Wilson BengeFilmography

Million Dollar Mermaid

Actors: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Donna Corcoran

Synopsis: Who else but Esther Williams could star in a romantic drama (with musical numbers) bearing a title like this? In Million Dollar Mermaid, Williams plays Annette Kellerman, a real-life Australian swimming star who took up the sport as a child to strengthen her legs, which were severely weakened by a Read More

Royal Wedding

Actors: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, Sarah Churchill, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: Two real-life events were incorporated into the plot of the 1951 MGM musical Royal Wedding. One, the marriage of Fred Astaire's sister Adele to a British nobleman had occurred years earlier; the other, the wedding of England's Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip was only four years in the past. Read More

Emergency Wedding

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

My Own True Love

Synopsis: After supervising several of the best "psychological" horror films ever made, producer Val Lewton shifted his base of operations from RKO to Paramount. Lewton's first project at his new studio -- and the last -- was My Own True Love, an uncharacteristically sentimental offering. Based on the novel Read More

The Three Musketeers

Actors: Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Van Heflin, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) Read More

Queen of the Amazons

Synopsis: In this adventure, a devoted fiancee journeys to the jungle to take on the terrifying Amazon women who have been holding her lover hostage. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Pursuit to Algiers

Actors: Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: Taking place almost exclusively on a transatlantic ocean liner, this easygoing Sherlock Holmes entry finds Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) escorting Far Eastern regent Nikolas (Leslie Vincent) on a diplomatic mission. A group of assassins have targeted Nikolas for extermination Read More

Tonight and Every Night

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Lee Bowman, Janet Blair, Marc Platt, Leslie Brooks, Florence Bates

Synopsis: Based on a play by Leslie Storm, Tonight and Every Night is a musical wartime morale booster in which star Rita Hayworth is but one of a lively ensemble. Set in battle-scarred Britain, the action takes place in a seedy old music hall, which never misses a performance even at the height of the Read More

The House of Fear

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Aubrey Mather, Dennis Hoey, Paul Cavanagh

Synopsis: This excellent Sherlock Holmes adventure is based on Conan Doyle's The Five Orange Pips. Most of the action takes place in a remote Scottish mansion, home of "The Good Companions," a group of elderly eccentrics. After taking out insurance policies on one another, the club members begin dropping Read More

The Pearl of Death

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey, Evelyn Ankers, Miles Mander

Synopsis: This above-average entry in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series is loosely based on the Conan Doyle story The Six Napoleons. On this occasion, Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are assigned to guard the priceless Borgia Pearl, a "cursed" gem that has inspired scores of murders over Read More

The Man in Half-Moon Street

Actors: Nils Asther, Helen Walker, Reinhold Schünzel, Paul Cavanagh, Edmund Breon

Synopsis: A scientist discovers that he can live forever by receiving gland transplants every ten years. Unfortunately, the unwilling donors must be killed for him to survive, something that doesn't bother the scientist until he falls in love. The girl, innocent of his grisly secret, falls for him too. Read More

Ministry of Fear

Actors: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Dan Duryea, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke, Percy Waram

Synopsis: An innocent man is drawn into a web of espionage when he unwittingly comes into possession of a crucial piece of microfilm in this shadowy, ominous film noir. Fritz Lang's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel is filled with unusual touches, beginning with the fact that protagonist Stephen Neale (Ray Milland Read More

The White Cliffs of Dover

Actors: Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Frank Morgan, Ralph Morgan, Roddy McDowall, Van Johnson

Synopsis: The White Cliffs of Dover is one of those overlong MGM wartime films that everyone seems to have seen a part of, but no one can remember the film as a sum total. Based on a poem by Alice Duer Miller, the story chronicles the trials and tribulations of one courageous woman through two world wars. Read More

Gaslight

Actors: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: Ingrid Bergman won her first of three Oscars for this suspense thriller, crafted with surprising tautness by normally genteel "women's picture" director George Cukor. Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a late 19th century English singer studying music in Italy. However, Paula abandons her studies Read More

The Lodger

Actors: Merle Oberon, George Sanders, Laird Cregar, Cedric Hardwicke, Sara Allgood

