William H. DanielsFilmography

Marlowe

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Garner, Gayle Hunnicutt, Carroll O'Connor, Rita Moreno, Sharon Farrell

Synopsis: James Garner is so good as Raymond Chandler's philosophical gumshoe Philip Marlowe that you forget he's totally wrong for the part. Based on Chandler's The Little Sister, Marlowe involves the detective's efforts to locate the missing brother of Orfamay Quest (Sharon Farrell). He follows the clues Read More

The Maltese Bippy

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Carol Lynley, Julie Newmar, Mildred Natwick

Synopsis: Cashing in on the popularity of their comedy series Laugh-In, comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin team up ala Abbott and Costello in this spoof of old horror movies and mysteries. Rowan plays a pornographic film producer and Martin plays his star, who is having trouble sleeping at night and Read More

The Impossible Years

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: David Niven, Lola Albright, Chad Everett, Ozzie Nelson, Cristina Ferrare

Synopsis: This situation comedy comes from a Bob Fisher and Arthur Marx play. Jonathan Kingsley (David Niven) is the teaching psychiatrist at the local university and is happily married to his wife Alice (Lola Albright). The couple has two teenage daughters, and the trouble begins when the oldest daughter Read More

In Like Flint

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb, Jean Hale, Andrew Duggan, Anna Lee

Synopsis: Derek Flint (James Coburn) is back in this James Bond-styled spy spoof sequel to Our Man Flint. Flint's boss Cramden (Lee J. Cobb) assigns him to stop a group of felonious females on the Virgin Islands who hope to take over the world; the bad femmes are kidnapping astronauts and replacing them Read More

Valley of the Dolls

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Paul Burke, Sharon Tate, Tony Scotti

Synopsis: A cinematic take on a 1960s best-seller, Valley of the Dolls traces the ups and downs of three young women as fame, booze, pills, and men consume their lives. Well-bred, small-town Anne Welles (Peyton Place star Barbara Parkins) arrives in New York eager for fame but settles for a job assisting Read More

Assault on a Queen

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Virna Lisi, Anthony Franciosa, Richard Conte, Alf Kjellin

Synopsis: Assault on a Queen is a complex, exciting crime-caper film in which a gang of clever mercenaries try to rob the famous luxury liner, the Queen Mary. Mark Brittain (Frank Sinatra) is hired by wealthy Italian adventuress Rosa Lucchesi (Verna Lisi) and her German partner-in-crime, Eric Laufftiauer (Alf Kjellin Read More

Von Ryan's Express

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard, Raffaella Carrà, Brad Dexter, James Brolin, Sergio Fantoni, Edward Mulhare

Synopsis: Von Ryan's Express is a fast-paced, well-acted World War II drama, featuring a squadron of Allied soldiers trying to escape a prison camp in Italy. While most of the prisoners at the camp are British, a determined, resourceful American Air Force colonel (Frank Sinatra) takes charge and leads the Read More

Marriage on the Rocks

Crew: Cinematographer, Producer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, Dean Martin, Cesar Romero, Hermione Baddeley

Synopsis: A couple's marriage is nearly destroyed by their attempts to save it in this farcical comedy. Dan and Valerie Edwards (Frank Sinatra and Deborah Kerr) are a couple who have been married for close to 20 years. Dan, a busy but successful advertising executive, believes they have a happy Read More

Robin and the Seven Hoods

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Falk, Bing Crosby

Synopsis: The Rat Pack packed it in after this sprightly musical comedy that owes more than it should to Damon Runyon's stories and Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows's classic musical Guys and Dolls. Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's bright and snappy score features such songs as "Style", "Bang-Bang" and the Sinatra Read More

Come Blow Your Horn

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Lee J. Cobb, Molly Picon, Barbara Rush, Jill St. John

Synopsis: This filmization of Neil Simon's first Broadway hit was adapted for the screen by Norman Lear. Once we get past the illogical casting of middle-aged Frank Sinatra and twentysomething Tony Bill as brothers, we're home free. Sinatra, a swinger supreme, uses his New York apartment as a harem of sorts Read More

The Prize

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, Elke Sommer, Diane Baker, Micheline Presle

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Irving Wallace, The Prize takes place in Stockholm, where several laureates gather to accept their Nobel Prizes. At first, the film concentrates on iconoclastic novelist Paul Newman, but he is temporarily shunted to the background when physics expert Edward G. Robinson is Read More

How the West Was Won

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Widmark, George Peppard, Karl Malden, John Wayne

Synopsis: Filmed in panoramic Cinerama, this star-studded, epic Western adventure is a true cinematic classic. Three legendary directors (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall) combine their skills to tell the story of three families and their travels from the Erie Canal to California between 1839 Read More

Billy Rose's Jumbo

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Doris Day, Stephen Boyd, Jimmy Durante, Martha Raye, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: Inasmuch as the spectacular Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart Broadway musical Jumbo was written in 1935, this 1962 film version can't help but seem a little quaint. Still, the film features the original production's star Jimmy Durante, energetically recreating his stage role as circus owner Pop Read More

Come September

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Sandra Dee, Bobby Darin, Walter Slezak

Synopsis: Rock Hudson stars in this frothy romantic comedy as filthy-rich American Robert Talbot. Talbot owns an Italian villa, where he traditionally stays only one month out of the year (September), but when Talbot suddenly decides to show up in July, Talbot's major overseer Maurice (Walter Slezak) is Read More

All the Fine Young Cannibals

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Susan Kohner, George Hamilton, Pearl Bailey

Synopsis: Robert Wagner plays Chad Bixby, a role reportedly inspired by the life of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in this romantic drama about two young couples linked by the out-of-wedlock baby spawned by Bixby and Salome Davis (Natalie Wood) before their current marriages. Pearl Bailey appears as a famous Read More

Can-Can

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Juliet Prowse

Synopsis: Cole Porter's Gay Paree musical about the introduction in Montmartre in 1896 of the notorious Can-Can dance, is brought to the screen, filtered through a Rat Pack sensibility. Shirley MacLaine stars as Simone Pistache, the perky and vivacious owner of a Parisian cafe, who, aided by her swingin' Read More

Ocean's Eleven

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson

Synopsis: During a Los Angeles Christmas, a group of 82nd Airborne vets assembles under the leadership of gamblin' man Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) to rip off four Las Vegas casinos just after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day. Playboy Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford) joins in the scheme because he's sick Read More

A Hole in the Head

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eleanor Parker, Carolyn Jones, Thelma Ritter

Synopsis: Although the main character, Tony Manetta (Frank Sinatra), in this light comedy tends to tip the scales towards being unbelievably unrealistic, the story is pulled off because everyone else is convincing. Tony is a widower in need of a financial bailout for himself and his son, so he asks for help Read More

