Cary Grant met his future wife Betsy Drake on the set of the appropriately titled Every Girl Should be Married. Grant plays well-known baby specialist Madison Brown, who is Dr. Spock in everything but name. After a chance meeting with headstrong young Anabel Sins (Drake), poor Brown finds his every move and thought monitored by Anabel, who intends ...
Not even considered a good film back in 1935, Dangerous is held together by the mesmerizing performance of Bette Davis. The star is cast as alcoholic, self-destructive stage actress Joyce Heath, a character obviously based on Jeanne Eagels. Wealthy architect Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) becomes convinced that Joyce can be rehabilitated with the ...
Reckless is a delightfully breezy screwball comedy from the same director (Victor Fleming) and star (Jean Harlow) responsible for the celebratedBombshell (itself a film ŕ clef loosely based on Clara Bow) -- with the added appeal of William Powell. One can readily see the chemistry between the two stars at work, which would lead to their impending ...
Billy Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo is the third take on Lajos Biro's theatrical tale of romance and espionage, Hotel Imperial. This time, the action is transplanted from World War I Galicia to World War II Egypt as Rommel's Afrika Corps viciously forces the British Army to retreat towards Cairo. Protagonist John J. Bramble (Franchot Tone) is ...
In 1933, at the height of the bleakness and desperation of the Depression, MGM released this genuine curiosity piece -- directed by comedy (!) director Gregory La Cava -- concerning a Warren G. Harding-like partisan hand-shaker President of the United States who, after seeing a vision, revokes the Constitution, becomes a reigning dictator, and ...
Originally titled Eadie was a Lady, this Jean Harlow vehicle was slated for release under the title Born to be Kissed, but the new Production Code vetoed this "suggestive" cognomen. After a brief and uncomfortable period as One Hundred Percent Pure, the film was finally shipped to theaters as The Girl From Missouri. Harlow plays Eadie, a sexy gold ...
Adapted from a Saturday Evening Post serial by Frank and Marian Cockrell, Dark Waters stars Merle Oberon as heiress Leslie Calvin, a woman with a neurotic aversion to water. This stems from the fact that in her childhood, Leslie was one of four survivors of a torpedoed steamship. Preying upon Leslie's fears, conniving Mr. Sydney (Thomas Mitchell), ...
Based on The Bride from Trieste by Ferenc Molnar, The Bride Wore Red stars Joan Crawford as the eponymous heroine. A singer in a seedy Budapest dive, Anni (Crawford) is mistaken for a socialite thanks to a practical joke perpetrated by the cynical Count Armalia (George Zucco). Though a bit confused about her new favored status, Anni happily ...
Virtually everybody except President Roosevelt was in the lavish MGM backstage musical Dancing Lady. Joan Crawford stars as Janie Barlow, an impoverished dancer reduced to working in a seedy Manhattan burlesque house. While on a slumming party with his society friend, wealthy young Tod Newton (Franchot Tone) spots Janie in the burleycue chorus ...
Though hampered by a small budget that shrank with each shooting day, director Burgess Meredith fashioned a serviceable film version of Georges Simenon's A Battle of Nerves. Retitled The Man on the Eiffel Tower, the film pits Simenon's analytical Inspector Maigret (Charles Laughton) against a wily murderer. We know virtually from the outset that ...
The 1932 publication of Charles Nordhoff and James Norton Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty sparked a revival of interest in the titular 1789 ship mutiny, and this 1935 MGM movie version won the Oscar for Best Picture. Clark Gable stars as Fletcher Christian, first mate of the infamous HMS Bounty, skippered by Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton), ...
Also known as Twilight, Without Honor is a tour de force for leading-lady Laraine Day. During a quarrel with her lover Dennis Williams (Franchot Tone), Mrs. Jane Bandle (Day) attacks him with an ice pick. Believing she has killed Williams, she hurriedly hides the body in her laundry room when her husband Fred (Bruce Bennett) comes home. As Jane's ...
Made on a miniscule budget primarily financed by its star Franchot Tone, Jigsaw is a strange little crime film. Howard Malloy (Tone), a crusading New York assistant district attorney, is dedicated to exposing a group of supposedly patriotic Americans who have murdered his friend after he discovered that they were truly a fascist "hate group." The ...
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 ...
The second Hollywood-filmed effort from the British-based Eagle Lion company, Lost Honeymoon is a decided improvement on the first (It's a Joke, Son). Franchot Tone plays returning GI Johnny Gray, who knows that he suffered from amnesia while in London but doesn't know what he did during his memory lapse. Johnny soon finds out when British lass ...
Here Comes the Groom was the second collaboration between director Frank Capra and star Bing Crosby. Though not as "socially relevant" as previous Capra productions, the film is a thoroughly likeable yarn about a happy-go-lucky newspaperman named Pete (Bing Crosby). In order to legally adopt a brace of war orphans, Pete must marry within a week. ...
Lucille Ball offers a seminal version of her Lucy Ricardo TV character in Her Husband's Affairs. Ball is cast as Margaret Weldon, the wife of advertising executive William Weldon (Franchot Tone). Though Weldon is successful, Margaret can't help but feel that he'd be more successful if she were to take an active part in his business affairs. The ...
Engineer Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is at a seedy midtown Manhattan bar early one evening, drowning his sorrows over a failed marriage, when he strikes up a conversation with a woman (Fay Helm). She's well dressed, with a very ornate hat topping off her ensemble, and also seems even sadder and more lost than he is. Henderson persuades her to ...
Having turned down the opportunity to produce Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), MGM's Louis B. Mayer had second thoughts when the Capra film swept the 1935 Oscars ceremony. Mayer hastily commissioned an It Happened One Night wannabe titled Love on the Run, tailored for the talents of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable (who, of course, had ...
Previously filmed with Marion Davies in 1927, the lightweight James M. Barrie play Quality Street proved an ideal vehicle for Katharine Hepburn ten years later. The setting of the Barrie original was switched from 1805 Scotland to 1815 Regency England, to avoid a preponderance of brogues and to take advantage of the latter era's more attractive ...
As appealing as ever in 1946, Deanna Durbin was admittedly getting a bit long in tooth for her ingenue-like role in Because of Him. Durbin is cast as Kim Walker, an aspiring actress determined to become the protegee of famed Broadway actor/producer Sheridan (Charles Laughton). The only person not charmed by Kim's herculean efforts to achieve ...
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 tavernkeeper's daughter, "Pothouse Peg" is championed ...
Suzy is the film in which Cary Grant, overcome by the beauty and vivacity of Jean Harlow, sings her a love ballad! This lighthearted moment aside, Suzy, adapted from a novel by Herbert Gorman is a standard-issue love triangle, set against the tapestry of World War I. Harlow plays a London showgirl, married to Irish engineer Franchot Tone. When ...
In this frothy musical comedy, Ann Carter (Deanna Durbin) is an aspiring singer from the Midwest who decides to move to New York in hopes of advancing her career. Her half brother, Martin Murphy (Pat O'Brien), is already living in the Big Apple, and has told her that he's doing well as a businessman; however, when she arrives at his door, she ...
Nice Girl? answers its own question by casting the relentlessy nice Deanna Durbin in the title role. In her first truly adult role, Durbin plays Jane Dana, the blossoming daughter of high school principal Oliver Dana (Robert Benchley). Jane is being ardently courted by longtime boyfriend Don Webb (Robert Stack) and by the more worldly Richard ...
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