Werner Richard Heymann Filmography

Unnatural

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Hildegarde Neff, Erich Von Stroheim, Karl Heinz Böhm, Harry Meyen, Harry Halm

Synopsis: Also known as Alraune and Mandrake, The Unnatural is a kinky science fiction film, elevated by the bravura performance of Erich Von Stroheim. Playing a mad scientist (again?), Von Stroheim artificially inseminates an addled prostitute with the sperm of a vicious murderer. The result of this unholy Read More

A Woman of Distinction

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Ray Milland, Rosalind Russell, Edmund Gwenn, Janis Carter, Mary Jane Saunders

Synopsis: A Woman of Distinction serves as a tailor-made vehicle for Rosalind Russell. The star is cast as Susan Middlecott, a highly respected college dean. As can be expected, Susan is too busy for romance -- at least until handsome professor Alec Stevenson (Ray Milland) enters the picture. At first, the Read More

Emergency Wedding

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Larry Parks, Barbara Hale, Willard Parker, Una Merkel, Alan Reed, Sr.

Synopsis: 1950's Emergency Wedding is a remake of 1940's You Belong to Me. The later film stars Larry Parks, who'd had a bit role in the original. Parks plays wealthy Peter Kirk, a playboy, while Barbara Hale co-stars as female doctor Helen Hunt. When Peter marries Helen, it is a "given" that he'll stay Read More

Tell It to the Judge

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Screenwriter

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Robert Cummings, Gig Young, Marie McDonald, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: Though divorced from attorney Robert Cummings, Rosalind Russell continues hoping that she can arrange a reconciliation. This proves difficult due to Cummings' fascination with curvaceous Marie McDonald. Contriving to arouse Cumming's jealousy, Russell pretends to be married to feckless Gig Young. Read More

Almost a Bride

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Shirley Temple, David Niven, Tom Tully, Virginia Welles, Darryl Hickman

Synopsis: Shirley Temple's final starring film, A Kiss for Corliss is a sequel to the actress' 1945 hit Kiss and Tell. The 21-year-old Temple again stars as impulsive teenager Corliss Archer, who on this occasion harbors a crush on notorious playboy Kenneth Marquis (David Niven), who has already been to the Read More

The Mating of Millie

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

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

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

Let's Live a Little

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, Robert Cummings, Anna Sten, Mary Treen, Harry Antrim

Synopsis: Sexual harassment can work both ways as can be seen in this romantic comedy when ad man endeavors to maneuver out of a relationship with his girlfriend. This is difficult as she controls a major account for his company and refuses to renew it unless he continues to go out with her. The frustrated Read More

Always Together

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Robert Hutton, Joyce Reynolds, Cecil Kellaway, Ernest Truex, Don McGuire

Synopsis: In this frothy, star-studded Warner Brothers outing, tightwad tycoon Jonathan Turner, believing himself at death's door, gives star-struck movie buff Jane Barker a million bucks. Problems begin when Jane's hubby, an aspiring writer, finds out about her new fortune. Marital turmoil ensues causing Read More

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Al Bridge, Harold Lloyd, Frances Ramsden, Raymond Walburn, Georgia Caine, Jimmy Conlin, Franklin Pangborn, Margaret Hamilton, Edgar Kennedy

Synopsis: Absent from films since 1938 (except as producer of a brace of RKO Radio features), silent-screen comedy favorite Harold Lloyd returned before the cameras in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. The project began as a labor of love between Lloyd and the brilliant, innovative producer/writer/director Preston Sturges Read More

Lost Honeymoon

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Franchot Tone, Ann Richards, Frances Rafferty, Clarence Kolb, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: The second Hollywood-filmed effort from the British-based Eagle Lion company, Lost Honeymoon is a decided improvement on the first (It's a Joke, Son). Franchot Tone plays returning GI Johnny Gray, who knows that he suffered from amnesia while in London but doesn't know what he did during his Read More