A Stranger in My Arms

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: June Allyson, Jeff Chandler, Sandra Dee, Charles Coburn, Mary Astor

Synopsis: Though billed fifth, Mary Astor is the one to watch in the Ross Hunter-produced soapera Stranger in My Arms. Astor portrays a neurotically possessive mother who'll stop at nothing to win a posthumous medal of honor for her son. But air force major Jeff Chandler knows that the dead boy was a coward Read More

Never So Few

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford, Steve McQueen, Richard Johnson

Synopsis: Action director John Sturges had a few good films behind him (Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral) and a few more to come (The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven) when he put together this colorful story of wartime romance. In addition to his talents as a director, this saga of an Read More

Some Came Running

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy

Synopsis: After the success of From Here to Eternity, pairing Frank Sinatra with another James Jones novel made perfect sense. Set in the aftermath of World War II, the film stars Sinatra as a recently discharged soldier whose promising writing career has derailed. After a drunken card game, Sinatra finds Read More

The Voice in the Mirror

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Richard Egan, Julie London, Arthur O'Connell, Walter Matthau, Troy Donahue

Synopsis: In this sensitive drama, a commercial artist is devastated by his tiny daughter's death and takes to drinking to numb the terrible pain. Soon he has become a full-blown alcoholic. His loving wife and caring doctor are unable to help. He wants to stop drinking, but he simply cannot until he meets Read More

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Burl Ives, Jack Carson, Judith Anderson, Madeleine Sherwood

Synopsis: This dynamic and commanding adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses on a troubled Southern family and the discord over their dying father's millions. Wealthy plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt (Burl Ives), celebrating his 65th birthday, is visited by his sons, Brick (Paul Newman Read More

My Man Godfrey

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: June Allyson, David Niven, Jesse Royce Landis, Robert Keith, Eva Gabor

Synopsis: The Depression-New Deal subtext of the original 1936 My Man Godfrey was understandably dispensed with in this so-so 1957 remake. David Niven steps into the old William Powell role as hobo-turned-butler Godfrey, while June Allyson does her best in the Carole Lombard part as Irene Bullock, the Read More

Interlude

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: June Allyson, Rossano Brazzi, Marianne Cook, Françoise Rosay, Keith Andes

Synopsis: Like many of his best works, filmmaker Douglas Sirk's Interlude is a remake of an earlier Universal soap opera. In this case, Sirk's source material is the 1939 Irene Dunne-Charles Boyer vehicle When Tomorrow Comes. Based on a story by (of all people) James M. Cain, the story concerns the romance Read More

Istanbul

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Errol Flynn, Cornell Borchers, John Bentley, Torin Thatcher, Leif Erickson

Synopsis: In this adventure, a remake of Singapore (1947), a hero finds a bracelet containing 13 precious gems while visiting Istanbul. He soon finds himself pursued by covetous crooks who want those jewels. He is then deported by the Turkish authorities, but not before he has time to hide the bracelet in a Read More

Night Passage

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea, Dianne Foster, Elaine Stewart

Synopsis: Night Passage is so similar in spirit to the successful collaborations between star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann that it comes as a surprise that this film is directed by James Nielson. Stewart plays Grant McLaine, ex-railroad employee and the level-headed brother of firebrand Read More

Away All Boats

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jeff Chandler, George Nader, Julie Adams, Lex Barker, Keith Andes

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Kenneth M. Dodson, Away All Boats stars Jeff Chandler as a tough Navy captain who takes charge of a group of raw, undisciplined sailors during World War 2. To keep his men from getting on each other's nerves, Chandler makes himself the target of their excess hatred by Read More

The Unguarded Moment

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Esther Williams, George Nader, Les Tremayne, John Saxon, Edward Andrews

Synopsis: Esther Williams essays her first dramatic, nonswimming role in The Unguarded Moment. Written by actress Rosalind Russell, the film is a remarkably prescient tale of sexual harassment at the workplace. Williams plays high-school music-teacher Lois Conway, who inadvertently arouses the libido of Read More

Foxfire

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jane Russell, Jeff Chandler, Dan Duryea, Mara Corday, Barton MacLane

Synopsis: For full appreciation of the culture-clash drama Foxfire, it is crucial that the viewer accept Jeff Chandler as a Native American--not much of a stretch, since he'd previously been thoroughly convincing as Cochise in Broken Arrow. Chandler plays Jonathan Dartland, a half-breed Apache mining Read More

The Far Country

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, Ruth Roman, Corinne Calvet, Walter Brennan, John McIntire

Synopsis: One of the most entertaining of the Western movies to come out of the 1950s, this is a Stewart vehicle in which he must take on the ruthlessness of the frontier. Set in the Yukon, Stewart and his friends are driving cattle to market from Wyoming to Canada, where the boom towns pay top dollar for Read More

The Girl Rush

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Fernando Lamas, Eddie Albert, Gloria de Haven, Marion Lorne

Synopsis: In this comedy sequel to Wonderful Town (a popular Broadway musical), Kim, a museum worker from Providence, Rhode Island, inherits half ownership of a Las Vegas hotel when her father dies. She and her Aunt Clara go there to learn more about it. Unfortunately, just before they arrive, the other Read More

Strategic Air Command

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Lovejoy, Barry Sullivan, Alex Nicol

Synopsis: Inspired in part by the true story of baseball great Ted Williams, who after serving in World War II was drafted to serve in the Korean War just as his baseball career was taking off, Strategic Air Command stars James Stewart as "Dutch" Holland, a star third baseman with the St. Louis Cardinals. Read More

Six Bridges to Cross

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Tony Curtis, George Nader, Julie Adams, Jay C. Flippen, Sal Mineo

Synopsis: This exciting caper outing is loosely based on the famous robbery of Brinks in Boston that netted the crooks $2.5 million. The story covers the six years small-time hood Jerry Florea (Tony Curtis) spent planning the heist. The story begins with the events that led a young Florea (played by Sal Read More

The Benny Goodman Story

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Steve Allen, Donna Reed, Berta Gersten, Herbert Anderson, Robert Simon

Synopsis: Steve Allen makes his dramatic film debut in The Benny Goodman Story. Outside of Goodman's conflicts with his parents over his career choice, and his early frustration over not being able to play his kind of music, the film tends to be more a series of musical highlights than a biography. The film Read More

The Shrike

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: José Ferrer, June Allyson, Joy Page, Kenneth Clark

Synopsis: Joseph Kramm's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play The Shrike was brought to the screen by its original director/star, Jose Ferrer. Most of the film takes place in a state hospital, where theatrical director Jim Downs (Ferrer) is convalescing after a suicide attempt. Downs' wife Ann (June Read More

