Zeffie TilburyFilmography

Tobacco Road

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Erskine Caldwell's once-scandalous novel Tobacco Road resulted in an equally steamy stage play by Jack Kirkland, which became one of the longest-running productions in Broadway history. This story of indigence and amorality amongst inbred "poor whites" (based on people Caldwell had known while Read More

She Couldn't Say No

Actors: Roger Pryor, Eve Arden, Cliff Edwards, Clem Bevans, Vera Lewis

Synopsis: Eve Arden played her first bonafide film-starring role in the 1941 Warner Bros. "B"-picture She Couldn't Say No. A brilliant lawyer, Alice Hinsdale (Arden) is obliged to act as secretary to her legal-eagle fiancé Wallace Turnbull (Roger Pryor) because he can't abide the notion that his wife might Read More

The Grapes of Wrath

Actors: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charles Grapewin, Doris Bowden

Synopsis: The adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of dirt-poor Dust Bowl migrants by 4-time Oscar-winning director John Ford starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who opens the movie returning to his Oklahoma home after serving jail time for manslaughter. En route, Tom Read More

Comin' Round the Mountain

Actors: Una Merkel, Jerry Colonna, Don Wilson

Synopsis: Comin' Round the Mountain was a tailor-made vehicle for bucolic radio humorist Bob "Bazooka" Burns. After striking out in New York, backwoods musician Jed Blower (Burns) and his hillbilly family band return to their native Tennessee. Here they land a job at a tinker-toy radio station in a Read More

Emergency Squad

Actors: William Henry, Louise Campbell, Richard Denning, Robert Paige, John Marston

Synopsis: In this B movie actioner, a plucky female cub reporter is determined to get her boss a front page scoop and so finagles a way to spend a few days with two drivers in the title squad. While with them she finds herself reporting a huge fire at a chemical plant. She gets herself in real danger when Read More

The Earl of Chicago

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

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

Balalaika

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Ilona Massey, Charlie Ruggles, Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill

Synopsis: In this romantic musical, a Russian prince sees a lovely singer in a town cafe and falls head-over-heels. Realizing that he cannot be seen with her in royal garb, he masquerades as a worker. Later he secretly arranges for her to sing at the Imperial Opera. Unfortunately, his father the emperor is Read More

Tell No Tales

Actors: Melvyn Douglas, Louise Platt, Gene Lockhart, Douglas Dumbrille, Florence George

Synopsis: A model of precision and economy, the MGM "B" thriller Tell No Tales represented the feature-film directorial debut of former actor Leslie Fenton. Reportedly an expansion of a "Crime Does Not Pay" 2-reeler, the story follows editor Michael Cassidy (Melvyn Douglas) as he tries to save his newspaper Read More

Boy Trouble

Actors: Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Donald O'Connor, Joyce Mathews, John Hartley

Synopsis: It may sound like a teenage-romance comedy, but Boy Trouble is actually a sentimental effort about middle-aged parents. Charlie Ruggles stars as a small town shopkeeper whose wife (Mary Boland) adopts a pair of rambunctious orphan boys (Donald O'Connor, Billy Lee). Ruggles is at first hostile Read More

Lady of the Tropics

Actors: Robert Taylor, Hedy Lamarr, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Franklin, Ernest Cossart

Synopsis: It's "Never the Twain Shall Meet" time again in the MGM romantic melodrama Lady of the Tropics. The lady in question is half-caste Manon De Vargnes (Hedy Lamarr), a resident of prewar Saigon. American playboy Bill Carey (Robert Taylor) falls madly in love with Manon, but both have their crosses to Read More

The Story of Alexander Graham Bell

Actors: Don Ameche, Loretta Young, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: This fictionalized biography of the famed American inventor's life provided actor Don Ameche with his signature role. For years after its release, people even referred to the telephone as "an Ameche." The story begins in 1873 Boston as Bell endeavors to teach deaf people to speak in the manner Read More

Josette

Actors: Don Ameche, Simone Simon, Robert Young, Joan Davis, Bert Lahr

Synopsis: In this musical comedy of errors, David Brassard, Sr. (William Collier, Sr.) has his heart stolen from him by a conniving, gold-digging nightclub singer named Josette (Tala Birell). Brassard's two sons, Pierre (Robert Young) and David Junior (Don Ameche) are both horrified and vow to lure the Read More

Arrest Bulldog Drummond

Actors: John Howard, Heather Angel, H.B. Warner, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive

Synopsis: Arrest Bulldog Drummond was the last of Paramount's "B" film series based on Sapper's two-fisted soldier of fortune, and also the final appearance by John Howard as Drummond. In this one, Drummond's honeymoon with his beloved Phyllis (Heather Angel) is postponed for the umpteenth time when Read More

