William Howard Filmography

When the Lights Go on Again

Crew: Director

Actors: Jimmy Lydon, Grant Mitchell, Dorothy Peterson, Regis Toomey

Synopsis: In this drama, a young couple ignores the advice of their elders and get married. Soon afterward, the young groom is inducted into the war. Overseas, he suffers from shell shock and must return home. Much of the drama centers upon his reminiscences as he rides the train homeward. Later the people Read More

Johnny Come Lately

Crew: Director

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

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

Klondike Fury

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Lucille Fairbanks, Ralph Morgan, Mary Forbes

Synopsis: In this Alaskan adventure, a surgeon becomes a pilot to help him distress after a failed operation. Unfortunately, he is caught in a storm, crashes and finds himself cared for by a lovely woman at a trading post. He gets a chance to reclaim his self-esteem when her son suddenly needs the operation Read More

Bullets for O'Hara

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Perry, Roger Pryor, Anthony Quinn, Maris Wrixon, Dick Purcell

Synopsis: A good wife's innocence is shattered when she learns that her wealthy husband is actually an amoral big-shot jewel thief. She learns this when he brazenly robs some of their vacationing friends. Naturally she wants to leave him, but he won't let her and makes her return to Chicago and stay quiet. Read More

Money and the Woman

Crew: Director

Actors: Brenda Marshall, Jeffrey Lynn, John Litel, Roger Pryor, Lee Patrick, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: The fact that James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, Mildred Pearce et. al.) was responsible for the storyline is the sole distinguishing feature of the pedestrian Warner Bros. melodrama Money and the Woman. Roger Pryor plays bank teller Charles Patterson, an outwardly honest soul who is actually a Read More

'Til We Meet Again

Crew: Director

Actors: Merle Oberon, George Brent, Pat O'Brien, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Binnie Barnes

Synopsis: 'Til We Meet Again is an inflated remake of 1932's One Way Passage. As in the original, the hero is a convicted murderer en route to the death house by way of a merchant ship; the heroine is suffering from a terminal illness. Once more, hero and heroine fall in love, each keeping the facts of his Read More

Back Door to Heaven

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Wallace Ford, Aline MacMahon, Stuart Erwin, Patricia Ellis

Synopsis: William K. Howard, a once-prestigious director fallen on hard times in 1939, proved that he still had the "right stuff" with the modest tearjerker Back Door to Heaven. Wallace Ford stars as Frankie, a pugnacious drifter stigmatized by his reform-school upbringing. Frankie and his former Read More

Over the Moon

Crew: Director

Actors: Merle Oberon, Rex Harrison, Ursula Jeans, Robert Douglas, Louis Borell

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, a humble country girl lives her life in the ramshackle mansion of her aged uncle. Feeling sorry for her "poor" relation and selflessly keeping him company until he dies, she is later shocked to learn that he has left her an enormous fortune. One might think such a windfall Read More

The Squeaker

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Sebastian Shaw, Ann Todd, Tamara Desni, Robert Newton

Synopsis: Based on an Edgar Wallace novel, this is an involved story of the consequences within the underworld of a big-time diamond heist. It also tells the story of a disgraced inspector who is trying to catch the infamous jewel fence known as the "Squeaker" to help clear his name again. ~ Tana Hobart Read More

Fire Over England

Crew: Director

Actors: Flora Robson, Raymond Massey, Leslie Banks, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh

Synopsis: The war between England and Spain in the late 16th century serves as backdrop for the fictional machinations of Fire Over England. Laurence Olivier plays a British naval officer who offers his services to Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson) after his father is executed by the Spaniards. The queen Read More

The Princess Comes Across

Crew: Director

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Douglas Dumbrille, Alison Skipworth, William Frawley

Synopsis: The 1936 comedy-mystery The Princess Comes Across might well have been inspired by a real-life incident during the silent-movie era, in which a crafty San Francisco stenographer hoodwinked the Hollywood elite into believing that she was a Spanish princess. Carole Lombard stars as an alluring Read More