The Glenn Miller Story

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, June Allyson, Charles Drake, George Tobias, Henry Morgan

Synopsis: The Glenn Miller Story traces Miller's rise from pit-orchestra trombone player to leader of the most successful big band of his era. June Allyson is on hand as Miller's wife, Helen, who learns the value of patience when Glenn spends his wedding night jamming with Gene Krupa and Louis Armstrong. Read More

Thunder Bay

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, Joanne Dru, Gilbert Roland, Dan Duryea, Jay C. Flippen

Synopsis: Thunder Bay was another inspired collaboration between star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann. Stewart plays an ex-GI named Steve, who has a hankering to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Together with his army buddy Gambi (Dan Duryea, in a rare good-guy role), Steve attains the financial Read More

Forbidden

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Tony Curtis, Joanne Dru, Lyle Bettger, Marvin Miller

Synopsis: Forbidden bears traces of several earlier film noirs, with Tony Curtis filling the shoes vacated by the likes of Alan Ladd, Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum. Curtis acquits himself very nicely as a small-time hood sent to Macao by gangster Lyle Bettger to locate Joanne Dru, the widow of another Read More

War Arrow

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Jeff Chandler, John McIntire, Suzan Ball, Noah Beery, Jr.

Synopsis: War Arrow is another of Universal's efficiently produced A plus/B minus Technicolor westerns of the early 1950s. Maureen O'Hara and Jeff Chandler star as, respectively, army major Howell Brady and his former sweetheart Elaine Corwin. As Elaine awaits anxiously on the sidelines, Major Brady trains Read More

Pat and Mike

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Aldo Ray, Jim Backus, William Ching, Sammy White

Synopsis: Pat (Katharine Hepburn), a college phys-ed instructor, enters into professional competition as a golf and tennis player. Mike (Spencer Tracy), a likeable but unscrupulous sports promoter, first attempts to bribe Pat to lose, but later becomes her manager. Pat performs brilliantly until her Read More

The Plymouth Adventure

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Gene Tierney, Van Johnson, Lloyd Bridges, Leo Genn

Synopsis: Plymouth Adventure earned a footnote in film history as the last directorial effort by the prolific Clarence Brown. Otherwise, this colorful re-creation of the Pilgrims' journey to America is a workmanlike job, never inspired but always interesting. Spencer Tracy stars as bull-stubborn Captain Read More

When in Rome

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Van Johnson, Paul Douglas, Joseph Calleia, Carlo Rizzo, Tudor Owen

Synopsis: During the Vatican Holy Year of 1950, confidence trickster Joe Brewster (Paul Douglas) disguises himself as a priest and heads to the Holy City. It is Brewster's intention to use his faux clerical garb to evade arrest by the American authorities. But through the influence of American priest Father Read More

Glory Alley

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ralph Meeker, Leslie Caron, Kurt Kasznar, Gilbert Roland, John McIntire

Synopsis: Authentic New Orleans locations enhance the overall enjoyment of the prizefight melodrama Glory Alley. A mere few seconds before a championship bout, Socks Barbarrosa (Ralph Meeker) decides to throw in the towel so far as his boxing career is concerned. Socks' friends, family and handlers assume Read More

Never Wave at a WAC

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Paul Douglas, Marie Wilson, William Ching, Arleen Whelan

Synopsis: Self-centered Washington socialite Rosalind Russell joins the WACS in order to be near her boyfriend William Ching, a GI stationed in Paris. Russell is certain that her DC connections will enable her to get out of the service as easily as she got in. Unfortunately for her, Russell's ex-husband Paul Douglas Read More

Thunder on the Hill

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Phillip Friend

Synopsis: Charlotte Hastings' West End stage hit Bonaventure was adroitly translated to the American screen as Thunder on the Hill. The bulk of the action takes place at convent, presided over by Sister Mary (Claudette Colbert). Circumstances -- namely, a dangerous rainstorm and raging flood -- dictate that Read More

The Lady Pays Off

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Linda Darnell, Stephen McNally, Virginia Field, Ann Codee

Synopsis: The Lady Pays Off is a formative example of filmmaker Douglas Sirk's elegant exotica. Linda Darnell plays the title character, a vacationing schoolteacher and one-time gambler named Evelyn Warren. Unfortunately, that "one time" leaves Evelyn indebted to casino owner Matt Braddock (Stephen McNally) Read More

Bright Victory

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Arthur Kennedy, Peggy Dow, Julie Adams, John Hudson, James Edwards

Synopsis: Arthur Kennedy stars as a blinded war veteran struggling to adjust to his affliction in peacetime. He must overcome his pugnacious attitude towards any problem he can't think his way out of--and he must learn to temper his inbred racial prejudices. Peggy Dow plays the woman who loves Kennedy Read More

Deported

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Märta Torén, Jeff Chandler, Claude Dauphin, Marina Berti, Richard Rober

Synopsis: The real-life deportation of gangster Lucky Luciano was the inspiration for this romanticized and slightly crackbrained crime drama. Jeff Chandler plays the Luciano counterpart, who once he arrives in Italy renews his criminal activities. Chandler masterminds a black-market racket, capitalizing Read More

Harvey

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Victoria Horne

Synopsis: This whimsical fantasy about a local drunk's 6' 3 1/2" imaginary rabbit pal was a smash hit (and a Pulitzer Prize winner) on Broadway and was then adapted into this likeable farce that's also an allegory about tolerance. James Stewart stars as Elwood P. Dowd, a wealthy tippler whose sunny Read More

Winchester '73

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Charles Drake, Rock Hudson, Millard Mitchell

Synopsis: Lin McAdam (James Stewart) and his friend High-Spade (Millard Mitchell) arrive in Dodge City for a shooting contest, in which the prize is a perfectly manufactured Winchester repeating rifle, referred to as "One of a Thousand" -- a gun so fine that Winchester won't sell it. Lin runs across Dutch Read More

Three Came Home

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Patric Knowles, Sessue Hayakawa, Florence Desmond, Sylvia Andrew

Synopsis: Based on the autobiographical book by Agnes Newton Keith, Three Came Home stars Claudette Colbert as Mrs. Keith. Trapped in Borneo during the Japanese invasion, Mrs. Keith and her British husband (Patric Knowles) are penned up in a prison camp along with several other subjects. Despite the Read More

The Life of Riley

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: William Bendix, James Gleason, Rosemary de Camp, Bill Goodwin, Beulah Bondi

Synopsis: This comedy is based on the enduring radio series and chronicles the attempts of an airplane riveter to find a better paying, less physically taxing job. Chester A. Riley gets his chance when his employer's son falls in love with Riley's daughter. Wanting to make her father happy, the daughter Read More

Illegal Entry

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Howard Duff, Märta Torén, George Brent, Gar Moore, Tom Tully