Synopsis: The Lodger was the third film version of Mrs. Marie Belloc-Lowndes' classic "Jack the Ripper" novel, and in many eyes it was the best (even allowing for the excellence of the 1925 Alfred Hitchcock adaptation). Laird Cregar stars as the title character, a mysterious, secretive young man who rents a Read More

The Immortal Sergeant

Actors: Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, Thomas Mitchell, Allyn Joslyn, Reginald Gardiner

Synopsis: Though Henry Fonda is top-billed in The Immortal Sergeant, the title character is played by Thomas Mitchell. Set in the Libyan Desert during WW2, the story finds tough but compassionate British Eighth Army sergeant Kelly (Thomas Mitchell) in charge of a 14-man patrol. Kelly's corporal is Colin Read More

The Pied Piper

Actors: Monty Woolley, Anne Baxter, Roddy McDowall, Otto Preminger, Peggy Ann Garner, J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: Monty Woolley plays an irascible Englishman who insists that he dislikes children. While on a vacation in France, the Nazis invade the country. Reluctantly, Woolley agrees to transport several French children into England. As the flight to freedom becomes more treacherous, Woolley grows fonder of Read More

You're Telling Me

Synopsis: In this comedy, a slightly addled young advertising executive works for his father's radio-advertising agency. His first job is to hire a famous big-game hunter for an upcoming show. Unfortunately, the man he chooses proves to be a fake and mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Palm Beach Story

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, William Demarest

Synopsis: As for the opening reels, the principal motivating factor is money. After a deliberately confusing pre-credit sequence (not explained until the film's punch line), Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) are married. "And so they lived happily ever after," exults a title Read More

Miss Annie Rooney

Actors: Shirley Temple, William Gargan, Guy Kibbee, Dickie Moore, Peggy Ryan

Synopsis: 14-year-old Shirley Temple receives her first on-screen kiss in this innocuous romantic comedy. Temple is cast as the titular Annie Rooney, the starry-eyed, idealistic daughter of erstwhile --and impoverished--inventor Tim Rooney (William Gargan). Annie is swept off her feet by intellectual Read More

The Lady Eve

Actors: Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, Eric Blore

Synopsis: (Preston Sturges) wrote and directed this classic romantic comedy starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, who are involved in a scintillating battle of the sexes, as Sturges points up the terrors of sexual passion and the unattainability of the romantic ideal. Henry Fonda plays Charles Pike Read More

Nothing But the Truth

Actors: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Edward Arnold, Glenn Anders

Synopsis: In this version of the oft-filmed stage play by James Montgomery, Nothing But the Truth stars Bob Hope as an up and coming young stockbroker working in Florida. He makes a bet with his coworkers that he can tell nothing but the absolute truth for 24 hours, and the other bettors are determined to Read More

Virginia

Actors: Madeleine Carroll, Fred MacMurray, Sterling Hayden, Helen Broderick, Carolyn Lee

Synopsis: If Selznick could make a Gone With the Wind, reasoned Paramount Pictures in 1941, anyone can. Paramount's own spin on Scarlet and Rhett was Virginia, starring British actress Madeleine Carroll as Southern belle Charlotte Dunterry. A first a showgirl, Charlotte arrives in Fairville, Virginia to Read More

The Man Who Lost Himself

Actors: Brian Aherne, Kay Francis, Henry Stephenson, S.Z. Sakall

Synopsis: In this humorous adventure, a Puerto Rican explorer shares a drink with his oddball millionaire double. For a lark, they decide to pull a switcheroo and exchange places. Unfortunately, the millionaire is killed in a car accident. His poor grieving wife, doesn't realize that the dead man is the Read More

Green Hell

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Vincent Price, Joan Bennett, Alan Hale, George Sanders, John Howard

Synopsis: Angry natives or a beautiful widow -- which poses the greater threat? Keith Brandon (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is an archeologist leading a team of researchers -- Richardson (Vincent Price), Loren (Alan Hale), Forrester (George Sanders), and Scott (John Howard) -- who are exploring the jungles of Read More

Only Angels Have Wings

Actors: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, John Carroll, Allyn Joslyn

