A musical remake of the 1936 comedy Second Honeymoon and the starring debut of Betty Grable, Springtime in the Rockies tells the not unfamiliar story of Vicky Lane (Grable, a Broadway dancer despairing over the tardiness of her partner Dan Christy (John Payne) who, as it turns out, has instead been busily engaged in a bit of extracurricular ...
To quell the rumors that musical stars Alice Faye and Betty Grable detested each other (actually they were fast friends, if not close buddies), 20th Century-Fox cast both ladies in their 1940 "inventory" musical Tin Pan Alley. Set in the years just prior to and during WW1, the film casts Faye and Grable as Katie and Lily Blaine, a singing-sister ...
Though a lesser 20th Century-Fox musical, Hello, Frisco, Hello was one of the studio's most successful wartime efforts. John Payne plays Johnny Cornell, a sharp wheeler-dealer operating on the Barbary Coast at the turn of the century. With the help of his songstress girlfriend Trudy Evans (Alice Faye), Johnny gains a reputation as a first-class ...
Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle, a bearded old gent who is the living image of Santa Claus. Serving as a last-minute replacement for the drunken Santa who was to have led Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Kringle is offered a job as a Macy's toy-department Santa. Supervisor Maureen O'Hara soon begins having second thoughts about hiring Kris: it's bad ...
Postwar films were festooned with amnesiac ex-GIs who found themselves mixed up with crime. In The Crooked Way, John Payne plays memory-deficient veteran Eddie Rice, who runs afoul of mobster Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts) and police inspector Lt. Williams (Rhys Williams). Both the crooks and the cops seem to have good reason to despise Rice, and ...
Victor Mature plays an arrogant champion boxer who opts for an acting career on Broadway. He falls in love with his costar Betty Grable, who's secretly married to actor John Payne. Unwilling to make public her marriage lest it adversely affect her career, Grable is unsuccessful in fending off Mature's advance, which causes her hubby's blood to ...
After several years' service with the Marines in World War II, Tyrone Power made his much anticipated return to the screen in The Razor's Edge. Power is appropriately cast as disillusioned World War I vet Larry Darrell, who returns from hostilities questioning his old values. To find himself, Larry joins several other members of the Lost ...
Another winning collaboration between producer Benedict Bogeaus and director Allan Dwan, Tennessee's Partner is the third film version of the same-named Bret Harte story. The plotline is motivated by the curious friendship between slick gambler Tennessee (John Payne) and gunslinging Cowpoke (Ronald Reagan). Setting up shop in California gold-rush ...
Next to Slightly Scarlet, Silver Lode is the best of the many 1950s collaborations between producer Benedict Bogaeus and director Allan Dwan. Clearly inspired by High Noon, the story covers three hours in the lives of a group of westerners. As the townsfolk prepare for the Fourth of July celebration, stranger Dan Duryea rides into view, followed ...
When the US marines land in Iceland during WW2, camp lothario John Payne wastes no time scoping out the local female population. He makes a casual pass at skating champ Sonja Henie, only to discover that she has taken his attentions as a marriage proposal! Unable to weasel out of his situation thanks to the rigidity of Icelandic customs, Payne ...
One of the first big-studio productions to acknowledge America's entry into WW2, 20th Century-Fox's To the Shores of Tripoli was filmed with full the cooperation of the US Marine Corps. John Payne plays Chris Winters, a wealthy, wise-lipped young Marine recruit who learns the true meaning of "Semper Fidelis" the hard way, courtesy of tough-as ...
Kansas City Confidential, Phil Karlson's low ( low ) budget, B-grade film noir, opens on a Kansas City armored-car robbery perpetrated by cynical, corrupt ex-policeman Timothy Foster (Preston S. Foster). Foster devises an outrageous scheme: he will recruit three of the most vicious and unrelenting criminals he can find (screen heavies Lee Van ...
The Dolly Sisters is the heavily Hollywoodized biopic of Jennie and Rosie Dolly, Hungarian-born entertainers who took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s. Betty Grable plays Jennie and June Haver plays Rosie; their uncle is the inevitable "funny foreigner" S.Z. Sakall, who manages their career from childhood. Passing an important audition for ...
In this musical, the cruise that salesgirl Nan Spencer (Alice Faye) worked so hard to pay for is cut tragically short when the ship is damaged. In recompense for the failed cruise, Nan is treated to a tour of Havana, guided by a shipping company officer, Jay Williams (John Payne). Once in Havana, Nan becomes the center of attention when both Jay ...
On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of commercial radio, 20th Century-Fox cooked up the pageantlike entertainment The Great American Broadcast. Opening with clips of such airwaves favorites as Dick Powell and Fred Allen (courtesy of earlier Fox films like Thanks a Million), the picture gets under way in 1918, as ambitious army buddies Bix ...
This little film noir is freely adapted from James M. Cain's novel Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the story of a gangster working for a powerful Don who is fighting to retain control of the city's criminal activities when an honest mayoral candidate launches a strong anti-crime campaign. In a desperate attempt to derail his career, the Don assigns the ...
The first musical comedy from the Grand National assembly line, Hats Off stars John Payne and Mae Clarke as rival press agents Jimmy Maxwell and Jo Allen. Both have been assigned to stir up publicity for separate expositions at the 1936 Texas Centennial (newsreel footage of which predominates throughout the film's short running time). To throw ...
Skating star Sonja Henie and the Glenn Miller Orchestra share the spotlight in Sun Valley Serenade. Henie plays a Norwegian refugee adopted by band pianist John Payne, who mistakenly thought that the full-grown Miss Henie was a 10-year-old little girl. Payne's girlfriend, Lynn Bari, is a soloist with the Miller band, and also a violently jealous ...
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