Synopsis: Long before he became producer/director of The Tonight Show, Fred DeCordova helmed the Universal meller Illegal Entry. Howard Duff, who later worked with DeCordova on the TV series Mr. Adams and Eve, stars as Bert Powers, an undercover agent for the U.S. Department of Immigration. While attempting Read More

Woman in Hiding

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Stephen McNally, John Litel, Taylor Holmes

Synopsis: So far as the rest of the world is concerned, Deborah Chandler Clark (Ida Lupino) is dead, killed in a freak auto accident. But Deborah is alive, if not too well. Having discovered a horrible truth about her new husband (Stephen McNally), Deborah had intended to commit suicide. Now she is the Read More

Abandoned

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Meg Randall, Raymond Burr

Synopsis: Viewers who know Gale Storm only through her chaotic comic performances on TV's My Little Margie and Oh Susanna will be surprised by her subdued dramatic performance in Abandoned. Storm plays Paula Consodine, who comes to Los Angeles in search of her missing sister. Newspaperman Mark Sitko (Dennis O'Keefe Read More

The Gal Who Took the West

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, John Russell, Scott Brady, Myrna Dell

Synopsis: For some reason, whenever Universal used the word "Gal" in a film's title, Yvonne de Carlo usually headed the cast. In Gal Who Took the West, de Carlo plays Lillian Marlowe, an New York songstress who heads Thataway. She becomes the romantic bone of contention between the feuding O'Hara cousins Read More

Ocean Breakers

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Sten Lindgren, Tore Svennberg, Carl Strom

Synopsis: The notoriety of the Ingrid Bergman-Roberto Rossellini liaison resulted in the release of several heretofore obscure Swedish Bergman films in the U.S. One of these, originally filmed in 1935 as Ocean Breakers, finally made it to American screens in 1949 as The Surf. In her second screen Read More

Naked City

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Ted de Corsia

Synopsis: Young model Jean Dexter is knocked unconscious and drowned in her own bathtub in her Manhattan apartment, and a lot of jewelry that she supposedly owned is missing. The Naked City is actually about six days in the life of New York City that coincide with the murder and the subsequent investigation Read More

Family Honeymoon

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Rita Johnson, William Daniels, Gigi Perreau, Jimmy Hunt

Synopsis: In this family farce, an older couple falls in love and decide to marry and embark upon a peaceful honeymoon without the bride's three bratty children. Unfortunately, the way things work out, the whole family ends up tagging along. The little darlings are less than pleased that their widowed Read More

For the Love of Mary

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Edmond O'Brien, Don Taylor, Jeffrey Lynn, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin's career was clearly on the downswing when she starred in For the Love of Mary. Durbin plays a switchboard operator at the White House, whose hiccuping spells throw several incoming special-interest callers into a tizzy. The President himself cures Durbin of her hiccups, thereby Read More

Because of Eve

Crew: Producer

Actors: Joseph Crehan, Wanda McKay, John Parker

Synopsis: One of the more notorious "sex hygiene" exploitation melodramas of the 1940s, Because of Eve began its long life in 1948 as The Story of Life. Bob (John Parker) and Sally (Wanda McKay) are expecting their first child when Sally learns that Bob had once suffered from venereal disease. Although Read More

Lured

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn, Alan Mowbray, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is an American taxi-dancer living in London whose roommate has disappeared. The missing girl had left to answer a job offer in the "personal" column of the Times...just like several other women who've vanished without a trace. Scotland Yard detective George Zucco suggests that Ball Read More

Brute Force

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth

Synopsis: Burt Lancaster had one of his first starring roles in this hard-hitting prison drama. Capt. Munsey (Hume Cronyn) is a cruel, corrupt prison guard who has his own less-than-ethical ways of dealing with inmates, enough so that Joe Collins (Lancaster) -- the toughest inmate in the cell block -- has Read More

Girl Crazy

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, June Allyson, Nancy Walker, Gil Stratton, Robert E. Strickland, Rags Ragland

Synopsis: This second film version of the George and Ira Gershwin's Broadway hit Girl Crazy stars reigning MGM musical prince and princess Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The 1932 version of Girl Crazy de-emphasized the main plot, building up the comic subplot involving a timorous temporary sheriff and a Read More

Keeper of the Flame

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf, Margaret Wycherly, Forrest Tucker

Synopsis: If you're wondering what Citizen Kane might have looked like had it been produced by MGM, we submit for your approval Keeper of the Flame. War correspondent Spencer Tracy is assigned to write the life story of a recently deceased super-patriot. One would suppose that the much-beloved decedent's Read More

For Me and My Gal

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Judy Garland, George Murphy, Gene Kelly, Richard Quine, Marta Eggerth, Ben Blue, Horace McNally

Synopsis: For Me and My Gal, a leisurely period musical, represents the first on-screen dancing of MGM's new star Gene Kelly. Judy Garland plays a member of a vaudeville troupe consisting of herself, George Murphy, Ben Blue and Lucille Norman. She leaves the act to join up with Kelly, who promises to propel Read More

Back Street

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Charles Boyer, Margaret Sullavan, Richard Carlson, Frank McHugh, Tim Holt

Synopsis: Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullavan star in this adaptation of Fannie Hurst's tearjerking novel about a woman who chooses to stand beside a man who cannot marry her. Rae (Margaret Sullavan) is a woman from Ohio who meets a dashing gentleman from out of town, Walter (Charles Boyer). They soon fall Read More

So Ends Our Night

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan, Frances Dee, Glenn Ford, Anna Sten

Synopsis: The Nazis are clearly the villains in So Ends Our Night, but since the film was made before America's entry into World War II, Adolph Hitler goes unmentioned (we wouldn't want to lose those foreign markets, would we?) Based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Flotsam, the film zeroes in on three Read More

Design for Scandal

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Walter Pidgeon, Lee Bowman, Jean Rogers, Mary Beth Hughes, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: Rosalind Russell stars as a no-nonsense judge who dabbles in sculpting in her spare time. Walter Pidgeon costars as a reporter assigned to discredit Rosalind after she rules against his boss (Edward Arnold) in a divorce case. Pidgeon plans to frame the judge in a compromising situation, then Read More

Shadow of the Thin Man

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Sam Levene

Synopsis: This fourth entry in MGM's Thin Man series could just as well have been titled "Nick and Nora Charles Go to the Races". Officially retired from sleuthing, Nick Charles (William Powell) does his best to be a dutiful husband to his lovely wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and a good father to his young son Nick Read More

Dr. Kildare's Victory

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore, Ann Ayars, Robert Sterling, Jean Rogers