Hunted Men

Actors: Mary Carlisle, Lloyd Nolan, Lynne Overman, J. Carrol Naish, Anthony Quinn

Synopsis: Hunted Men is part of Paramount's unofficial B-picture series based on the J. Edgar Hoover book Persons in Hiding. Lynne Overman stars as a middle-class family man whose even-keel lifestyle is shattered when he brings home an affable stranger (Lloyd Nolan) to dinner. The stranger turns out to be Read More

Bulldog Drummond's Peril

Actors: John Barrymore, John Howard, Louise Campbell, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive

Synopsis: Though John Barrymore is top-billed in Bulldog Drummond's Peril, the aging matinee idol is consigned to the supporting role of Inspector Nielsen. Drummond is portrayed by John Howard; once more, he is on the verge of marrying the ever-patient Phyllis Clavering (Louise Campbell). And yet again, the Read More

Marie Antoinette

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

Woman Against Woman

Actors: Herbert Marshall, Virginia Bruce, Mary Astor, Janet Beecher, Marjorie Rambeau

Synopsis: Herbert Marshall finds himself torn between two women: ex-wife Mary Astor and bride-to-be Virginia Bruce. After a while, Marshall's own opinions in the matter mean nothing. The ladies are so involved in their personal battle that they've lost sight of their common goal. Only when Marshall tells Read More

Block-Heads

Actors: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Patricia Ellis, Billy Gilbert

Synopsis: Twenty years after the Armistice, doughboy Stan Laurel continues guarding a trench in France--simply because no one told him the war was over. His rescue coincides with the first wedding anniversary of his old pal Oliver Hardy. Heading to town to pick up a gift for his wife (Minna Gombell), Ollie Read More

It Happened in Hollywood

Actors: Richard Dix, Victor Kilian, Franklin Pangborn, Charles Arnt

Synopsis: By 1937, everyone was tired of films about silent stars who couldn't make the transition to talkies (and would be until Singin' in the Rain), but this Columbia comedy-drama still had its moments in spite of gross inaccuracies. Richard Dix is Western star Tim Bart, a screen hero who is adored by Read More

Federal Bullets

Actors: Milburn Stone, Zeffie Tilbury, Terry Walker, William Harrigan

Synopsis: Federal Bullets is a leisurely paced Monogram crime melodrama with not a few clever plot twists. The FBI, represented by Milburn Stone and William Harrigan, investigates a seemingly respectable charitable organization. In fact, the enterprise is a front for a crime ring, headed by Ma Barker clone Zeffie Tilbury Read More

Live, Love and Learn

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Robert Benchley, Helen Vinson, Mickey Rooney

Synopsis: Starving artist Robert Montgomery could care less if his paintings sell, so long as he's happy. Montgomery falls in love with Rosalind Russell, an heiress who's gone "slumming" in Greenwich Village. Russell becomes Montgomery's patroness as well as his wife, urging him to make his paintings more Read More

Rhythm in the Clouds

Actors: Patricia Ellis, Warren Hull, Richard Carle, Zeffie Tilbury

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a struggling songwriter fakes a letter of admittance into the apartment of a rich composer. It is most convenient as the successful fellow is out of town. The girl is hungry and unable to pay her own rent, so she takes full advantage until he returns and finds his Read More

Bulldog Drummond Comes Back

Actors: John Barrymore, John Howard, Louise Campbell, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive

Synopsis: In the second of Paramount's "Bulldog Drummond" thrillers, Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (John Howard) is finally about to marry longtime fiancée Phyllis Clavering (Louise Campbell) when the girl is kidnapped. The hijackers, Mikhail Valdin (J. Carroll Naish) and his sister, Erena Soldanis (Helen Read More

Under Cover of Night

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Florence Rice, Nat Pendleton, Henry Daniell, Sara Haden

Synopsis: For a studio specializing in glossy soap operas, costume pictures and musicals, MGM made an inordinate number of "B"-grade crime thrillers in 1937. The first on the docket that year was Under Cover of Night, starring Edmund Lowe as intrepid sleuth Christopher Cross. This time the killer is an 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

Bulldog Drummond Escapes

Actors: Guy Standing, Heather Angel, Porter Hall, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: Paramount's "Bulldog Drummond" series got off to a start with 1937's Bulldog Drummond Escapes. Up-and-coming Ray Milland stars as soldier-of-fortune Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, who on this occasion comes to the aid of pretty heiress Phyllis Clavering (Heather Angel). The heroine is being held against Read More

