a dictator. He also falls quietly in love with the leader's girlfriend. Unfortunately, the evil leader is the head of the air corps, and to get rid of the young man who Read More

Federal Fugitives

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Doris Day, Victor Varconi, Charles Wilson, George Carleton

Synopsis: Silent film stalwart Neil Hamilton heads the cast of the PRC "special" Federal Fugitives. Hamilton plays secret service officer Captain Madison, assigned to investigate the deaths of three of his colleagues in highly suspicious plane crashes. Posing as an airplane manufacturer, Madison keeps a Read More

The Sea Hawk

Actors: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Flora Robson, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: In the 1580s, the Sea Hawks -- the name given to the bold privateers who prowl the oceans taking ships and treasure on behalf the British crown -- are the most dedicated defenders of British interests in the face of the expanding power of Philip of Spain. And Captain Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) Read More

Strange Cargo

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Ian Hunter, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas

Synopsis: "Strange" is right: this mystical MGM melodrama has to be the oddest of the studio's Clark Gable-Joan Crawford vehicles. When eight prisoners escape from a New Guinea penal colony, they are picked up by a sloop commandeered by another escapee named Verne (Gable) and his trollop girl friend Julie Read More

Pound Foolish

Synopsis: This entry in MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series focuses on customs evasion. It shows how even wealthy people, not just career criminals and smugglers, attempt to evade paying customs tax on items they bring back from overseas. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide Read More

Everything Happens at Night

Actors: Sonja Henie, Ray Milland, Robert Cummings, Maurice Moscovich, Leonid Kinskey

Synopsis: 20th Century Fox's Christmas gift to moviegoers in 1939, this fanciful comedy-drama features the studio's darling of the ice, Sonja Henie. She plays the daughter of a Nobel Peace Prize-winner feared murdered by the German Gestapo. A couple of rival American newspaper reporters, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings Read More

Disputed Passage

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff, John Howard, Judith Barrett, William Collier, Sr.

Synopsis: Idealism vs. Practicality is the Disputed Passage in this lavishly mounted soap opera. Based on a novel by Lloyd C. Douglas (The Robe, Magnificent Obsession) the film stars John Howard as young medical student John Wesley Beaven. In the course of his education, Beaven is torn between two Read More

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle

Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edna May Oliver, Walter Brennan, Lew Fields

Synopsis: The last of RKO's Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicles, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is also the least typical. At their best playing carefree characters in gossamer-thin musical comedy plotlines, Fred and Ginger seem slightly ill at ease cast as the real-life dancing team of Vernon and Read More

Submarine Patrol

Actors: Richard Greene, Nancy Kelly, Preston S. Foster, George Bancroft, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: Set during World War I, Submarine Patrol stars Preston S. Foster as a naval officer demoted for dereliction of duty. He is forced to commandeer a battered old submarine chaser and its ragtag crew. Anxious to redeem himself, Foster transforms his loser underlings into a crack combat team, chalking Read More

Suez

Actors: Tyrone Power, Loretta Young, Annabella, J. Edward Bromberg, Joseph Schildkraut

Synopsis: This is an epic Darryl F. Zanuck production that plays fast and loose with historical facts regarding early 19th century French politics and the building of the Suez Canal. Tyrone Power stars as Ferdinand de Lesseps, an engineer and son of a French nobleman (Harry Stephenson). At the start of the Read More

King of the Newsboys

Actors: Lew Ayres, Helen Mack, Alison Skipworth, Victor Varconi, Sheila Bromley

Synopsis: In this drama, a young man aspires to a life of wealth and power in the newspaper business. Unfortunately, it takes time and money to be successful. The young man's girl is not patient and decides to dump him in favor of a wealthy gangster. This inspires the jilted youth to achieve his dreams. He Read More

Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation

Actors: Peter Lorre, Joseph Schildkraut, Lionel Atwill, Virginia Field, John King

Synopsis: This eighth (and final) entry in 20th Century-Fox's "Mr. Moto" series once again stars Peter Lorre as J. P. Marquand's resourceful and unfailingly polite Japanese detective. When American archeologist Howard Stevens (John King) recovers the ancient crown of the Queen of Sheba, the priceless Read More

The Plainsman

Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Ellison, Charles Bickford, Helen Burgess