Synopsis: In this episode of the popular medical series, Kildare finds himself involved in a dispute between to competing hospitals. The trouble begins when an intern rushes a beautiful girl to Kildare's hospital. She has a shard of glass imbedded in her heart. The girl survives the surgery, and the intern Read More

They Met in Bombay

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell, Peter Lorre, Reginald Owen, Matthew Boulton, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: They Met in Bombay is a typical MGM star vehicle, in which the leading players are called upon to carry a pencil-thin plotline on the force of sheer personality. Clark Gable and Rosalind Russell play Gerald Meldrick and Anya Von Duren, a pair of rival jewel thieves at large in India. Both parties Read More

The Mortal Storm

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan, Robert Stack

Synopsis: The Nazi Party's rise to power has disastrous consequences for a German family in this drama. Victor Roth (Frank Morgan) is a college professor teaching in Germany in 1933 who leads a peaceful and contented life with his wife Emelie (Irene Rich), son Rudi (Gene Reynolds), daughter Freya (Margaret Sullavan Read More

New Moon

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland, George Zucco, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1930 with Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore, the robust Sigmund Romberg operetta New Moon was given another airing in 1940 as Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald vehicle. Set in 18th century Louisiana, the story concerns the relationship between haughty plantation owner Marianne de Read More

The Shop Around the Corner

Crew: Cinematographer

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

Idiot's Delight

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Edward Arnold, Charles Coburn, Joseph Schildkraut, Burgess Meredith

Synopsis: Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Idiot's Delight starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne on Broadway. Set in a lavish alpine hotel bordering an Italian air base, the story throws together several disparate people, each in his or her own way affected by the World War that threatens to Read More

Another Thin Man

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Virginia Grey, Otto Kruger

Synopsis: Three years after the second Thin Man entry, MGM brought back the property by popular demand with Another Thin Man. As ever, William Powell and Myrna Loy star as sophisticated sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, with the added filip of 8-month-old Nick Charles Jr. At the invitation of munitions Read More

Stronger Than Desire

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Stronger Than Desire is a streamlined remake of 1934's Evelyn Prentice. Instead of the earlier film's William Powell and Myrna Loy, we are offered Walter Pidgeon and Virginia Bruce in the roles of a dynamic attorney and his wife. Little has changed storywise from Evelyn Prentice: Bruce kills (or Read More

Ninotchka

Crew: Cinematographer

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

Three Loves Has Nancy

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone, Guy Kibbee, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: Nancy, a jilted bride-to-be, is played by Janet Gaynor in one of her last starring films. The three loves are novelist Robert Montgomery, publisher Franchot Tone, and gormless nebbish Grady Sutton (Sonny TUFTS??). In New York to find her runaway groom Sutton, Janet runs across Montgomery and Tone. Read More

Marie Antoinette

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Robert Morley, Anita Louise, Joseph Schildkraut

Synopsis: M.G.M.'s opulent costume drama Marie Antoinette marked a return to the screen after a two-year absence for reigning Queen of M.G.M. Norma Shearer. Shearer plays the title role of an Austrian princess who is married off to Louis Auguste (Robert Morley), the Dauphin of France. Marie, by becoming the Read More

Dramatic School

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Luise Rainer, Paulette Goddard, Alan Marshal, Lana Turner, Genevieve Tobin

Synopsis: Viennese-born Luise Rainer plays a young Parisian girl who attends an exclusive drama school, working nights at a factory to pay the tuition. Despite the jealousies of her fellow students, Luise allows nothing to discourage her from her goal to become as great an actress as her idol (Gale Sondergaard Read More

The Last Gangster

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Rosa Stradner, Lionel Stander, Douglas Scott

Synopsis: Edward G. Robinson offers an excellent turn as a crime lord obsessed with the welfare of his son in this melodramatic crime story. The lad is born while the notorious Robinson serves 10 years. Unfortunately, the press hound the babies mother and constantly derider her until a kinder reporter takes Read More

Double Wedding

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Florence Rice, John Beal, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Richard Thorpe's comedy Double Wedding (1937) marked the seventh screen pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy, known for their popular appearances together in the Thin Man series. Powell is Charlie Lodge, a bohemian artist who lives in a trailer, camped in an auto parking space in a busy city. Read More

Beg, Borrow or Steal

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Frank Morgan, Florence Rice, John Beal, Janet Beecher, Herman Bing

Synopsis: In this entertaining comedy, an American expatriate lives in Paris and fancies himself a clever con artist. Getting cocky, he invites his wife and daughter to join him. The daughter is about to marry and he promises her an exquisite French chalet. Now he must quickly find one before she arrives Read More

Broadway Melody of 1938

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Binnie Barnes, Judy Garland, Buddy Ebsen

Synopsis: This third entry in MGM's "Broadway Melody" series may not have been the biggest or best, but thanks to a masterpiece of casting it is one of the most memorable of the batch. Signed by MGM in 1935, 15-year-old Judy Garland made her first feature-film appearance under the aegis of Leo the Lion Read More

Personal Property

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jean Harlow, Robert Taylor, Reginald Owen, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: A golddigger finds that romance doesn't always equal finance in this comedy. Crystal Wetherby (Jean Harlow) is an American widow left stranded in London with a stack of debts incurred by her late husband and barely a shilling to her name. Raymond Dabney (Robert Taylor) is the black sheep of a Read More

Camille

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille Read More

Romeo and Juliet

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore, Edna May Oliver, Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: Director George Cukor and producer Irving G. Thalberg's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, a lavish production of Shakespeare's tale about two star-crossed lovers, is extremely well-produced and acted. In fact, it is so well-done, that it is easy to forget that Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer are too Read More

Rose Marie

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, James Stewart, Reginald Owen, Allan Jones

Synopsis: It was standard operating procedure at MGM to cast their favorite singing team of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in new versions of old operettas, then retain only the music, drastically altering the plotlines to conform to popular tastes. This was the treatment afforded the Rudolf Friml-Herbert Stothart Read More

Anna Karenina

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Freddie Bartholomew, Basil Rathbone, Maureen O'Sullivan, May Robson

Synopsis: This second filmization of Leo Tolstoy's novel is widely regarded as the best version. Greta Garbo plays the title character, the sheltered wife of Czarist official Rathbone. Intending to dissuade Rathbone's brother (Reginald Owen) from a life of debauchery, Garbo is sidetracked by her own Read More

Naughty Marietta

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester, Douglas Dumbrille

Synopsis: The first of MGM's phenomenally profitable Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy musicals, Naughty Marietta takes several beneficial liberties with the libretto of the original Victor Herbert operetta. MacDonald plays an 18th-century French princess who escapes an arranged marriage by posing as a "cake Read More