It's in the Bag

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Fred Allen, Jack Benny, William Bendix, Binnie Barnes, Robert Benchley

Synopsis: Based on the popular Russian novel The Twelve Chairs, this stars Fred Allen as flea-circus impresario Fred Floogle. Learning that he's inherited $12 million from his uncle, Fred also discovers that the money has been stuffed in one of thirteen chairs that he's sold at auction. The rest of the film Read More

Hold That Blonde

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Eddie Bracken, Veronica Lake, Albert Dekker, Willie Best, Frank Fenton

Synopsis: This curious mixture of comedy, romance and melodrama teams up comic actor Eddie Bracken and glamour girl Veronica Lake, two of Paramount's most popular stars of the mid-1940s. He plays Ogden Spencer Trulow III, a wealthy kleptomaniac; she plays Sally Martin, who may or may not provide the "cure" Read More

Kiss and Tell

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Screenwriter

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

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

Three is a Family

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Marjorie Reynolds, Charlie Ruggles, Helen Broderick, Arthur Lake

Synopsis: Based on a play by Phoebe and Henry Ephron, Three Is a Family is a 1940s farce that frequently substitutes noise for humor. Charlie Ruggles plays a hubby whose bungled business schemes force his wife Fay Bainter to enter the workplace. The couple's daughter Marjorie Reynolds shows up with her twin Read More

Hail the Conquering Hero

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines, William Demarest, Bill Edwards, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: It took nerve for writer/director Preston Sturges to lampoon the whole concept of hero worship in the middle of World War II, but once more Sturges' oddball sense of taste and propriety paid off at the box office in Hail the Conquering Hero. Eddie Bracken plays the son of a World War I Marine hero Read More

Knickerbocker Holiday

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Songwriter

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Charles Coburn, Constance Dowling, Shelley Winters, Ernest Cossart, Johnnie Davis, Percy Kilbride

Synopsis: The wild and woolly early days of New York -- when it was still known as New Amsterdam -- provide the backdrop for this period musical-comedy. In 1650, Peter Stuyvesant (Charles Coburn) arrives in New Amsterdam to assume his duties as governor. Stuyvesant is hardly the fun-loving type, and one of Read More

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Gail Russell, Diana Lynn, James Brown, Bill Edwards, Dorothy Gish

Synopsis: Our Hearts Were Young and Gay was based on the lighthearted joint autobiography of actress Cornelia Otis Skinner and humorist Emily Kimbrough. Gail Russell and Diana Lynn star respectively as Cornelia and Emily, two innocent but fun-loving young girls at loose in the Roaring 20s. The story Read More

My Pal, Wolf

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Sharyn Moffett, Jill Esmond, Una O'Connor, George Cleveland, Charles Arnt

Synopsis: In this adventure the young lively daughter of wealthy Virginia parents bridles under the stern tutelage of her new English nanny who insists she forego her tomboy ways and act like a perfectly lady. This nanny runs the household with an iron hand and the little girl is terribly unhappy until she Read More

Together Again

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

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

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

Mademoiselle Fifi

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Simone Simon, John Emery, Kurt Kreuger, Alan Napier, Helen Freeman

Synopsis: One of the few failures for RKO Radio's resident "prestige programmer" producer Val Lewton, Mademoiselle Fifi is based on two Guy De Maupassant tales, with emphasis on Boule de Suif. The story takes place during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, though it is clearly an allegorical representation of Read More

Flight Lieutenant

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Jonathan Hale, Minor Watson

Synopsis: There are moments in Columbia's Flight Lieutenant that approach "high camp"; indeed, one is hard pressed to remember if any cliché is left unturned. Pat O'Brien plays air pilot Sam O'Doyle, who is professionally disgraced when he survives a crash in which his co-pilot is killed. He tries to get Read More

The Wife Takes a Flyer

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Joan Bennett, Franchot Tone, Allyn Joslyn, Cecil Cunningham, Roger Clark