Parole

Actors: Henry Hunter, Alan Dinehart, Noah Beery, Jr., Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: A lesser but still effective entry in the mid-1930s "prison" cycle, Parole catalogues the many problems facing prisoners who've served their debt to society. The story concentrates on Russ Whalen (Henry Hunter), one of several parolees trying to find work on the outside. The "ex-con" onus forces Read More

Old Hutch

Actors: Wallace Beery, Eric Linden, Cecilia Parker, Elizabeth Patterson, Robert McWade

Synopsis: In this remake of the 1920 Will Rogers comedy Honest Hutch, Wallace Beery stars as the eponymous Hutch, the ne'er-do-well patriarch of a large and needy family, who unexpectedly becomes rich when he stumbles upon $100,000 worth of hidden swag. Ironically, because Hutch has become so notorious as Read More

Desire

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, John Halliday, William Frawley, Ernest Cossart

Synopsis: In this frothy romantic adventure, Marlene Dietrich plays Madeleine de Beaupre, a devious jewel thief. After sneaking a valuable string of pearls away from jeweler Aristide Duval (Ernest Cossart), Madeleine attempts to flee Paris, leaving a trail that will instead implicate psychiatrist Dr. Read More

Second Childhood

Actors: George "Spanky" McFarland, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas, Eugene "Porky" Lee, Darla Hood

Synopsis: Veteran character actress Zeffie Tilbury steals the show in this immensely satisfying "Our Gang" comedy. On the occasion of her 65th birthday, a crotchety hypochondric (Tilbury) goes through her daily rant as her snooty servants (Sidney Bracey and Greta Gould) ply her with colorful but uncessary Read More

Anthony Adverse

Actors: Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, Edmund Gwenn, Claude Rains, Anita Louise

Synopsis: When David O. Selznick produced the film version of the 1000-plus page novel Gone with the Wind, he declared he could not make a film running any less than 222 minutes. When Warner Bros. adapted the even longer Hervey Allen best-seller Anthony Adverse, the studio managed to pack everything--except Read More

The Bohemian Girl

Actors: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Thelma Todd, Antonio Moreno, Jacqueline Wells, Darla Hood

Synopsis: The excellent box-office returns for the previous Laurel & Hardy comic operas The Devil's Brother and Babes in Toyland encouraged Hal Roach to cast the team in still another operatic adaptation, a self-styled "comedy version" of William Balfe's The Bohemian Girl. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play Read More

The Gorgeous Hussy

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Melvyn Douglas

Synopsis: The Gorgeous Hussy purports to be based on the life of Margaret "Peggy" O'Neill, the controversial wife of early 19th-century politician John Eaton, who served as cabinet minister during the Andrew Jackson presidency. Snubbed by the Washington elite because of her questionable background as a Read More

After the Thin Man

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart, Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: This second of MGM's Thin Man films reteams William Powell and Myrna Loy as, respectively, bibulous private detective Nick Charles and his socialite wife Nora. The Charleses are sucked into another murder case via Nick's lovely cousin Elissa Landi, whose husband Alan Marshall has vanished. Hubby Read More

Give Me Your Heart

Actors: Kay Francis, George Brent, Roland Young, Patric Knowles, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: Kay Francis, Warner Bros.' resident "wronged woman," was the star of Give Me Your Heart. Francis plays a socialite whose illicit romance with married Patric Knowles results in a baby. When the father, a titled Englishman of means, declares that the child would be better off in his care, Ms. Read More

Mark of the Vampire

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Elizabeth Allan, Lionel Atwill, Jean Hersholt, Carroll Borland

Synopsis: Mark of the Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his own 1927 thriller London After Midnight, which unfortunately no longer exists. The sudden appearance of ghostly vampires in a remote mittel-European community is seemingly tied in with an old, unsolved murder case. Police inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill Read More

The Last Days of Pompeii

Actors: Preston S. Foster, Basil Rathbone, David Holt, Alan Hale, John Wood, Louis Calhern

Synopsis: RKO Radio's spectacular production The Last Days of Pompeii utilizes the title but precious little else of the famous Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton historical novel (at least the film admits as much in the opening credits). Preston S. Foster stars as Marcus, a happy-go-lucky Ancient Roman blacksmith Read More

Stranded

Actors: Kay Francis, George Brent, Patricia Ellis, Donald Woods, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: In this romance, a social worker employed by Traveler's Aid finally is able to show her love to a construction foreman responsible for building the Golden Gate Bridge. She has loved him for nine years and is delighted that they can finally be together. Unfortunately, both of them are so busy that Read More

Women Must Dress

Actors: Minna Gombell, Gavin Gordon, Hardie Albright, Suzanne Kaaren, Lenita Lane

