The whimsical Oscar Wilde fantasy yarn The Canterville Ghost is updated to WW2 in this economical but attractively produced MGM filmization. Charles Laughton plays Sir Simon de Canterville, a feckless 17th century British aristocrat who, after proving himself a coward on the field of honor, is walled up alive in his own castle by his unforgiving ...
The pleasures of the flesh confront the discipline of the Lord's teachings in this screen adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's story Miss Sadie Thompson. Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford) is a sassy streetwalker who lands in Pago Pago in the South Pacific after an epidemic grounds the ship on which she's booked passage. Sadie's shapely legs, free ...
The first film version of Philip Barry's Broadway play The Animal Kingdom stars Ann Harding, Leslie Howard and Myrna Loy. Howard plays a wealthy publisher who decides to marry the socially prominent Loy, leaving his mistress Harding in the lurch. In comically convoluted fashion, Loy behaves like a callous libertine, while Harding is the soul of ...
Archetypal depression-era stars Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney are felicitously teamed in Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once. Fonda plays an ex-convict who can't get a break on the "outside". He marries Sidney, who like her husband is one of life's losers. Framed on a murder rap, Fonda is forced to take it on the lam, with his wife and baby in tow. In ...
One of the funniest, most sharply paced comedies of the 1930s, and perhaps the best of all of Harold Lloyd's talkies, The Milky Way was based on the Broadway play by Lynn Root and Harry Clork. Lloyd plays Burleigh Sullivan, a mild-mannered milkman who intercedes one night when his sister Mae (Helen Mack) is being accosted on the street by two ...
In this follow-up to director Leo McCarey's Going My Way (1944), Bing Crosby repeats his Oscar-winning characterization of happy-go-lucky priest Father O'Malley. The good father is sent to help out financially strapped St. Mary's Academy, a parochial school presided over by lovely nun Sister Benedict (Ingrid Bergman). The film is constructed in ...
Something of a distaff Mr. Chips, schoolteacher Ella Bishop (Martha Scott) devotes her life to her work, ageing 50 years (from 19 to 69) in the course of the film. At a testimonial dinner on the occasion of her retirement, Miss Bishop's former students wonder why their beloved teacher never married. In flashback, the audience learns that town ...
With only a minimal romantic subplot and no music whatsoever, Who Done It? is pure, undiluted Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and a good mystery on its own to boot. Bud and Lou star as Chick Larkin and Mervyn Milgrim, a pair of soda jerks who aspire to become radio detective-show writers (their latest epic is "The Midget Gets the Chair-or, Small Fry" ...
Having joined the army in Buck Privates and the navy in In the Navy, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello signed up with Air Force in Keep 'Em Flying. Abbott and Costello play Blackie and Heathcliff, carnival workers who are fired from their jobs along with their pal, reckless stunt pilot Jinx Roberts (Dick Foran). When Jinx joins the Army Air Corps-the ...
When her tough boyfriend Red Branahan (William Gargan) is sent to jail, Aggie Appleby (Wynne Gibson) meets mild-mannered Adoniram Schlump (Charles Farrell), and decides to turn him into a real man. She teaches him how to talk tough, changes his name to Red Branahan, and gets him a construction job -- unaware that the real Red has been released ...
14-year-old Shirley Temple receives her first on-screen kiss in this innocuous romantic comedy. Temple is cast as the titular Annie Rooney, the starry-eyed, idealistic daughter of erstwhile --and impoverished--inventor Tim Rooney (William Gargan). Annie is swept off her feet by intellectual high-schooler Marty White (Dickie Moore), the son of a ...
One of several "naughty" screwball comedies based on the works of Thorne Smith (of Topper fame), Hal Roach's Turnabout stars Carole Landis and John Hubbard as unhappily married couple Sally and Tim Willows. Bored with her humdrum existence, Sally spends most of her time figuring out ways of spending her husband's money, while hard-working Tim ...
Dynamite is a 1949 effort from the Pine-Thomas production mill. William Gargan and Richard Crane star as Gunner and Johnny, troubleshooters for dynamite contractor Hard Rock Mason Frank Ferguson. Though forced to work as a team on the job, Gunner and Johnny fall out when romance enters the picture in the form of Mason's pretty daughter Mary ...
This melodrama chronicles the enduring friendship between four boys in New York's Hell's Kitchen. As boys, the made a pact that they would meet annually to renew their friendship. Trouble ensues when one of the boys accidently sets fire to a building. Another boy took the blame. He went to reform school. Years pass before he is reunited with his ...
Originally slated for released through Grand National Pictures, Isle of Destiny was redirected to RKO Radio when Grand National folded in late 1939. June Lang stars as Virginia Allerton, a famous aviatrix who crashlands in a remote South Sea Island (a la Amelia Erhardt!) and is promptly kidnapped by gun-runner Barton (Gilbert Roland). Coming to ...
Well-known New York sports promoter Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature) is the prime suspect in the murder of Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis), a successful model and would-be actress. Questioned relentlessly by the police, and particularly by hulking detective squad commander Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar), he maintains his innocence. Meanwhile, Vicky's ...
A naval officer gets more than he bargained for when he adopts a recently orphaned young boy, the son of his late best friends. Despite the resistance of the lad's surviving relatives, who worry that growing in the Navy will be hard on the boy, the officer loves and takes good care of the boy. At least he does until the child is abducted by a ...
Like many 1930s Warner Bros. films, Black Fury drew its inspiration from the headlines. The story is adapted from a true-life incident from 1929, wherein a striking Pennsylvania coal miner was beaten to death by three company detectives; this served as the focus for Henry R. Irving's stage play Bohunk as well as Judge M. A. Musmanno's story Jan ...
Like its predecessors, this third cinema version of Sidney Hoiward's Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted suffers from Hollywood censorship. Still, this story of the grim consequence of a misbegotten mail-order marriage has much to offer. Carole Lombard is superb as the waitress who lies about herself while carrying on a romance ...
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