Synopsis: In this WW II spy comedy, an American pilot stationed in England is flying a routine mission when the Nazis shoot down his plane. He ends up seeking shelter in the home of an unhappily married Dutch woman. She covers for the pilot by introducing him as her mentally unbalanced but basically Read More

To Be or Not to Be

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision

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

They All Kissed the Bride

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

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

A Night to Remember

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Loretta Young, Brian Aherne, Jeff Donnell, Sidney Toler

Synopsis: Brian Aherne stars as a successful murder-mystery novelist; his wife, Loretta Young, wishes Aherne would switch to writing love stories (Young doesn't have a very realistic grasp on the literary marketplace, but we'll let that pass). Young sweet-talks Aherne into vacating their apartment and Read More

My Life with Caroline

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Ronald Colman, Anna Lee, Charles Winninger, Reginald Gardiner, Gilbert Roland

Synopsis: My Life with Caroline is a dizzy boy-chases-girl affair with a twist: the girl being chased is the boy's own wife. Wealthy publisher Anthony (Ronald Colman) weds dizzy socialite Caroline (Anna Lee, in her first Hollywood film), who sees nothing wrong with seeking out new boyfriends even after her Read More

Topper Returns

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Joan Blondell, Roland Young, Carole Landis, Billie Burke, Dennis O'Keefe

Synopsis: The third of producer Hal Roach's Topper films, Topper Returns eschews the frothy "screwball" format of the first two in favor of an "old dark house" comedy-mystery. Roland Young returns as banker Cosmo Topper, who gallantly offers a lift to pretty hitchhikers Gail Richards (Joan Blondell) and Ann Read More

Bedtime Story

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Fredric March, Loretta Young, Robert Benchley, Allyn Joslyn, Eve Arden

Synopsis: Despite its alluring title, Bedtime Story is an innocent little domestic comedy about a bickering married couple. Fredric March is a successful playwright specializing in vehicles for his beautiful actress wife Loretta Young. Young wants to retire from the stage and set up housekeeping on a little Read More

That Uncertain Feeling

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Alan Mowbray, Olive Blakeney

Synopsis: Ernst Lubitsch's That Uncertain Feeling was previously filmed by the director in 1925 as Kiss Me Again; both versions were inspired the Victorien Sardou-Emile de Najac bedroom farce Let's Get a Divorce. Six year into her marriage to preoccupied insurance salesman Larry Baker (Melvyn Douglas), Jill Read More

This Thing Called Love

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Melvyn Douglas, Binnie Barnes, Allyn Joslyn, Gloria Dickson, Lee J. Cobb

Synopsis: This Thing Called Love extracts its laughs from the prehistoric concept of sexual frustration. Business partners Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas marry, but only on a trial basis. Russell wants to prove that a married couple can function merely as friends, and to that end she denies her husband Read More

He Stayed for Breakfast

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Loretta Young, Melvyn Douglas, Alan Marshal, Eugene Pallette, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: In this drama, set in Paris, a devout communist is slowly seduced into becoming a capitalist by a persuasively pretty young woman. The tale begins as the young man shoots at a banker and then flees the police. He runs into the woman's apartment, and for some reason, she decides to let him stay. Read More

One Million B.C.

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Hubbard, Mamo Clark

Synopsis: Even taking into consideration Of Mice and Men, One Million BC was inarguably the most ambitious feature-film project ever undertaken by producer Hal Roach. Told in flashback, this is the highly fanciful tale of the prehistoric feud between the Rock Tribe and Shell People. Tumak (Victor Mature) Read More

The Primrose Path

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry Travers, Miles Mander

Synopsis: In her third film for innovative director Gregory LaCava, Ginger Rogers briefly turns her back on her established screen image by playing the daughter and granddaughter of prostitutes. Determined not to pursue the "family business", Ellie May Adams (Rogers) opts for respectability, as personified Read More

The Shop Around the Corner

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden

Synopsis: The Shop Around the Corner is adapted from the Hungarian play by Nikolaus (Miklos) Laszlo. Budapest gift-shop clerk Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and newly hired shopgirl Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) hate each other almost at first sight. Kralik would prefer the company of the woman with whom Read More