Mary Burns, Fugitive

Crew: Director

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Melvyn Douglas, Pert Kelton, Alan Baxter, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: An innocent but admittedly none-too-bright victim of circumstance, Mary Burns (played by perennial movie victim Sylvia Sidney) is inexorably sucked into the vortex of organized crime. She tries to escape her murderer husband Babe Wilson (Alan Baxter), but it's a losing proposition, especially Read More

Vanessa, Her Love Story

Crew: Director

Actors: Helen Hayes, Robert Montgomery, Otto Kruger, May Robson, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Adapted from the last of Hugh Walpole's "Herries Chronicles," Vanessa: Her Love Story is set in Victorian England. Vanessa (Helen Hayes) doesn't know it, but there's a strain of inherited insanity in the family of her husband Ellis (Otto Kruger). Disturbed by Ellis' bizarre behavior, poor Vanessa Read More

Rendezvous

Crew: Director

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

Evelyn Prentice

Crew: Director

Actors: Myrna Loy, William Powell, Rosalind Russell, Una Merkel, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: Filmed between the original Thin Man and the first of its sequels, Evelyn Prentice re-teamed William Powell and Myrna Loy as another husband-and-wife team knee deep in a murder mystery. In this one, Powell is John Prentice, a prominent lawyer with an eye for women other than his own wife. His Read More

This Side of Heaven

Crew: Director

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Fay Bainter, Mae Clarke, Tom Brown, Una Merkel

Synopsis: This Side of Heaven is an early, muted example of what would refine itself into the "screwball comedy" genre. Lionel Barrymore plays an accountant, who's also the head of a large family consisting principally of dizzy buffoons. Not only that, but the Barrymore clan is selfish, totally Read More

The Cat and the Fiddle

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Based on the stage musical by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach, The Cat and the Fiddle stars Jeanette MacDonald as a music student and Ramon Novarro as a struggling composer. When the leading lady walks out of Victor's (Novarro) upcoming operetta, the star's husband pulls his financial support. The Read More

The Power and the Glory

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Colleen Moore, Ralph Morgan, Helen Vinson, Clifford Jones

Synopsis: Frequently cited as the precursor to Citizen Kane, Power and the Glory is the first major Hollywood film to extensively utilize narrated flashbacks to tell its story. At the funeral of a powerful railroad executive (Spencer Tracy), the exec's best friend (Ralph Morgan) recalls the dead man's Read More

The Trial of Vivienne Ware

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Bennett, Donald Cook, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, ZaSu Pitts, Lillian Bond

Synopsis: Running a swift 55 minutes, Trial of Vivienne Ware packs in more sheer entertainment value than its longer, more prestigious "role model," The Trial of Mary Dugan. Joan Bennett plays the title character, a beleaguered young woman accused of murdering her nasty fiancee (Jameson Thomas). She is Read More

Sherlock Holmes

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Clive Brook, Miriam Jordan, Ernest Torrence, Reginald Owen, Howard Leeds

Synopsis: This version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed tale is set in contemporary London and follows Holmes and Watson as they seek to bring the nefarious Professor Moriarty to justice. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The First Year

Crew: Director

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Minna Gombell, Leila Bennett, Dudley Digges

Synopsis: Grace Livingston (Janet Gaynor) is leading a happy life in her small town, with her mother (Maude Eburne) and father (Robert McWade), being courted by two men, the steady but predictable Tommy Tucker (Charles Farrell) and the more ambitious, flashy, and worldly Dick Loring (George Meeker), who Read More

Surrender

Crew: Director

Actors: Warner Baxter, Leila Hyams, Ralph Bellamy, William Pawley, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Surrender is yet another triangular romance set against the backdrop of WWI. French POW Dumaine (Warner Baxter) is sequestered near the castle of a prideful Prussian nobleman, Count Reinmacher (C. Aubrey Smith), who lives for the day that his four sons will march triumphantly into Paris. Axelle (Leila Hyams Read More