Synopsis: Virtually a textbook example of Howard Hawks' "macho" mode, Only Angels Have Wings takes place high in the Peruvian Andes. Cary Grant heads a ramshackle airmail and freight service, forced to fly in the most perilous of weather conditions to the most treacherous of destinations. Facing death on a Read More

Rulers of the Sea

Actors: Margaret Lockwood, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Will Fyffe, Montagu Love, Vaughan Glaser

Synopsis: In the 1830s, despite the development of the steamboat at the outset of the 19th century, all trans-Atlantic travel was still done by sailing ships. David Gillespie (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is first mate on one of the fastest of such ships, commanded by Captain Oliver (George Bancroft), but he is Read More

Rosalie

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Eleanor Powell, Frank Morgan, Edna May Oliver, Ray Bolger

Synopsis: More burdened with leaden production numbers than plot, Rosalie took Sigmund Romberg and George Gershwin's 1928 Broadway hit, threw out most of the songs, including "How Long Has This Been Going On?," but retained the spindly story of the incognito Princess Rosalie of Romanza (Eleanor Powell), who Read More

Mr. Boggs Steps Out

Actors: Stuart Erwin, Helen Chandler, Toby Wing, Tully Marshall, Spencer Charters

Synopsis: In this comedy, a dull statistician changes his life after winning a pile of money after successfully determining the number of beans in a barrel. He decides to do something novel with the prize and ends up buying a barrel factory. He encounters trouble when the nearby pickle factory is threatened Read More

Trade Winds

Actors: Fredric March, Joan Bennett, Ralph Bellamy, Ann Sothern, Sidney Blackmer

Synopsis: Joan Bennett plays a young woman who believes she's killed bigtime crook Sidney Blackmer. She changes her hair color from blonde to brunette and escapes from San Francisco to parts unknown. Police detective Fredric March is hired to track down Bennett, which he does in the company of two Read More

Sweethearts

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Florence Rice

Synopsis: Contrary to popular belief, the Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald Technicolor confection Sweethearts is not based on the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta of the same name (though most of Herbert's songs remain intact), but a Dorothy Parker-Alan Campbell brainstorm about a popular Broadway singing duo Read More

Easy Living

Actors: Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland, Luis Alberni, Mary Nash

Synopsis: Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in Read More

Maid of Salem

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Harvey Stephens, Gale Sondergaard, Louise Dresser

Synopsis: Claudette Colbert is a young freethinking woman living in Salem, Massachusetts during the notorious 17th century "witch trials". Colbert falls in love with adventurer Fred MacMurray, causing no end of scandal with the Puritan townsfolk. A hateful little girl (Bonita Granville) pretends to be Read More

Oh, Doctor

Actors: Edward Everett Horton, William Hall, Eve Arden, Thurston Hall

Synopsis: In this black comedy, a twitchy hypochondriac ends up conned into giving up his $500,000 inheritance in exchange for $50,000 cash. He does this because he is sure that he will die before he can get the money. The fellow's nurse loves her healthy charge and inspires him to live again. Together they Read More

The Man Who Cried Wolf

Actors: Tom Brown, Robert Gleckler, Forrester Harvey, Billy Wayne

Synopsis: An actor creates a devious murder plot in this suspenseful, ironic drama. For many years, the aging thespian has been confessing to homicides he never committed. Naturally the cops think he is bonkers so that when he really does kill his victim, no one believes he did it. Unfortunately, his lies Read More

Bank Alarm

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Eleanor Hunt, Vince Barnett, Frank Milan, Wilma Francis

Synopsis: Bank Alarm was one of four low-budget but high-entertainment crime melodramas starring Conrad Nagel and Eleanor Hunt as Federal agents Alan O'Connor and Bobbie Reynolds. On this occasion, the two G-people are on the trail of a gang of desperate bank robbers. Making their job slightly easier is the Read More

Souls at Sea

Actors: Gary Cooper, George Raft, Frances Dee, Henry Wilcoxon, Harry Carey

Synopsis: Paramount's answer to Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) also involved mutiny and romance on the high seas. Gary Cooper stars as Nuggin Taylor, first mate on a slave ship in 1842. Ironically, Nuggin is an abolitionist. When a mutiny overthrows the ship's skipper and leaves him in charge, he frees his Read More