Synopsis: One is immediately aware that The Plainsman is a Cecil B. DeMille production in the opening scene, wherein President Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.), on the verge of signing crucial legislation which will determine the future of the American West, is dragged away from his Cabinet by a scolding Read More

Men in Exile

Actors: Dick Purcell, June Travis, Alan Baxter, Margaret Irving, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: Director John Farrow was always at his best when dealing with desperate men in desperate situations. One of Farrow's lesser but still fascinating 1930s assignments was the Warner Bros. actioner Men in Exile, starring Dick Purcell as American fugitive from justice Jimmy Carmody. Escaping across the Read More

The Big City

Actors: Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy, Charles Grapewin, Janet Beecher, Eddie Quillan

Synopsis: The Big City is an improbable urban melodrama which takes place during a "taxi war" between honest independent cabdrivers and graft-ridden taxi monopolies. Looking for a scapegoat for a recent gangland bombing, crooked city officials deport the foreign wife (Luise Rainer) of rabble-rousing cabbie Spencer Tracy Read More

Trouble in Morocco

Actors: Jack Holt, Mae Clarke, C. Henry Gordon, Harold Huber, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: In this adventure set in Cairo, two foreign correspondents are assigned to investigate a ring of arms smugglers. One of them gets involved with a gangster who mistakes him for another crook and ends up joining the Foreign Legion. As he tries to fulfill his obligation, he finds himself battling Read More

Dancing Pirate

Actors: Charles Collins, Frank Morgan, Steffi Duna, Luis Alberni, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: Dancing Pirate was the second feature-length production by Pioneer Pictures, whose earlier effort Becky Sharp was the first three-strip Technicolor feature. Pirate was likewise filmed in the three-strip process, but the film is currently available only in its black-and-white reissue version. Read More

A Feather in Her Hat

Actors: Pauline Lord, Basil Rathbone, Louis Hayward, Billie Burke, Wendy Barrie

Synopsis: Legendary stage actress Pauline Lord made but a few films, but was always worth watching whenever she took command of the screen. In Feather in Her Hat, Lord plays cockney storekeeper Clarissa Phipps, who worries that her son Richard will grow up being ashamed of her humble vocation. Thus, she Read More

Mr. Dynamite

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Jean Dixon, Esther Ralston, Victor Varconi, Verna Hillie

Synopsis: Mr. Dynamite was based on the Dashiel Hammett novel On the Make. Edmund Lowe plays jaunty private eye T. N. Thompson, or T.N.T. ("Mistery Dynamite", get it?) Nothing pleases Thompson more than running rings around the San Francisco police force, headed by the dyspeptic detective King (Robert Gleckler Read More

Roberta

Actors: Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Helen Westley

Synopsis: Alice Duer Miller's novel Gowns by Roberta was adapted into the 1933 Broadway musical Roberta, with music by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. The 1935 filmization of Roberta was slightly adapted to accommodate the dancing talents of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, though their roles are secondary to Read More

When London Sleeps

Crew: Screen Story

Synopsis: In this drama, investigators begin looking into a number of terrible train wrecks and learn that a schizophrenic railroad executive is to blame. In Britain the film is titled Menace. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Song You Gave Me

Actors: Bebe Daniels, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: Based on Walter Reisch's play The Song is Ended, The Song You Gave Me is a British attempt to emulate the glossy "continental" style. Hollywood's Bebe Daniels (who later took up permanent residence in London) stars as Mitzi Hansen, the personal secretary to world-renowned singer Karl Linden (Victor Varconi Read More

The Rebel

Actors: Luis Trenker, Vilma Banky, Victor Varconi, Paul Bildt, Olga Engl

Der Rebell

Synopsis: In this costume drama, a courageous Tyrolean fights to keep Napoleon from conquering his German homeland. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Doomed Battalion

Actors: Tala Birell, Luis Trenker, Victor Varconi, Albert Conti, Gustav von Seyffertitz

Synopsis: This war drama, set in a snow covered Tyrolean pass during WW I, chronicles a strange situation between an Austrian battalion assigned to guard the snowbound pass and the Italians that plan to blow their position up. The Austrian leader is well aware that the enemy has been digging a tunnel Read More