Transatlantic

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Lois Moran, John Halliday, Greta Nissen, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Adhering to a formula that would later be popularized further in Grand Hotel, Transatlantic is one of the best of the "multi-story" films of the early 1930s. As a luxurious ocean liner makes its way across the Atlantic Ocean, the audience is made privy to the travails of several of its passengers. Edmund Lowe Read More

Don't Bet on Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Roland Young, Jeanette MacDonald, J.M. Kerrigan, Una Merkel

Synopsis: This French-style farce is set at a large party. There a young misogynist explains why he cannot trust women. A man overhears him and wagers $10,000 that the woman-hater will not succeed in getting the next woman through the door to kiss him. He has 48 hours to succeed or fail. Unfortunately the Read More

Scotland Yard

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Joan Bennett, Lumsden Hare, Barbara Leonard, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Dakin Barrolles (played by Edmund Lowe is a criminal who, while escaping from a bank robbery that went wrong, stumbles across a famous banker, Sir John Lasher, and his wife, Xandra. Lasher is deep in his cups, and neither he nor Xandra notice when Barrolles absconds with one of their possessions Read More

Good Intentions

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Marguerite Churchill, Regis Toomey, Earl Foxe, Eddie Gribbon

Synopsis: In this classy crime drama, the well-spoken, leader of a sophisticated gang of gangsters use their high social status to gain access to the vaults of the local rich people. The suave ring leader smoothly moves through the aristocratic social circles, charming all those who cross his path. He falls Read More

Christina

Crew: Director

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Morton, Rudolph Schildkraut, Harry Cording, Lucy Dorraine

Synopsis: This part-talkie (17 minutes of dialogue in its 83-minute running time) stars Janet Gaynor as Christina, the daughter of Dutch toymaker Niklaas (Rudolph Schildkraut). Much to her dad's dismay, Christina falls in love with sideshow huckster Jan (Charles Morton). Likewise disapproving of the romance Read More

Love, Live and Laugh

Crew: Director

Actors: George Jessel, Lila Lee, David Rollins, Henry Kolker, Kenneth MacKenna

Synopsis: Any movie that starts Jewish entertainer George Jessel as an Italian accordionist named Luigi can't be all bad. In love with the beautiful Margharita (Lila Lee), Luigi lands a job in the music store owned by the girl's uncle. Ultimately, however, our hero does the Pagliacci act when Margharita Read More

The Valiant

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Muni, Marguerite Churchill, DeWitt Jennings, Henry Kolker, Edith Yorke

Synopsis: The Valiant began life as a one-act play by Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass. It is a stark little vaudeville piece about a convicted murderer who goes silently to his execution without ever revealing his true identity. Expanded to 65 minutes, The Valiant was filmed in 1929, starring Paul Muni Read More

A Ship Comes In

Crew: Director

Actors: Rudolph Schildkraut, Louise Dresser, Milton Holmes, Linda Landi

Synopsis: The Pleznik family from Hungary arrives in New York -- after landing at Ellis Island, the parents, Peter (Rudolph SChildkraut) and Louise (Marie Dresser), and their three children settle on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and, with with help from a nice policeman, find their way to the home of an Read More

The River Pirate

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Lois Moran, Nick Stuart, Earl Foxe, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: One of the first talkies, this film concerns a youth torn between his fatherly gangland mentor and the beautiful, virtuous daughter of a police detective. This film was recently remastered complete with its long-absent talking sequence finale. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

The Main Event

Crew: Director

Actors: Vera Reynolds, Rudolph Schildkraut, Julia Faye, Charles Delaney, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: No relation to the 1979 Barbra Streisand-Ryan O'Neal vehicle of the same name, Main Event was one of the first efforts of the newly-formed DeMille Pictures Corporation (as in "Cecil B.") Nightclub dancer Glory Frayne (Vera Reynolds) falls in love with championship boxer Red Lucas (Robert Read More