Rendezvous

Crew: Cinematographer

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

The Painted Veil

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Herbert Marshall, George Brent, Warner Oland, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: A W. Somerset Maugham novel was the source for the fair-to-middling Greta Garbo vehicle The Painted Veil. In a situation comparable to the plotlines of most of her silent films, Garbo is lovelessly married to Herbert Marshall, but carries a flaming torch for George Brent. (Also harking back to Garbo Read More

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, Katherine Alexander

Synopsis: Based on a successful stage drama, this historical romance stars Norma Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett, an invalid largely confined to her bed. Elizabeth has little company beyond her dog and her obsessively protective father, Edward Moulton Barrett (Charles Laughton). Her one great passion and means Read More

Queen Christina

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elisabeth Young

Synopsis: If Queen Christina is not the best of Greta Garbo's films (as many Garbo fanatics insist), it is certainly the most luxuriously romantic of her talkie features. The star is cast as 17th-century Swedish queen Christina, who feels that she can best function in a male-dominated world by adopting Read More

Dinner at Eight

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke

Synopsis: Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore Read More

Christopher Bean

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Marie Dressler, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi, Helen Shipman, Helen Mack

Synopsis: Based on the play by Sidney Howard (of Gone with the Wind and Dead End fame), Christopher Bean is a showcase for the magnificent Marie Dressler. She plays Abby, the poor but proud housekeeper of a small-town doctor (Lionel Barrymore), his wife (Beulah Bondi), and their children. Years before the Read More

Broadway to Hollywood

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Alice Brady, Frank Morgan, Madge Evans, Russell Hardie, Jackie Cooper

Synopsis: Broadway to Hollywood is a through-the-years saga about a show business family. Frank Morgan and Alice Brady play vaudeville headliners of the 1880s whose fame is eclipsed by their son (played as a youth by Jackie Cooper, then as an adult by Russell Hardie). Morgan and Brady are reduced to bit Read More

The Stranger's Return

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Miriam Hopkins, Franchot Tone, Stuart Erwin, Irene Hervey

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Phil (State Fair) Stong, The Stranger's Return is one of the most accomplished projects of director King Vidor, and one of the few MGM films of its period to display anything like a "personal touch." Miriam Hopkins stars as a bored Manhattanite who visits her family farm in Read More

The White Sister

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Louise Closser Hale, May Robson

Synopsis: Based on the 1909 novel by F. Marion Crawford, The White Sister stars Helen Hayes as an aristocratic Italian girl who spurns the potential husband chosen by her father in favor of a handsome army lieutenant (Clark Gable). When her lover is reported killed in World War I, Hayes renounces the world Read More

Grand Hotel

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: Based on Vicki Baum's novel and produced by Irving Thalberg, this film is about the lavish Grand Hotel in Berlin, a place where "nothing ever happens." That statement proves to be false, however, as the story follows an intertwining cast of characters over the course of one tumultuous day. Greta Garbo Read More

Rasputin and the Empress

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Ralph Morgan, Diana Wynyard

Synopsis: It's hard to separate fact and fancy from the many accounts of what happened on the set when all three of the fabulous Barrymores -- Ethel, John and Lionel -- appeared together for the only time in Rasputin and the Empress. As for the end result, John offers the subtlest (!) performance as Russian Read More

Skyscraper Souls

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Warren William, Maureen O'Sullivan, Gregory Ratoff, Anita Page, Veree Teasdale, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Production for MGM, this well made Grand Hotel clone was based on a 1931 novel by Faith Baldwin. Warren William stars as David Dwight, a building and bank magnate who not only attempts to double-cross his backers but is two-timing both his wife Read More

As You Desire Me

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Erich Von Stroheim, Owen Moore, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: This complex '30s film is based upon a play by Pirandello which involved a hapless amnesiac. In As You Desire Me, the legendary Greta Garbo plays a down-in-the-dumps amnesiac (she can't recall who her husband is) who ends up singing in a low-life nightclub and putting up with the advances of a Read More

Mata Hari

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: "So much for Carlotta" muses the head of German Espionage (Lewis Stone), shortly after secret agent Karen Morley is put to death. Morley's successor is exotic dancer Mata Hari (Greta Garbo), an enigmatic woman of Javanese-Dutch ancestry who seldom thinks twice about luring some poor swain to his Read More

Lovers Courageous

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Madge Evans, Roland Young, Frederick Kerr, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: Lovers Courageous represents a rare direct-to-screen original by Frederick Lonsdale, the playwright responsible for such drawing-room comedies as The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Robert Montgomery and Madge Evans plays the titular lovers, Willy and Mary. After living a peripatetic existence all over the Read More

Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Hersholt, John Miljan, Alan Hale

Synopsis: It was once theorized by critic Andrew Sarris that this 1931 Greta Garbo vehicle was subtitled "Her Fall & Rise" rather than the expected "Rise & Fall," because Hollywood--and by extension, the public--could not tolerate a failure. Whatever the case, modern audiences will latch onto Susan Lennox Read More

Inspiration

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Montgomery, Marjorie Rambeau, Judith Vosselli

Synopsis: Not every Greta Garbo film is an imperishable classic; this was seldom truer than in the case of her repetitious 1931 vehicle Inspiration. A modernized adaptation of Alphonse Daudet's Sappho, the film casts Garbo as Yvonne, a Parisian belle with "a history." When her past returns to haunt her, she Read More

Strangers May Kiss

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Neil Hamilton, Marjorie Rambeau, Irene Rich

Synopsis: Norma Shearer stars in this pre-Code melodrama as Lisbeth Corbin, who is in love with Alan (Neil Hamilton), a globe-trotting newspaper reporter, but also strings along Steve (Robert Montgomery), a well-mannered local boy who is good friends with Lisbeth, even though she doesn't love him. When Alan Read More

The Great Meadow

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Johnny Mack Brown, Eleanor Boardman, Lucille La Verne, Anita Louise, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: In this historical drama, set in 1775, the hardships faced by a courageous band of settlers traveling from Virginia to Kentucky are chronicled. To get there they must fight the angry natives, open up the forests, and forage for food. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

A Free Soul

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, James Gleason

Synopsis: In this Academy Award-winning film, Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) is a hotshot Californian lawyer from a well-to-do family, whose main failing is his indulgence in alcohol. After winning a case for mobster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable), Stephen brings his client along to a party at his parents' Read More

Olympia

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Nora Gregor, Theo Shall, Julia Serda, Karl Ettlinger, Arnold Korff

Synopsis: Although His Glorious Night, MGM's 1929 talkie adaptation of Ferenc Molnar's Olympia, proved to be a box-office disaster (a failure chalked up by the studio to the vocal inadequacies of leading man John Gilbert, though this wasn't entirely the case), the studio was still committed to refilming the Read More