The Shadow Strikes

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Lynn Anders, Walter McGrail, James "Doc" Blakely, Kenneth Harlan

Synopsis: The Shadow, the famed radio and pulp-novel hero with the mysterious power to "cloud men's minds" so that they cannot see him, was first brought to the screen by low-budget Grand National Pictures in 1937. Former matinee idol Rod LaRocque stars as the Shadow's man-about-town alter-ego Lamont Read More

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Actors: Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Based on a popular drawing-room drama by Frederick Lonsdale, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney stars Joan Crawford as a jewel thief who poses as an aristocrat. It is Crawford's intention to pilfer a valuable pearl necklace while attending a society party in the company of partner-in-crime William Powell. Read More

Wallaby Jim of the Islands

Synopsis: Set in the land Down Under but filmed at Sunland, CA, and on Catalina Island, this low-budget action-adventure stars one of the more forgotten of the singing cowboys, baritone George Houston. Fisherman Wallaby Jim has discovered a rich pearl bed, but his constant brawling gets him in trouble with Read More

Murder at Glen Athol

Actors: John Miljan, Irene Ware, Noel Madison, Barry Norton, Iris Adrian

Synopsis: The "Crime Club" detective-novel series spawned a film counterpart in 1935, which for the next four years bounced around such studios as Warner Bros., Universal, and Chesterfield. The last-named company's contribution was Murder at Glen Athol, based on a novel by Norman Lippincott. Usually cast as Read More

Dancing Feet

Actors: Ben Lyon, Joan Marsh, Eddie Nugent, Isabel Jewell, James Burke

Synopsis: Dancing Feet stars Joan Marsh as Judy, a society deb who lands a job as a dime-a-dance girl to spite her wealthy grandfather (Purnell Pratt). While her fiancé Peyton (Ben Lyon) stews, Judy strikes up a friendship with Jimmy (Eddie Nugent), a bellhop who aspires to become a vaudeville dancer. Judy Read More

Dodsworth

Actors: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven

Synopsis: In this highly acclaimed adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel, Walter Huston plays Sam Dodsworth, a good-hearted, middle-aged man who runs an auto manufacturing firm. His wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) is obsessed with the notion that she's growing old, and she eventually persuades Sam to sell his Read More

A Feather in Her Hat

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

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

False Pretenses

Actors: Irene Ware, Sidney Blackmer, Russell Hopton, Betty Compson, Edward Gargan

Synopsis: Former Miss America Irene Ware stars in the standard Chestefield Pictures social drama False Pretenses. Ware is cast as lunch-counter waitress Mary Beekman, who intends to crash society and land a wealthy husband. She is helped along by affable millionaire Kenneth Alden (Sidney Blackmer), who Read More

Glamour

Actors: Paul Lukas, Constance Cummings, Phillip Reed, Joseph Cawthorn, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: Another of director William Wyler's "apprenticeship" films, Glamour is based on a story by Edna Ferber. The original story covered 24 hours in the life of actress Linda Fayne (Constance Cummings), who is so busy with her career that there's no time left over for her baby. This plotline was used as Read More

Fugitive Lady

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Florence Rice, Donald Cook, Clara Blandick, Nella Walker

Synopsis: In this thriller, a young woman marries a dashing young man who, unbeknownst to her, is a jewel thief. After his latest job, he takes off and leaves her to take the rap. In court she is found guilty. She is riding a train en route to prison when the train crashes. Her identity is confused with Read More

Twin Husbands

Actors: John Miljan, Shirley Grey, Monroe Owsley, Hale Hamilton, Robert Elliott

Synopsis: The basic difference between the Chesterfield and Invincible productions of the 1930s is that most of the Chesterfields were directed by Richard Thorpe, while the Invincibles were helmed by Frank Strayer (in truth, both studios were one in the same!) It was Strayer at the controls for Twin Read More