The Earl of Chicago

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Edward Arnold, Reginald Owen, Edmund Gwenn, E.E. Clive

Synopsis: The schizophrenic screenplay of The Earl of Chicago is rendered even more bizarre by the uneven performance by Robert Montgomery. He plays Silky Kilmont, a Runyonesque American gangster who inherits a British title (Earl of Gorley) and mansion. Taking charge of his new estate, Silky has an amusing Read More

Ninotchka

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Ina Claire

Synopsis: "Garbo Laughs!" declared the ads for Ninotchka. In the face of dwindling foreign revenues, MGM decided to put Greta Garbo, a bigger draw in Europe than the US, in a box-office-savvy comedy, engaging the services of master farceur Ernst Lubitsch to direct. The film opens in Paris during the Read More

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, David Niven, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: The great Ernst Lubitsch directed this farce (written by Charles M. Brackett and Billy Wilder) about a free-wheeling millionaire, Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper), who enjoys getting married but has a hard time staying married: he's had seven wives and is looking for number eight. He thinks he may Read More

The King and the Chorus Girl

Crew: Songwriter

Actors: Fernand Gravey, Joan Blondell, Edward Everett Horton, Alan Mowbray, Jane Wyman

Synopsis: Groucho Marx received co-writer credit (along with his old friend Norman Krasna) for King and the Chorus Girl, though very little Marxian wit is in evidence. What remains is a fun but forgettable comedy about a European monarch (Fernand Gravet) who woos and wins a down-to-earth American chorine (Joan Blondell Read More

Symphonie D'Amour

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Fernand Gravey

Synopsis: Also known as La Grande Refrain, Symphonie D'Amour was filmed in 1936 but wasn't released in America until a decade later. Fernand Gravet plays Panard, a young composer who has yet to receive his big break. His actress girlfriend (Jacqueline Francell) inveigles a wealthy marquis to finance a Read More

Caravan

Crew: Songwriter

Actors: Annabella, Conchita Montenegro, Loretta Young, Jean Parker, Charles Boyer, Pierre Brasseur, Phillips Holmes, Louise Fazenda

Synopsis: Charles Boyer played his first major Hollywood role (and gets to sing in the bargain!) in the oddball musical romance Caravan. A miscast Loretta Young stars as young Countess Wilms, who is forced to wed by midnight or lose her inheritance. She impulsively chooses gypsy vagabond Latzi (Boyer) Read More

Idylle Au Caire

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Renate Muller, Henry Roussell, Georges Rigaud

Synopsis: This is the French-language version of the exotic German drama Saison in Kairo. Set in Cairo (where else?), the story revolves around the efforts by Toby (Georges Rigaud) and Stephy (Renete Muller) to marry off Toby's mother (Spinelly) to Stephy's father (Henry Roussell). The complications: Toby's Read More

Adorable

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Henri Garat, C. Aubrey Smith, Herbert Mundin

Synopsis: Frisky princess Marie Christine, known as Mitzi (Janet Gaynor) passes herself off as a manicurist, and falls in love with Karl (Henry Garat), a delicatessen worker, though he's really a lieutenant in Mitzi's army. Back at the palace, the Prime Minister (C. Aubrey Smith) tells Mitzi her betrothal Read More

Saison in Kairo

Crew: Songwriter

Ich Bei Tag und du Bei Nacht

Crew: Songwriter

Actors: Kaethe von Nagy, Willy Fritsch, Julius Falkenstein

Liebe Ist Liebe

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Kaethe von Nagy, Julius Falkenstein, Hans Albers, Frida Richard, Hans Brausewetter

Der Sieger

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Hans Albers, Kaethe von Nagy, Julius Falkenstein, Hans Brausewetter, Frida Richard