Wise Girls

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: In this comedy, a plumber does a job for a fellow and ends up conned into marrying his daughter. The daughter only agrees to the absurd union to make her real lover jealous. When the plumber learns of her motives, he has the marriage annulled and ends up marrying her honest younger sister. The Read More

Strictly Unconventional

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Catherine Dale Owen, Paul Cavanagh, Tyrell Davis, Ernest Torrence

Synopsis: Strictly Unconventional offers two subplots united by irony. British wife Elizabeth (Catherine Dale Owen), weary of her much older M.P. husband Clive (Lewis Stone), dreams of running off with her handsome Canadian lover Ted (Paul Cavanaugh). Hoping to vicariously experience her fantasy, Elizabeth Read More

Montana Moon

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, Ricardo Cortez, Benny Rubin

Synopsis: Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown star in this high budget horse opera from M-G-M. She is Joan Prescott, a spoiled debutante en route to the family ranch in Montana and he is the cowboy she meets and marries after impulsively departing the train at a whistle stop. Surprising everyone, Papa Read More

Romance

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Gavin Gordon, Elliott Nugent, Florence Lake

Synopsis: Greta Garbo appears here (in her second talking film) as an Italian singer who seduces a young priest into falling for her. She admits that she had been the kept woman of an older man, and when she returns to her former lover (to tell of her new love), her visit is misinterpreted by the priest as Read More

Anna Christie

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Accompanied by one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Hollywood history, Greta Garbo made her "talking picture" debut in this carefully chosen vehicle, the second screen version of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 play about the Minnesota-raised Swedish girl who desperately attempts to keep her Read More

Wild Orchids

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Lewis Stone, Nils Asther

Synopsis: In this silent film, the beautiful Lili Sterling (Greta Garbo) meets up with the enchanting Prince de Gace (Nils Asther) while on a trip with her husband, John (Lewis Stone), and the two find themselves impossibly drawn to one another. However, when John begins to suspect his wife of infidelity Read More

Their Own Desire

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Belle Bennett, Robert Montgomery, Helene Millard

Synopsis: Yet another early talkie about love, jealousy and divorce among the upper classes, Their Own Desire remains a dramatically stilted if technically efficient star vehicle. Lewis Stone is married to frumpy Belle Bennett, whom he leaves for the more streamlined Helene Millard. Stone's daughter, Norma Read More

The Kiss

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Anders Randolf, Holmes Herbert, Lew Ayres

Synopsis: MGM's paranoid fear of audience reaction to Greta Garbo's speaking voice must have been the only reason for this plodding courtroom melodrama to have been made as a silent. Released with a synchronized score and two important sound effects, The Kiss would prove to be Garbo's, and Metro's, final Read More

The Trial of Mary Dugan

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, H.B. Warner, Raymond Hackett, Lilyan Tashman

Synopsis: In this well-executed courtroom drama, a Broadway chorine is accused of stabbing her wealthy boy friend to death. The girl is defended by her good friend. During the trial, the lawyer refrains from cross-examining the witnesses. This enrages the dancer's younger brother, who has just passed the Read More

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Basil Rathbone, George Barraud, Herbert Bunston, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: This early talkie was based on Frederick Lonsdale's successful Broadway play. Fay Cheyney (Norma Shearer) is a cunning jewel thief who impersonates a wealthy widow as she travels to Monte Carlo, planning on stealing a fortune in pearls from one Mrs. Webley (Maude Turner Gordon); Fay's henchmen Read More

A Woman of Affairs

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lewis Stone, Johnny Mack Brown, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Synopsis: Michael Arlen's notorious novel The Green Hat was considered such a hot potato censor-wise that the property's title could not be used when it was adapted to film. Retitled A Woman of Affairs, this tale of a woman destroyed by syphilis was heavily laundered for the screen. Greta Garbo plays an Read More

Telling the World

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: William Haines, Anita Page, Eileen Percy, Frank Currier, Polly Moran

The Actress

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Ralph Forbes, Owen Moore, O.P. Heggie, Gwen Lee

Synopsis: The Actress is a silent-film adaptation of Arthur Wing Pinero's evergreen stage play Trelawny of the Wells. Norma Shearer plays Rose Trelawny, who becomes an accomplished actress only after she learns to "love the players"-that is, to believe in what she's doing. While touring with a second-string Read More

The Mysterious Lady

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Edward Connelly, Richard Alexander

Synopsis: Based on a lugubrious novel by Ludwig Wolff, The Mysterious Lady is a romance/espionage tailored to the talents of Greta Garbo. The divine Miss G plays an alluring Russian spy, directly answerable to satanic-featured general Gustav von Seyffertitz. While she's accustomed to fomenting suicides and Read More

A Lady of Chance

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Lowell Sherman, Gwen Lee, Johnny Mack Brown, Eugénie Besserer

Synopsis: In her last silent film, Norma Shearer plays Dolly, aka Angel Face, a young woman engaged in blackmailing rich libertines. Cheated out of her loot by a couple of former associates, Bradley (Lowell Sherman) and Gwen (Gwen Lee), Dolly commits a bit of larceny but manages to skip town with her latest Read More

The Latest from Paris

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norma Shearer, George Sidney, Ralph Forbes, Tenen Holtz, William Bakewell

Synopsis: The Latest from Paris takes place in New York's garment district, where business rivals Blogg (George Sidney) and Littauer (Tenen Holz) have been carrying on a feud for years. In the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, heroine Ann Dolan (Norma Shearer) works for Blogg, while her sweetheart Joe Adams (Ralph Forbes Read More

Dream of Love

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Nils Asther, Aileen Pringle, Warner Oland, Carmel Myers

Synopsis: The venerable French stage drama Adrienne Lecouvreur was redressed by MGM as the Joan Crawford vehicle Dream of Love. It's a rags-to-riches yarn, as a fiery gypsy girl (Crawford) becomes an internationally popular actress. Loved by thousands of fans, Adrienne Lecouvreur is unable to find true love Read More

Bringing up Father

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Farrell MacDonald, Jules Cowles, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler, Gertrude Olmstead

Synopsis: George McManus' long-running domestic comic strip Bringing Up Father was brought to the screen by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. Reportedly, Hearst had approached vaudeville's Three Keatons (Joe, Myra and young Buster) to star in this project back in 1916, but Joe Keaton hated Read More

Love

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, George Fawcett, Emily Fitzroy, Brandon Hurst

Synopsis: This MGM-ized adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was originally titled Heat but was changed to Love when someone at the studio pointed out the possible implications of having the opening title read "John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in Heat." Heavily updated and revised, the film bore scant Read More

Captain Salvation

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lars Hanson, Marceline Day, Ernest Torrence, George Fawcett

Synopsis: Lars Hanson had recently appeared as Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter when he was called on once again to play a man of the cloth. Anson Campbell (Hanson), however, has his doubts as he studies for the ministry -- he loves the sea at least as much as he loves God. Bess Morgan (Pauline Read More