The Black Camel

Actors: Warner Oland, Sally Eilers, Bela Lugosi, Dorothy Revier, Victor Varconi, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Actress Shelah Fane (Dorothy Revier) is in Honolulu to shoot a movie, but her chaotic personal life is keeping her from concentrating on work. She's supposed to marry millionaire playboy Alan Jaynes (William Post Jr.), but she's also got an ex lurking around and a possible skeleton in her closet Read More

Captain Thunder

Actors: Victor Varconi, Fay Wray, Charles Judels, Robert Elliott, Don Alvarado

Synopsis: Warner Bros.' Captain Thunder contains some of the darndest Mexican accents you've ever heard in your life. The star is Hungarian-born Victor Varconi, portraying a legendary south of the border outlaw who tries to force Canadian senorita Fay Wray to marry a rival rustler whom she despises. She Read More

Doctors' Wives

Actors: Warner Baxter, Joan Bennett, Victor Varconi, Helene Millard, Paul Porcasi

Synopsis: The trials of being a doctor's wife are presented in this drama. The story centers upon the problematic marriage of one couple. Their troubles begin when the doctor makes a housecall to a seductive woman with designs upon him. His suspicious wife follows him and spies on him. She thinks they are Read More

Men in Her Life

Actors: Lois Moran, Charles Bickford, Victor Varconi, Luis Alberni

Synopsis: In this drama, a woman with dubious past finds herself blackmailed when she makes plans to marry a senator's son. She finds salvation with a bootlegger who offers to take care of the excursionist. Unfortunately, he chooses to kill the fellow, gets caught, and is put on trial. Now the woman must Read More

Safe in Hell

Actors: Dorothy Mackaill, Donald Cook, Ralf Harolde, Morgan Wallace, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: A young Barbara Stanwyck was considered for the starring role as the exiled call-girl in this extremely frank pre production-code drama directed by William A. Wellman from a play by Houston Branch). The role eventually went ot Dorothy Mackaill, an evocative British-born veteran adept at playing Read More

Eternal Love

Actors: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn, Victor Varconi, Hobart Bosworth

Synopsis: Eternal Love was the last silent film of star John Barrymore and director Ernst Lubitsch; thereafter, both men would concentrate exclusively on talkies. Based on Der Konig der Bernina, a novel by Jakob Christopher Beer, the story is set in the Swiss Alps in 1812. Both forced into loveless Read More

The Divine Lady

Actors: Corinne Griffith, Victor Varconi, H.B. Warner, Ian Keith, Marie Dressler

Synopsis: Frank Lloyd both produced and directed The Divine Lady, a Hollywood slant on the 19th century romance of Lord Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton. American film star Corinne Griffith, decked out in a blonde wig, is decorative but otherwise unconvincing as Lady Emma, while Hungarian-born Victor Varconi Read More

Tenth Avenue

Actors: Phyllis Haver, Joseph Schildkraut, Victor Varconi, Robert Edeson

Sinner's Parade

Actors: Dorothy Revier, Victor Varconi, John Patrick, Edna Marion

Synopsis: The Columbia programmer Sinner's Parade stars studio utility player Victor Varconi as shady dance-hall proprietor Al Morton. Schoolteacher Mary Tracy (Dorothy Revier) goes to work for Al to support her family. When Bill Adams (John Patrick), the son of anti-vice campaigner Mrs. Adams (Clara Selwynne Read More

The King of Kings

Actors: H.B. Warner, Dorothy Cumming, Ernest Torrence, Joseph Schildkraut, James Neill

Synopsis: Having scored big-time box office with his first Biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), Cecil B. DeMille hoped to top this success with his 1927 The King of Kings. Inasmuch as he was now dealing with the life of Christ, DeMille had to be careful to serve up equal amounts of showmanship and Read More

Chicago

Actors: Phyllis Haver, Victor Varconi, Eugene Pallette, Virginia Bradford, T. Roy Barnes

Synopsis: Based on a real-life incident, Maurine Watkins' semi-satirical novel and play Chicago was first brought to the screen in 1927. Phyllis Haver was ideally cast as gum-chewing dance-hall girl Roxie Hart, who shoots her lover full of holes and then is forgiven by her faithful -- if not entirely honest Read More

Fighting Love

Actors: Jetta Goudal, Victor Varconi, Henry B. Walthall, Louis Natheaux, Josephine Crowell