Synopsis: Telegraph operator Hans Albers wins a fortune at the racetrack, immediately shooting his wad on a new wardrobe. It is Albers' hope to impress Kaethe Von Nagy, the daughter of a wealthy American banker. Even when he's lost all his money, our hero contrives to stay near the girl by hiring himself Read More

Quick

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Lilian Harvey, Jeanne Fusier-Gir, Jules Berry, Pierre Brasseur

Synopsis: Though Lillian Harvey is the star of Quick, the title character is played by the versatile French character actor Jules Berry. The story is set among an acting troupe, with leading lady Harvey falling in love with a clown. However, she loves him only when they're on stage together; offstage, Harvey Read More

Un Reve Blond

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Henri Garat, Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, Pierre Brasseur, Willi Forst, Paul Hoerbiger, Trude Hesterberg

Synopsis: The internationally popular screen team of Lillian Harvey and Willy Fritsch scored another box-office bull's-eye with Ein Blonder Traum (A Blonde Dream). Harvey plays a Jou-Jou, a struggling artist who is deceived and victimized by a man posing as an American millionaire. Taking pity on the poor Read More

Happy Ever After

Crew: Songwriter

Actors: Lilian Harvey, Jack Hulbert, Dame Cicely Courtneidge, Sonnie Hale

Synopsis: In this musical, a frail artist is victimized by a con artist who cheats her out of her life savings. Two window washers named Willie stop the girl from sinking any lower and simultaneously fall in love with her. They help her become an incredibly popular singer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Der Kongress Tanzt

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, Henri Garat, Otto Wallburg, Armand Bernard, Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover, Gibb McLaughlin, Carl-Heinz Schroth

Synopsis: During the 1814 Congress in Vienna, the crowned heads of Europe gather together to decide the shape (and fate) of the continent (which would hold -- with some serious cracks -- for exactly 100 years) and devise a strategy for dealing with Napoleon. The ordinary Austrians chafe at the cost of Read More

Le Bal

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Germaine Dermoz, Lucie Mannheim, Marguerite Pierry, Reinhold Schuenzel, Danielle Darrieux, André Lefaur, Gertrud Wolle, Paul Otto, Vanda Greville

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Helen Nimirosky, The Ball was filmed simultaneously in German and French-language versions. The French adaptation, Le Bal, served to introduce 14-year-old Danielle Darrieux to the picture-going public. Darrieux plays the daughter of a pair of delicatessen owners who suddenly Read More

The Bombardment of Monte Carlo

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Songwriter

Synopsis: The queen wants to take a vacation, and she wants passage aboard a ship whose crew is waiting for their pay. The captain has a winning streak and acquires enough money to pay the crew, but he doesn't know when to stop and loses all of the cash. He demands that the casinos of Monte Carlo refund his Read More

Ihre Hoheit Befiehlt

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Songwriter

Actors: Kaethe von Nagy, Willy Fritsch, Reinhold Schuenzel, Paul Hoerbiger, Paul Heidemann

Synopsis: Princess Marie Christine (Kaethe Von Nagy) doesn't want to marry the man picked out for her by her parents. Likewise, aristocrat Lt. Von Conradi (Willy Fritsch) balks at the notion of an arranged marriage. Now the scenes shifts to a costume ball: Princess Marie pretends to be a humble manicurist Read More

Le Chemin Du Paradis

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Lilian Harvey, Henri Garat, Jacques Maury, Rene Lefebvre, Gaston Jacquet

Synopsis: Chemin de Paradis (Road to Paradise) is the French-language version of the incredibly successful German musical comedy Die Drei von der Tankstelle, with Lillian Harvey repeating her role as flirtatious young heiress Liliane. The plot still revolves around three young men who try to square their Read More

Liebeswalzer

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Julia Serda, Lilian Harvey, Karl Ludwig Diehl, George Alexander

Drei Von Der Tankstelle

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, Olga Tschechowa, Fritz Kampers, Oscar Karlweis

Synopsis: If a poll had ever been conducted amongst fans of international musical-comedy star Lillian Harvey, the actress's most pop