Tillie the Toiler

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Marion Davies, Matt Moore, Harry Crocker, George Fawcett, George K. Arthur

Synopsis: Marion Davies has the lead role of Tillie in this adaptation of Russ Westover's popular 1920s comic strip. Tillie is bored by both her job as a stenographer and her office romance with Mr. Whipple (George K. Arthur). She's far more interested in another man in the office, Mac (Matt Moore). Mac Read More

Altars of Desire

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Mae Murray, Conway Tearle, Robert Edeson, Maude George, André Beranger

Synopsis: Filmed through mounds of gauze, silent movie queen Mae Murray stars in MGM's Altars of Desire. Murray plays a willful American lass whose wealthy dad (Robert Edeson) sends her to Paris so that she may pick up some "refinement." Instead, she picks up a fortune-hunting nobleman, played as a Read More

On Ze Boulevard

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lew Cody, Renée Adorée, Roy D'Arcy, Dorothy Sebastian

Synopsis: As jaunty as its title, On Ze Boulevard stars Lew Cody in his customary role of a Parisian roue, this time a headwaiter named Gaston Pasqual. Winning a huge sum of money in a football pool, Pasqual tosses aside his rented tux and begins living the life of a spendthrift. Willing to spend any amount Read More

Boob

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Gertrude Olmstead, George K. Arthur, Joan Crawford, Charlie Murray, Antonio D'Algy

Synopsis: This early William Wellman directorial effort stars George K. Arthur as the title character, an incredibly naïve farmhand named Peter Good. Spurned by Amy (Gertrude Olmstead), the girl he loves, Peter sets out to prove that he isn't a boob. He joins a posse hunting for a gang of bootleggers, and Read More

Monte Carlo

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lew Cody, Gertrude Olmstead, Roy D'Arcy, Karl Dane, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: Lew Cody stars as Tony Townsend, a top-hatted "international adventurer" who gets into a heap of trouble when he runs out of money at the fancy French resort of Monte Carlo. Escaping the authorities, the dapper Tony -- who somewhere along the line has been forced to relinquish his trousers as a Read More

Flesh and the Devil

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent, William Orlamond

Synopsis: A bulky, verbose novel by Herman Suderman was the source for the exquisitely silent Flesh and the Devil. On leave from the Austrian army, lifelong friends John Gilbert and Lars Hanson return to their loving families. At a reception in Hanson's honor, Gilbert makes the acquaintance of the Read More

Bardelys the Magnificent

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Gilbert, Eleanor Boardman, Roy D'Arcy, Lionel Belmore, Emily Fitzroy

Synopsis: The Rafael Sabatini swashbuckler Bardelys the Magnificent served as an excellent vehicle for MGM's top male star John Gilbert. Set during the regime of France's King Louis XIII, the story concerns a bold young braggart named Bardelys (Gilbert), whose sexual conquests have become legendary. When Read More

The Torrent

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Greta Garbo, Gertrude Olmstead, Edward Connelly, Lucien Littlefield, Martha Mattox

Synopsis: The Vincent Blasco-Ibanez novel Entre Naranjos served as the inspiration for Greta Garbo's first American film, The Torrent. Garbo plays Leonora, a full-bodied Spanish peasant girl who falls in love with her landlord's son Don Rafael Bull (Ricardo Cortez). To prevent his son from marrying beneath Read More

The Temptress

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno, Roy D'Arcy, Marc MacDermott, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: The Temptress was Greta Garbo's second American film, and while it may strike modern viewers as excessively melodramatic, Garbo is always worth watching. The star plays Elena, the wife of Monsieur Canterac (Lionel Barrymore) -- and the mistress of rich Parisian banker Monsieur Fontenoy (Marc MacDermott Read More

Dance Madness

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Claire Windsor, Douglas Gilmore, Hedda Hopper, Mario Carillo

Synopsis: The madness begins when J.P. and May Smith (Conrad Nagel, Claire Windsor) celebrate their second wedding anniversary with a trip to Paris. Succumbing to the charms of the City of Light, J.P. forsakes fidelity to pursue a sexy masked cabaret dancer. Finding out about her husband's galavanting, May Read More

The Merry Widow

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Mae Murray, John Gilbert, Roy D'Arcy, Josephine Crowell, George Fawcett

Synopsis: This silent adaptation of Franz Lehar's famous operetta (in which precious little of the original story was retained) was a rare event in Erich Von Stroheim's directorial career -- a critical and commercial success that the director was also able to complete according to his wishes (though in the Read More

Helen's Babies

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Long before Shirley Temple, Baby Peggy Montgomery was filmdom's favorite moppet. In Helen's Babies, Montgomery plays Toddie, the niece of pretentious author Harry (Edward Everett Horton). Considering himself an expert on child-rearing, Harry finds he knows next to nothing about kids when Toddie is Read More

Greed

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, Sylvia Ashton

Synopsis: Frank Norris' powerful Zola-esque novel McTeague was first filmed in 1915. While filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim would insist that he'd been enthralled by the book since it first came out in 1902, it is more likely that he didn't make the novel's acquaintance until seeing that 1915 film. Whatever the Read More

The Merry-Go-Round

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Norman Kerry, Mary Philbin, Cesare Gravina, Edith Yorke, George Hackathorne

Synopsis: Best known today as the film which cost director Erich Von Stroheim his job at Universal Studios, Merry Go Round contains enough Von Stroheim touches to suggest that "official" director Rupert Julian merely tied together the film's loose ends. The titular merry-go-round is owned by the unspeakable George Siegmann Read More

Foolish Wives

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Erich Von Stroheim, Rudolph Christians, Miss Du Pont, Maude George, Mae Busch

Synopsis: Actor/ writer/ director Erich Von Stroheim stars as a fraudulent count, living high on the hog in Monte Carlo. He supports himself by extorting huge sums of money from silly married ladies who are dumb enough to fall for his romantic charms. Von Stroheim's partners in crime, phony princesses Mae Busch Read More

The Devil's Passkey

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Made in between his two classics, Blind Husbands and Foolish Wives, this drama from director Erich von Stroheim centers on a restless American wife married to a rich but unsuccessful playwright who reels after his newest work is rejected. The trouble begins when she finds herself strongly Read More

Blind Husbands

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sam de Grasse, Francelia Billington, Erich Von Stroheim, Gibson Gowland

Synopsis: Because of his portrayals of villainous Prussians in pictures such as Hearts of the World and The Heart of Humanity, Erich von Stroheim was already famous as "the man you love to hate." But Stroheim had also been quite busy behind the camera over the years, as an assistant director to D.W. Griffith Read More