Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), a former businessman who has turned his ...
Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille is kept by the wealthy and powerful Baron de ...
Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore). Among the invited are a crooked executive ...
Opening in England during the middle of World War II, A Guy Named Joe tells the story of Pete Sandidge (Spencer Tracy), a tough, devil-may-care bomber pilot who's amassed an enviable record in combat, mostly by taking chances that give his C.O. (James Gleason) the shakes, much as he and the top brass appreciate the results. Pete lives to fly, but ...
Old Gramps (Lionel Barrymore) is not about to go gentle into that good night when Mr. Brink (Cedric Hardwicke), who sometimes travels under the name of the Grim Reaper, comes calling. Through a ruse, Gramps chases Brink up a tree in his garden, rendering the mysterious stranger helpless. As a result, no one dies throughout the world, and disease ...
Test Pilot is one of those irresistible MGM potboilers of the 1930s that coast along on sheer star power. Clark Gable plays a courageous test pilot, who compromises his achievements with his frequent bouts of drinking. Gable's mechanic, Spencer Tracy, does what he can to keep his boss out of trouble. While testing a new aircraft, Gable is forced ...
"So much for Carlotta" muses the head of German Espionage (Lewis Stone), shortly after secret agent Karen Morley is put to death. Morley's successor is exotic dancer Mata Hari (Greta Garbo), an enigmatic woman of Javanese-Dutch ancestry who seldom thinks twice about luring some poor swain to his doom. Assigned to intercept allied war messages, ...
This is director Frank Capra's classic bittersweet comedy/drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), the eternally-in-debt guiding force of a bank in the typical American small town of Bedford Falls. As the film opens, it's Christmas Eve, 1946, and George, who has long considered himself a failure, faces financial ruin and arrest and is seriously ...
Based on Vicki Baum's novel and produced by Irving Thalberg, this film is about the lavish Grand Hotel in Berlin, a place where "nothing ever happens." That statement proves to be false, however, as the story follows an intertwining cast of characters over the course of one tumultuous day. Greta Garbo is Grusinskaya, a ballerina whose jewels are ...
In David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun, Jennifer Jones stars as Pearl Chavez, whom everyone has tagged as a "bad girl" foredoomed to an unhappy end. She is taken into the home of wealthy, greedy rancher McCanles (Lionel Barrymore) and his kindly wife Laura Belle (Lillian Gish), who'd once been the sweetheart of Pearl's recently executed father ...
During the 1845 battle for Texas' independence, a cattle baron (Clark Gable) spars with an evil senator (Broderick Crawford) over the state's future and for the affections of newpaperwoman Ava Gardner. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Jean Harlow offers her final screen performance in this witty and -- in retrospect -- quite moving racetrack comedy-drama co-starring Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon. When her father dies shortly after losing his horse farm to Duke Bradley (Gable), Carol Clayton (Harlow) refuses the handsome bookmaker's offer to forget the debt and instead vows to ...
Richard Brooks and John Huston's screenplay for Huston's Key Largo eschews the lofty blank verse of Maxwell Anderson's original play, concentrating instead on the simmering tensions among the many characters. Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, an embittered war veteran who travels to Key Largo in Florida, there to meet Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall ...
David Copperfield was MGM's major Christmas release for its 1934-1935 season and also the first of producer David O. Selznick's major "literary" films for that studio. While a great deal of editing and streamlining was necessary to distill Charles Dickens' massive novel into 133 minutes of screen time, the end result was so successful that only ...
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 ...
The 1924 George Gershwin stage hit Lady Be Good was brought to the screen by MGM; any resemblance (beyond the Gershwin score) to the original play is purely accidental. The MGM scriveners came up with a new story concerning married songwriters Ann Sothern and Robert Young, who can't live with each other and can't live without each other. Top ...
Originally filmed in Sepiatone, Let Freedom Ring is a satisfying Nelson Eddy musical with patriotic overtones. Set in the years following the Civil War, the story focuses on the battle of wills between Harvard-educated idealist Steve Logan (Eddy) and bullying railroad magnate Jim Knox (Edward Arnold). Launching a newspaper aimed at combatting Knox ...
This fifth film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island boasts an all-star MGM cast, headed by Wallace Beery as Long John Silver and Jackie Cooper as Jim Hawkins. The screenplay, by John Lee Mahin, John Howard Lawson and Leonard Praskins, remains faithful to the Stevenson original...up to a point. The story begins when drunken old sea ...
A boy learns life-changing lessons about the importance of friendship and the dignity of labor in this adventure saga based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. Young Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is the working definition of a spoiled brat; the only child of a wealthy widowed businessman, Harvey has everything he needs, but never stops asking for ...
In this third installment of MGM's "Dr. Kildare" series, Dr. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) comes to the rescue when his supervisor/mentor Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) nearly collapses from overwork. Gillespie is seeking a permanent cure for pneumonia, and must ask Kildare for assistance when the task proves beyond his physical ability. The older ...
Rain, the famous John Colton-Clemence Randolph theatrical adaptation of Somerset Maugham's short story about religious hypocrisy, was such a "hot potato" in 1928 that the Hays Office, Hollywood's self-appointed censorship bureau, would not allow the play to be filmed under its original title. Thus, the silent film version of Rain went out as Sadie ...
Shirley Temple's first costume picture -- and one of her best pictures of any kind -- was 1935's The Little Colonel. The story begins in 1870, when unreconstructed Southerner Colonel Lloyd (Lionel Barrymore) disowns his daughter Elizabeth (Evelyn Venable) when she stubbornly marries damn-Yankee Jack Sherman (John Lodge). Several years pass, during ...
Playwright Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness! was filmed by MGM in 1935. Impressionable turn-of-the-century lad Eric Linden, whose knowledge of the ways of the world has come from French novels, is anxious to taste life to the fullest. Linden's father Lionel Barrymore sternly advises the boy to be good and be careful, while Barrymore's ...
MGM's Navy Blue and Gold prettily dresses up some of the oldest cliches in the "military cadet" movie genre. The film charts the progress of three Annapolis "plebes," all played by actors in the age range of 24 to 30. Wisecracking Roger Ash (Robert Young) is a cynic, wide-eyed Richard Gates Jr. (Tom Brown) is overeager), and reclusive Truck Cross ...
It's hard to separate fact and fancy from the many accounts of what happened on the set when all three of the fabulous Barrymores -- Ethel, John and Lionel -- appeared together for the only time in Rasputin and the Empress. As for the end result, John offers the subtlest (!) performance as Russian Prince Paul Chegodieff; Lionel throws all caution ...
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