Nana

Actors: Anna Sten, Phillips Holmes, Lionel Atwill, Richard Bennett, Mae Clarke

Synopsis: In this handsomely-staged adaptation of the story by Emile Zola, Anna Sten plays Nana, a woman of the streets who is spotted by noted theatrical producer Gaston Greiner (Richard Bennett). Greiner is so impressed by Nana's beauty that he gives her a part in his latest revue. Almost overnight, Nana Read More

Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back

Actors: Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, Warner Oland, Charles Butterworth, Una Merkel

Synopsis: This second and final "Bulldog Drummond" film to star Ronald Colman, finds the famed sleuth in the midst of a sinister plan orchestrated by Warner Oland. Damsel in distress Loretta Young reports that her wealthy and influential uncle is missing, but all those concerned insist that the uncle never Read More

The Ghost Walks

Actors: John Miljan, June Collyer, Richard Carle, Spencer Charters, Johnny Arthur

Synopsis: In the tradition of the classic scare piece Banquo's Chair, The Ghost Walks features one phony spectre and one supposedly real wraith. An actor is hired for a high-society gathering to pose as a ghost. It's all part of a plan by a struggling playwright to stir up interest in his latest production. Read More

Treasure Island

Actors: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Lionel Barrymore, Otto Kruger, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: This fifth film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island boasts an all-star MGM cast, headed by Wallace Beery as Long John Silver and Jackie Cooper as Jim Hawkins. The screenplay, by John Lee Mahin, John Howard Lawson and Leonard Praskins, remains faithful to the Stevenson original...up Read More

City Park

Actors: Sally Blane, Henry B. Walthall, Matty Kemp, Hale Hamilton, John Harron

Synopsis: Chesterfield's City Park is dominated by the strong performances of venerable character actors Henry B. Walthall, Wilson Benge and Lafe McKee. When impoverished Rose Wentworth (Sally Blane) poses as a streetwalker in order to get arrested and secure herself food and shelter, she is paroled in the Read More

Big Executive

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Richard Bennett, Elisabeth Young, Sharon Lynne, Dorothy Peterson

Synopsis: The Big Executive is Ricardo Cortez, to whom success is less important than the pursuit of success. Having lost as many fortunes as he's gained, Cortez again teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. His principal business rival, who'd like nothing better than to see Cortez standing on a street corner Read More

By Appointment Only

Actors: Lew Cody, Aileen Pringle, Sally O'Neil, Edward Morgan, Edward Martindel

Synopsis: When a patient dies of heart failure, society doctor Michael Travers (Lew Cody), takes an interest in her 14-year-old daughter Judy (Sally O'Neil), whom he makes his ward. Against the wishes of his fiancée, socialite Diane Manners (Aileen Pringle), Michael leaves for an extended business trip to Read More

Song of Songs

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Brian Aherne, Lionel Atwill, Alison Skipworth, Hardie Albright

Synopsis: Song of Songs was the first Marlene Dietrich vehicle not directed by Dietrich's "Svengali," Josef von Sternberg. The star plays a zaftig German peasant girl who becomes a nude model (anything to get her out of those ill-fitting 1890s costumes!) She falls in love with a struggling sculptor (Brian Aherne Read More

The Death Kiss

Actors: Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Adrienne Ames, John Wray, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: While Tonart Studios is filming a gangster movie, one of the actors is killed in a shooting accident. After several other incidents occur, police begin to think of sabotage. Their list of suspects includes the studio chief (Alexander Carr), his manager (Bela Lugosi), the director of the film (Edward Van Sloan Read More

Cynara

Actors: Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Phyllis Barry, Henry Stephenson, Viva Tattersall

Synopsis: King Vidor directed this screen adaptation of the novel An Imperfect Lover by Robert Gore-Brown, which had also made the transition to the stage. Jim Warlock (Ronald Colman) is a successful British lawyer who has always displayed a solid and conservative nature in his business associations, his Read More

Scram!