White Gold

Crew: Director

Actors: Jetta Goudal, Ken Thomson, George Nichols, George Bancroft, Robert Perry

Synopsis: Confined to two basic sets and six characters, White Gold may well be the most claustrophobic western ever made. This sense of stuffiness was a deliberate artistic decision by director William K. Howard, who wanted to visually convey the entrapment experienced by heroine Jetta Goudal. The title Read More

Gigolo

Crew: Director

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Jobyna Ralston, Louise Dresser, Cyril Chadwick, George Nichols

Synopsis: A novel by Edna Ferber was the source for this Rod LaRocque vehicle. The story begins just before the outbreak of WWI, when Julia Gory (Louise Dresser) wealthy widowed mother of hero Gideon Gory (LaRoque), marries socially prominent doctor Blagden (Cyril Chadwick). Interested only in Julia's money Read More

Volcano

Crew: Director

Actors: Bebe Daniels, Ricardo Cortez, Wallace Beery, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Dale Fuller

Synopsis: Volcano takes forever to get to the climactic eruption. In the meantime, the audience is subjected to the travails of convent-bred Zabette de Chauvalons, who upon returning to her father's estate in Martinique discovers that daddy has died and the property is now in the hands of her evil Read More

Bachelor Brides

Crew: Director

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Elinor Fair

Synopsis: When not appearing in the films directed by their boss Cecil B. DeMille, Rod LaRocque and Elinor Fair were kept busy in such DeMille-produced programmers as Bachelor Brides. About to be wed to titled Englishman LaRocque, the fair Fair is thrown into a panic when her family jewels are stolen. All Read More

Red Dice

Crew: Director

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Marguerite de la Motte, George Cooper, Walter Long, Gustav von Seyffertitz

Synopsis: This unusual melodrama with comic touches was based on Octavus Roy Cohen's novel The Iron Chance. Alan Beckwith (Rod La Rocque) is a war hero who is very much down on his luck. He makes a deal with big-time bootlegger Andrew North (Gustave von Seyffertitz) -- if North will give him a large sum of Read More

Code of the West

Crew: Director

Actors: Owen Moore, Constance Bennett, Mabel Ballin, Charles Ogle, David Butler

Synopsis: Shy cowboy Cal Thurman (Owen Moore) falls for sophisticated city girl Georgie May (Constance Bennett) in this, the first of two versions of Zane Grey's story. When Georgie May haughtily rejects the poor cowpuncher, he sets out to stake his claim, gets in trouble with a gang of crooks, and later Read More

The Light of Western Stars

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Holt, Billie Dove, Noah Beery, Sr., Alma Bennett, William Scott

Synopsis: Veteran Western director William K. Howard does a solid job with this routine Zane Grey story. Jack Holt, Billie Dove, and Noah Beery Sr., who starred together in Wanderers of the Wasteland, appear together again. Madeline Hammond (Dove), the sister of ranchman Al Hammond (William Scott), arrives Read More

Thundering Herd

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Holt, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Sr., Raymond Hatton, Tim McCoy

Synopsis: Zane Grey's 1925 story of the great Buffalo hunts became a sprawling silent Western produced by Paramount and starring the studio's stalwart Jack Holt as a trader who uncovers a scheme to blame the Indians for a Buffalo massacre. The film's highlight, a breathtaking shot of wagons careening across Read More

Border Legion

Crew: Director

Actors: Antonio Moreno, Helene Chadwick, Rockliffe Fellowes, Gibson Gowland, Charles Ogle

Synopsis: The second of four versions of Zane Grey's story of a dispirited ranch hand who joins a gang of outlaws, this silent western benefitted by the presence of veteran Vitagraph star Antonio Moreno. Moreno plays Jim Cleve, who heads West after being jilted by his girlfriend. He works for a while as a Read More

The Torrent

Crew: Director

Actors: William Fairbanks, Ora Carew, Frank Elliott, Gertrude Astor, Joseph Kilgour

