MGM's Sadie McKee is a superb example of how the "committee" system of moviemaking in the 1930s could sometimes yield unexpected delights. It all begins when Sadie McKee (Joan Crawford) is brought to big bad old New York by glib vaudevillian Tommy (Gene Raymond), only to be unceremoniously dumped in favor of actress Dolly (Esther Ralston). Cast ...
Long derided by film historians as a talented but visually unimaginative director, James Cruze made up for any and all past artistic sins with his rousing Old Ironsides. Per its title, this 11-reel silent film is set at the time of Stephen Decatur's defeat of the Barbary pirates in Tripoli. Decatur himself (played by comic actor Johnnie Walker) is ...
Previously filmed in 1923, Zane Grey's To the Last Man manages to pack plenty of A-level production values into what was essentially a B-picture budget. In the years following the Civil War, Kentucky man Lynn Hayden (Randolph Scott) moves his family to Nevada, partly to start life anew, but mostly to leave behind the bloody family feud between the ...
Released by Monogram in 1937, Shadows of the Orient was actually produced independently several years earlier by Larry Darmour. Arrested in a raid on a Chinese gambling joint, judge's daughter Viola Avery (Esther Ralston) is rescued from disgrace by King Moss (Sidney Blackmer), owner of the establishment. In return, Moss expects Viola to string ...
Five characters find themselves playing a lively game of musical beds in this saucy pre-Code comedy. Richard (Edward Everett Horton) is a well-known lawyer who has a rather surprising reputation as a ladykiller. Felix (also played by Horton) is a nightclub impressionist who wants Richard's permission to spoof him in his stage act. Richard tells ...
Before it became one of Hollywood's busiest B-picture mills, Monogram Pictures had a fondness for literary adaptations (The Moonstone, Jane Eyre etc.) Monogram's 1933 Black Beauty was, of course, based on the classic novel by Anna Sewell. Only a few of the many anecdotal adventures of the titular black horse are dramatized herein. Black Beauty is ...
Perhaps Mascot Pictures' The Marines are Coming would have been more credible had it been made 10 years earlier. Stars William Haines, Esther Ralston and Conrad Nagel are game, but all three are a bit long in tooth for their characters. In a throwback to his silent films, Haines plays a wise-guy marine, while Nagel is his more-serious best friend. ...
We're in the Legion Now stars two veterans of the silent screen, Reginald Denny and Esther Ralston, both of whom were old enough to know better. Denny and comedian Vince Barnett play Dan and Spike, a couple of American gangsters who use the Foreign Legion as a hideout. Amazingly, the two crooks end up as heroes by blowing up an enemy garrison -- ...
Grand Hotel meets Twentieth Century in this Mascot feature. Evelyn Venable stars as Patricia Wells, a tempestuous stage actress who impulsively elopes on opening night of her newest play. Wells and her new fiancée Fred Arnold (Ralph Forbes) book adjoining compartments on the Streamline Express, while her conniving producer Jimmy Hart (Victor Jory) ...
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