Synopsis: A homely woman gets the best kind of revenge upon her philandering husband in this drama. Tired of his constant cheating, the woman puts on make up, takes their daughter, and starts a new, more modern life. She becomes an acclaimed dress designer while her daughter falls in love with a stodgy Read More

The Farmer Takes a Wife

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Henry Fonda, Charles Bickford, George "Slim" Summerville, Andy Devine

Synopsis: Henry Fonda made his screen debut in this filmization of his Broadway success The Farmer Takes a Wife. The story is set along the Erie Canal in the 1850s. Fonda plays a farmer who takes a river job to make ends meet. He falls in love with Janet Gaynor, daughter of a canal-boat cook, who thinks Read More

Alice Adams

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: Katharine Hepburn stars as Booth Tarkington's would-be society belle Alice Adams. The product of a family of modest means, Alice nonetheless dreams of being accepted by the "better people." Luck of luck, she meets well-to-do young Fred MacMurray at a social gathering; he is charmed by her pathetic Read More

Public Hero No. 1

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Chester Morris, Joseph Calleia, Paul Kelly

Synopsis: The stringent censorship imposed upon Hollywood of the mid-1930s dictated that gangsters could no longer be the "heroes" in any crime film. Public Hero No. 1 reflects this restriction. G-Man Chester Morris poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys Read More

The Werewolf of London

Actors: Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Originally intended as a vehicle for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, this Universal production predated The Wolf Man by six years, but failed to whip up audience enthusiasm for the monster popularized by Lon Chaney, Jr. in the studio's later classic. Henry Hull stars as botanist Dr. Glendon, whose Read More

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Actors: Claude Rains, Douglass Montgomery, Heather Angel, David Manners, Valerie Hobson

Synopsis: Charles Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, has been a source of speculation and controversy ever since its posthumous publication. Even so, the ending concocted by scenarists John Balderston and Gladys Unger for the 1935 film version of Edwin Drood met with near-unanimous Read More

Mystery Liner

Actors: Cornelius Keefe, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Edwin Maxwell

Synopsis: A rather nifty little science fiction-thriller/murder mystery from Poverty Row company Monogram, Mystery Liner was based on a Saturday Evening Post story by British pulp writer Edgar Wallace. Noah Beery starred as John Holling, the captain of an ocean liner equipped with a powerful scientific Read More

Charlie Chan Carries On

Actors: Warner Oland, John Garrick, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hymer, Marjorie White

Synopsis: Warner Oland made his first appearance in the role of Earl Derr Biggers' sagacious, aphorism-spouting oriental detective Charlie Chan in the 1931 Fox production Charlie Chan Carries On. It all begins when Chan, on vacation from his job with the Honolulu police, tries to solve the murder of a Read More

The Ship from Shanghai

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, Carmel Myers, Holmes Herbert, Zeffie Tilbury

Synopsis: In this high-seas adventure, a ship's steward goes 'round the bend, mutinies, throws the captain into the briny, and turns into an utter tyrant. He is protected by the simple-minded, enormously strong cook. Fortunately for the crew, the crazed steward goes completely mad and ends up leaping to his Read More

The Single Standard

Actors: Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, Lane Chandler

Synopsis: Worried that Greta Garbo's rich, deep voice and thick Swedish accent would not record properly, MGM executives kept Garbo in silent pictures longer than any of the studio's other contractees. The star's penultimate silent effort (with music and sound effects added) was The Single Standard, based Read More

Another Scandal

Synopsis: After breaking away from Paramount, the company he helped form in 1912, W. W. Hodkinson had to make do with tiny budgets and wafer-thin storylines. Another Scandal recycles the old marital-misunderstunding bromide, this time predicated on the theory that the man should remain head of the Read More

The Marriage of William Ashe

Synopsis: Although this picture was adapted from the novel by Mrs. Humphrey Ward, it was rewritten to emphasize the character of Lady Kitty Bristol -- May Allison's role. Lady Kitty is a frivolous young woman who leaves her convent school for London society. She is courted by two men, the radical writer Read More

Camille

Actors: Alla Nazimova, Rudolph Valentino, Arthur Hoyt, Zeffie Tilbury, Rex Cherryman

Synopsis: Although by no means the definitive version of the Alexander Dumas story -- scenarist June Mathis modernizes it and the overall tone is rather cool for such a group of supposedly hot-blooded characters -- this picturization is notable for a number of reasons. To play Camille's lover, Armand Duval Read More

The Avalanche

Synopsis: Elsie Ferguson has a dual role, as mother and daughter, in this tale of gambling fever. Chichita (Ferguson) has a gambler father who is murdered, and later on she marries another gambler, who shoots himself. When she meets yet another gambler, Nick Delano (Warner Oland), she marries him too, and Read More