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille contractees Jetta Goudal, Victor Varconi and H.B. Warner were kept busy in the DeMille-produced programmer Fighting Love. Set in Italy and Africa, the story revolves around Colonel Filippo Novarro (Walthall), a valiant old soldier married to a very young wife, Donna Vittoria (Jetta Goudal Read More

The Forbidden Woman

Actors: Jetta Goudal, Ivan Lebedeff, Josephine Norman, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: Forbidden Woman was the first production by PDC Pictures to be released after the defection of the company's founder Cecil B. DeMille (though DeMille's brother William upheld family tradition by supervising the picture). Threatened by the imperialistic inventions of the French army, an Arab sultan Read More

The Angel of Broadway

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Victor Varconi, May Robson, Alice Lake, Elsie Bartlett

Synopsis: Glamorous Broadway actress Babe (Leatrice Joy) is cast as a Salvation Army lass in her latest musical. For research purposes, she pays a visit to a Lower East Side S. A. Mission, dons a uniform, and goes to work on a street corner, complete with tambourine and contribution pot. This upsets her Read More

For Wives Only

Actors: Marie Prevost, Victor Varconi, Charles Gerrard, Arthur Hoyt, Claude Gillingwater

Synopsis: For Wives Only was based on the stage play The Critical Year. The story takes place in Vienna, where handsome Dr. Rittenhaus (Victor Varconi) spends most of his time avoiding the amorous advances of his adoring female patients (shades of Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle). Hoping to use Rittenhaus' Read More

Silken Shackles

Actors: Irene Rich, Huntly Gordon, Bertram Marburgh, Victor Varconi, Evelyn Selbie

Synopsis: Flighty Denise Lake (Irene Rich) tries to be faithful to her husband Howard (Huntley Gordon), but while vacationing in Hungary she falls for a shabby violinist named Tade Adrian (Victor Varconi), who claims to be of noble birth. Her understanding hubby allows Denise to have her fling but arranges Read More

The Volga Boatmen

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Elinor Fair, Robert Edeson, Victor Varconi, Julia Faye

Synopsis: One feels that if Cecil B. DeMille had been assigned to direct the one-character play Krapp's Last Tape, he'd have added 15,000 extras and a flood. A typically overbaked (and immensely entertaining) DeMille effort, The Volga Boatman was "inspired" by a Konrad Bercovici novel. Set in the months Read More

Feet of Clay

Actors: Vera Reynolds, Rod La Rocque, Victor Varconi, Ricardo Cortez, Julia Faye

Synopsis: While this Cecil B. DeMille production has many of the elements common to his pictures -- lavish, expensive sets and costumes, a high falutin' society background, and domestic turmoil -- it doesn't quite hit its mark. Part of the reason for this is the dream sequence. Instead of something Read More

Triumph

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Rod La Rocque, Victor Varconi, Charles Ogle, Theodore Kosloff

Synopsis: After the spectacular epic The Ten Commandments, filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille returns to the drawing room for this pleasingly straightforward drama. King Garnet (Rod La Rocque) is the idle son of factory owner David Garnet (George Fawcett). He is in love with Ann Land (Leatrice Joy), the factory's Read More

Changing Husbands

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Victor Varconi, Raymond Griffith, Julia Faye, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: Leatrice Joy has a dual role, as Gwynne Evans, a restless young wife who longs to go on the stage, and as lookalike actress Eva Graham, who wants nothing more than peace and quiet. The two women meet up and agree to change places. Oliver Evans (Victor Varconi) is glad to see that his wife has Read More

Worldly Goods

Actors: Agnes Ayres, Pat O'Malley, Victor Varconi, Edythe Chapman, Bert Woodruff

Synopsis: Before he became a producer at MGM, Paul Bern showed a flair for directing, adding a sophisticated touch to this comedy-drama. Salesman Fred Hopper (Pat O'Malley) gets by on bluff and he uses his skills to win Eleanor Lawson (Agnes Ayers) over his rival, department store head Clifford Ramsey (Victor Varconi Read More

Sodom and Gomorrah

Actors: Walter Slezak

Synopsis: This epic Austrian production was credited to Michael Kertesz, who became better known as Michael Curtiz. It was also the screen debut of Walter Slezak. Mary Conway (Lucy Doraine) agrees to marry the wealthy Jackson Harber (George Reimers) to save her mother (Erika Wagner) from a forgery charge. Read More

Herren Der Meere