Synopsis: It's a rainy night and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are faced with a particularly ill-tempered judge Rychard Cramer. He'd love to throw them in the clink for vagrancy, but since the jail is full, he gives them just one hour...to leave town. Out on the street, they encounter a drunk (perennial Read More

Men in Her Life

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

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

Platinum Blonde

Actors: Loretta Young, Robert Williams, Jean Harlow, Louise Closser Hale, Donald Dilloway, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: A rather bleak comedy-drama from Frank Capra, Platinum Blonde basically starts where Capra's later and much more buoyant It Happened One Night (1934) ends: the marriage between a brash newspaperman and a society dame. But where the latter comedy was enhanced by the director's patented optimism Read More

Raffles

Actors: Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, David Torrence, Frances Dade, Alison Skipworth, Bramwell Fletcher

Synopsis: The third in a succession of film adaptations of author E.W. Hornung's novel Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, this version was the first to also be produced in sound. Ronald Colman stars as A.J. Raffles, an utterly unflappable British gentleman cricket player who by night is secretly a thief known Read More

Her Wedding Night

Actors: Clara Bow, Ralph Forbes, Charlie Ruggles, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Geneva Mitchell

Synopsis: Clara Bow's career as one of Hollywood's liveliest leading ladies was drawing to a close when she made this early sound farce, one of her few talkies. Larry Charters (Ralph Forbes) is a highly successful songwriter who is growing weary of life in the public eye. Hoping for a break, Larry convinces Read More

The Bat Whispers

Actors: Spencer Charters, Chester Morris, Una Merkel, William Bakewell, Chance Ward, Richard Tucker, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Wilson Benge

Synopsis: Magnificently restored by UCLA to its original "Grandeur" wide-screen format The Bat Whispers may not be a cinematic masterpiece but is certainly worth a second look. Opening with a series of flamboyant tracking shots, director Roland West soon enough settles down to the usual "Old House" Read More

Charley's Aunt

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, June Collyer, Hugh Williams, Doris Lloyd, Halliwell Hobbes

Synopsis: This first talkie version of the evergreen Brandon Thomas stage farce Charley's Aunt stars Charlie Ruggles, obviously having the time of his life in the leading role. Though updated to 1930, the film adheres to the familiar plot as set down by Thomas back in 1895. Two Oxford undergraduates Read More

This Thing Called Love

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Constance Bennett, Roscoe Karns, ZaSu Pitts, Carmelita Geraghty

Synopsis: In this comedy, a lonesome fellow returns from Peru with a fortune and begins looking for a wife. While still single, he has a real estate agent show him a home or two. The agent invites him to dinner. During the meal the agent and his wife bicker constantly, causing the poor fellow to rethink the Read More

Queen Kelly

Actors: Gloria Swanson, Seena Owen, Walter Byron, William Von Brincken, Madge Hunt

Synopsis: Though filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim's notorious profligacy had made him virtually unhirable in the US by 1929, screen-star Gloria Swanson still had faith in him. She poured a great deal of her own money in Von Stroheim's last silent film, Queen Kelly, and agreed to play the leading role to insure Read More

A Most Immoral Lady

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Walter Pidgeon, Montagu Love, Josephine Dunn

Bulldog Drummond

Actors: Ronald Colman, Claud Allister, Joan Bennett, Lilyan Tashman, Lawrence Grant, Montagu Love

Synopsis: Tired of his sedentary postwar existence, Col. Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (Ronald Colman) offers his services as adventurer for hire. This gets him mixed up with lovely Joan Bennett, whose wealthy father is being held against his will in a gloomy sanitarium. Armed with little more than bravado Read More

Untamed

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Ernest Torrence, Holmes Herbert, John Miljan

Synopsis: Untamed was touted by MGM as Joan Crawford's talking-picture debut, even though she'd already been heard as well as seen in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Best described as Somerset Maugham on toast, the film casts Crawford as Bingo, an oil heiress who has been raised in the tropics. When her Read More

That's My Baby

Actors: Reginald Denny, Barbara Kent, Lillian Rich, Tom O'Brien

That's My Daddy

Synopsis: Accustomed to being directed by William A. Seiter, Universal comedy star Reginald Denny was thrown off his usual pace when That's My Daddy was assigned to Fred C. Newmeyer. As a result, Denny ended up directing most of the picture himself -- and also rewrote the screenplay. The story concerns a Read More

Freedom of the Press

Actors: Malcolm McGregor, Henry B. Walthall, Marceline Day, Hayden Stevenson

Synopsis: Lewis Stone, best known to modern viewers as kindly Judge Hardy from the "Andy Hardy" series, was on occasion not so kindly in films. In Freedom of the Press, Stone plays a thoroughly corrupt politician named Daniel Steele. Embarking upon a mayoral campaign, Steele sets about to destroy his Read More

Anybody Here Seen Kelly?

