W.C. Fields plays Egbert Souse, a bibulous denizen of Lompoc who supports his family by winning radio contests. When a fleeing bank robber is knocked cold upon tripping over the park bench where Egbert sits, Souse is hailed as a hero and offered the job of bank guard. The next day, he is approached by one J. Frothingham Waterbury (Russell Hicks), ...
Absent from films since 1938 (except as producer of a brace of RKO Radio features), silent-screen comedy favorite Harold Lloyd returned before the cameras in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. The project began as a labor of love between Lloyd and the brilliant, innovative producer/writer/director Preston Sturges. Though these two comedy geniuses ...
In Preston Sturges' classic comedy of Depression-era America, filmmaker John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), fed up with directing profitable comedies like "Ants in Your Plants of 1939," is consumed with the desire to make a serious social statement in his upcoming film, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" Unable to function in the rarefied atmosphere of ...
There was some novelty value in the fact that an actor whose initials were E.Q. was cast as intellectual sleuth Ellery Queen in Republic's The Mandarin Mystery. That actor was Eddie Quillan, who though a talented and appealing performer was woefully miscast as Queen. The story, based on the Ellery Queen novel The Chinese Orange Mystery, is set in ...
The title of this "Lum 'N' Abner" comedy isn't explained until the film is half over. Chester Lauck and Norris Goff repeat their radio characterizations of Lum and Abner, proprietors of the Jot-Em-Down Store in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. This time, the boys journey to Chicago, where Abner hopes to collect his share of an inheritance, only to find out ...
Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, Manhattan Love Song charts the misadventures of the madcap Stewart sisters, Jerry (Dixie Lee) and Carol (Helen Flint). Suddenly finding themselves broke, the girls are forced to become the servants of their former chauffeur Williams (Robert Armstrong) and maid Annette (Nydia Westman). This seemingly untenable ...
Olsen and Johnson's second starring vehicle for Republic was better than their first (Country Gentlemen), but a Hellzapoppin' it wasn't. Ole and Chic play a couple of itinerant vaudevillians, teamed with Sally the Singing Seal ("the eighth wonder of the world"). Heroine Joan Eldredge (Mary Howard) is about to lose the theater left to her by her ...
The girl is stenographer Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball); the guy is her boss, stuffy young shipping magnate Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien); and the gob is a brash sailor known as Coffee Cup (George Murphy). Not surprisingly, the plot involves the efforts by the self-effacing Stephen and the self-confident Coffee Cup to woo and win the lovely Dot. And ...
W.C. Fields heads to Esoteric studios to pitch a story idea to producer Franklin Pangborn. The producer wants to make a conventional romantic musical starring Fields' niece, teen-aged soprano Gloria Jean, but "The Great Man" has other ideas. As Pangborn sits in dumbfounded silence, Fields unravels an incoherent farrago which begins with him ...
Hollywood and Vine is set in a drugstore located at the intersection of the title. James Ellison plays a successful screenwriter who likes to do his research first-hand. Assigned to write a film about Hollywood hopefuls, Ellison gets a job as a drugstore soda jerk. Wanda McKay plays Daisy, a small-town girl with dreams of stardom who hangs out at ...
Poverty Row studio Monogram took a stab at musical production with King Kelly of the U.S.A., a cinematic blunder starring opera baritone Guy Robertson, who plays James "King" Kelly, a theatrical entrepreneur sailing to Europe with his latest show, "Kelly's Affairs of 1934." En route, he falls in love with Catherine (Irene Ware), who, unbeknownst ...
Filmed on a budget of about 78 cents, High Hat was a foredoomed attempt to turn radio singer Frank Luther into a movie star. Luther struggles manfully in the role of Suwanee Collier, the boyfriend and mentor of aspiring vocalist Elanda Lee (Dorothy Dare). A classical singer, Elanda refuses to lower herself to perform "swing" music until Collier ...
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