Synopsis: Ernest Leeds (Frank Elliott) is the love 'em and leave 'em type, and he's having a blast on board an ocean liner. Another voyager is Hale Garrison (William Farnum), a hunter who is returning from the jungles. He meets Gloria Manner (Ora Carew) while sailing and falls in love with her instantly. Read More

East of Broadway

Crew: Director

Actors: Owen Moore, Mary Carr

Synopsis: Owen Moore was a bit long in tooth when he played the brash young hero of East of Broadway. Peter Mullaney (Moore) has one burning desire: to join the New York City police force. Too short--and too stupid--to pass the entrance exam, Mullaney is given a one-night-only chance by the sympathetic Read More

Danger Ahead

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Produced by low-budget entrepreneur Phil Goldstone, this silent action melodrama starred Richard Talmadge, a German-born former stunt double for Douglas Fairbanks.Talmadge played Bruce Randall, a wealthy young man supposedly killed during a robbery in his home. But Bruce has survived and is Read More

Let's Go!

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Talmadge, Eileen Percy, George Nichols, Tully Marshall, Bruce Gordon

Synopsis: Silent screen stunt-man Richard Talmadge also produced this fine action melodrama, one of the few of his starring films to be extant. The former acrobat and stunt double for Douglas Fairbanks plays Barry Macklin, the supposedly worthless son of a cement factory owner (John Steppling). Assigned to Read More

Trooper O'Neil

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Charles "Buck" Jones, Beatrice Burnham, Francis McDonald, Claude Payton, Sid Jordan

Synopsis: About the only thing that separated this Northwoods drama from the other several dozen that were released during 1922 was that this one took place in the summer, hence there are no snow scenes. Oddly, while the heroine wears lightweight dresses, all the men sport knitted caps and heavy jackets, as Read More

Captain Fly-By-Night

Crew: Director

Synopsis: A confusing silent melodrama set at San Francisco's famous Presidio, this film starred light leading man Johnnie Walker as a mysterious stranger thought by the soldiers to be a notorious masked highwayman. Senorita Anita (Shannon Day), however, is drawn to the young man -- who proves to be a Read More

Deserted at the Altar

Crew: Director

Actors: Bessie Love, Frankie Lee, Tully Marshall, Wade Boteler, William Scott

Synopsis: This melodrama, with all its standard trappings, was adapted the stage play by Pierce Kingsley, which in turn was based on Grace Miller's novel. Bessie Love stars as orphaned country girl Anna Moore, who, along with her brother, Tommy (Frankie Lee), is being raised by hypocritical Squire Simpson Read More

What Love Will Do

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The team of Johnnie Walker and Edna Murphy starred in this old-fashioned silent melodrama about an evangelist who proves to be both a swindler and an adulterer. When a traveling crusader, Herbert Dawson (Richard Tucker), comes to town, he hires young Johnny Rowan (Walker) to be his treasurer. Read More

Get Your Man

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In somewhat of a departure from his usual fare, Western star Buck Jones played a Scottish coal miner-turned-Northwest Mounted Police Officer in this silent outdoors melodrama. Jock MacTier (Jones) loves Margaret MacPherson (Helene Rosson), but she ups and marries mining pay master Arthur Whitman (William Lawrence Read More

Play Square

Crew: Director

Synopsis: When small town boy Johnny Carroll (Johnnie Walker) heads out for the big city, he finds himself on the wrong side of the law as one of a gang of crooks. But when he runs into Judge Kerrigan from back home (Wilbur Higby) and hears how much his mother (Nanine Wright) misses him, he decides to give Read More

One Man Trail

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Buck Jones, Beatrice Burnham, Helene Rosson, James Farley

Synopsis: Silent screen Western hero Buck Jones starred in this average assembly-line oater as a young rancher searching for the villain who murdered his father and ran off with his sister. The villain (James Farley), a notorious gambler, has changed his name to elude the law, but Jones is not fooled for Read More