The King of Kings

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

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

Fast and Furious

Actors: Reginald Denny, Barbara Worth, Claude Gillingwater, Armand Kaliz, Lee Moran

Synopsis: Another of Reginald Denny's money-spinning Universal vehicles, Fast and Furious casts Denny as "speed demon" Tom Brown. Fascinated with fast roadsters, Tom enjoys nothing more than "opening up" on the highway -- at least, until he's run off the road by another reckless driver. After emerging from Read More

The Lone Eagle

Actors: Raymond Keane, Barbara Kent, Nigel Barrie, Jack Pennick, Donald Stuart

Synopsis: Those who believe that misleadingly titled "instant" movies produced in the wake of earth-shaking news events are an aberration of the 1990s are referred to 1927's The Lone Eagle. The title, of course, was meant to invoke Col. Charles Lindbergh. Unfortunately for Universal Pictures, Lindbergh Read More

The Midnight Message

Actors: Mary Carr, Wanda Hawley, Creighton Hale, Otis Harlan

Synopsis: Mary Carr, Hollywood's favorite "martyr mother," does her usual in The Midnight Message. Carr plays the widowed, impoverished mom of Western Union messenger boy John Fox Jr. Dispatched to deliver a night telegram to millionaire Otis Harlan, Fox is overpowered by a gang of burglars. Soon, however Read More

Trip to Chinatown

Synopsis: Vampy Margaret Livingston and stalwart Earl Foxe seem miscast in this farce comedy. Foxe plays a young hypochondriac who believes that he has only a week to live. His name, by the way, is Welland Strong (get it?). He decides to visit his uncle (J. Farrell MacDonald) in the short amount of time he Read More

Lady Windermere's Fan

Actors: Ronald Colman, Irene Rich, May McAvoy, Bert Lytell, Edward Martindel

Synopsis: Unable to rely upon Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic dialogue to carry the day (this was, after all, the silent-film era), director Ernst Lubitsch substitutes verbal wit for the visual variety in his 1925 filmization of Lady Windermere's Fan. Ronald Colman has one of his first important screen roles as Read More

Alias Mary Flynn

Synopsis: Piccadilly Charlie (Gladden James) and his female associate (Evelyn Brent) are on the run from the police after a jewel heist, and the girl hides out in a car belonging to John Reagan (William C. Mong). Reagan -- who had a wayward past as a young man -- takes her in and influences her to reform. Read More

The Road to Yesterday

Actors: Joseph Schildkraut, Jetta Goudal, Vera Reynolds, William "Hopalong" Boyd, Julia Faye, Trixie Friganza

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's century-hopping extravaganza The Road to Yesterday begins in the present (1925, that is). Wealthy Joseph Schildkraut can't understand why his wife Jetta Goudal is so cold to him. Goudal senses that Schildkraut had once done her dirt....in a previous life. Likewise unhappily Read More

The Ten Commandments

Actors: Theodore Roberts, Charles de Roche, Estelle Taylor, Richard Dix, Julia Faye, Rod La Rocque

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's first screen version of The Ten Commandments is only peripherally a Biblical story. The film's first 45 minutes recaps the struggle between Moses (Theodore Roberts) and Rameses (Charles de Roche) over the liberation of the Hebrews. Only after the Lord has imposed a series of Read More

Robin Hood

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Beery, Sam de Grasse, Enid Bennett, Paul Dickey, William Lowery

Synopsis: Robin Hood, Douglas Fairbanks' biggest (though not necessarily best) production of the silent era, represents the first time that many familiar of the elements of the Robin Hood legend were presented on screen. To bring the project to full fruition, Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford purchased Read More