In the early days of sound film, one of Warner Bros.' big box-office draws was the aging stage actor George Arliss and, in Disraeli, Arliss scored his biggest box-office hit. He is at his best as the foxy British prime minister (in a role he created on-stage and re-created earlier in a 1921 silent film version of the same play). The film concerns ...
Though legendary entertainer Al Jolson was a highly visible presence on the U.S.O. circuit during World War II, he was generally regarded as a relic of an earlier time until his movie comeback in 1945's Rhapsody in Blue. Showing up 30 minutes into this biopic of George Gershwin, Jolson literally stopped the show with his robust rendition of ...
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 ...
Based on the lives of big-band stars Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, this biographical chronicle begins with their childhood in an industrial Pennsylvania town. Encouraged in their musical talents by their father, the Dorsey brothers' sibling rivalry proves to be a stumbling block until the their father's death gives them the momentum they need to rise to ...
Mary Pickford was at the height of her fame as "America's Sweetheart" when she took on the challenge of playing two roles -- a mother and her young son -- in this silent drama with comic accents. Cedric Fauntleroy (Pickford) is growing up under difficult circumstances in New York City; his father was the son of the Earl of Dorincourt (Claude ...
A handful of strangers are suddenly thrown together as America goes face-to-face against the Communist threat in this curious example of Cold War exploitation. A few people are enjoying drinks in a Manhattan cocktail lounge - television reporter Vince Potter (Gerald Mohr), vacationing tractor tycoon George Sylvester (Robert Bice), cattle baron Ed ...
The year is 1942: Mr. Winkle (Edward G. Robinson), a mild-mannered bank clerk, decides to quit his job and open a fix-it shop in his garage. Winkle's wife Amy (Ruth Warrick) disapproves of this, and orders her husband to move into his little shop. Tired of being browbeaten, Winkle is delighted when his draft notice shows up. Fitted for a uniform, ...
Singing cowboy Gene Autry makes a rare appearance outside his usual Republic Pictures stamping grounds in 20th Century-Fox's Shooting High. Instead of playing "himself" as he usually does, Autry is cast as Will Carson, whose family is engaged in a decades-long feud with the Pritchard clan. The story shifts into gear when a movie company arrives in ...
Eddie Cantor, beloved "banjo eyed" entertainer who conquered stage, films, radio and television, is given the Hollywood biopic treatment in this largely uninvolving film. Cantor is portrayed by Keefe Brasselle, a minor nightclub performer of the 1950s who couldn't hope to come within shouting distance of Cantor's appeal. The storyline charts ...
Beefcake star Jon Hall shows off his sleek physique in the exotic melodrama South of Pago Pago. The son of an island chieftan, young Kehane (Hall) defiantly opposes the efforts by crooked pearl hunter Bucko Larson (Victor McLaglen) to invade his domain. Larson and his minions hope to dissuade our hero by introducing him to seductive Ruby (Frances ...
Thousand and One Nights is an occasionally strident but generally successful satire of the popular Universal Jon Hall/Maria Montez epics. Cornel Wilde stars as a twentyish Aladdin, whose magic lamp yields two genies: Collosus-like Rex Ingram (repeated the role he played in 1940's Thief of Baghdad) and ravishing redhead Evelyn Keyes (who, like ...
Baby Face is a good example of the kind of spitfire lead female characters that appeared in the cinema of pre-code Hollywood. Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) works as a barmaid in her father's factory-town saloon where she learns to deal with the unwanted advances of male customers. When her father dies, she moves to New York City with her maid, ...
Cover-Up transfers the metropolitan "film noir" milieu to a small Midwestern town. Dennis O'Keefe plays Sam Donovan, an insurance detective, investigating the suicide of a policy holder. All signs point to murder, but no one in the victim's hometown is willing to cooperate with Donovan, least of all sheriff Larry Beat (William Bendix). Local girl ...
Despite its lack of production values and box-office "names," The Jackie Robinson Story is one of the best and most convincing baseball biopics ever filmed. Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson plays himself, and quite well indeed. The film traces Robinson's career from his college days, when he excelled as a track star at Pasadena ...
When the family land is threatened with foreclosure, honest, hard-working rancher Ross McEwen (Joel McCrea) resorts to bank robbery in order to come up with the necessary cash. Although he leaves the bank an I.O.U., Sheriff Pat Garrett (Charles Bickford) is sent out to catch the criminal as he flees to escape capture. This western was originally ...
A longtime fan of comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen, "Philo Vance" creator S. S. Van Dyne wrote a tailor-made screenplay for the team, which emerged on-screen as The Gracie Allen Murder Case. The Paramount studio executives decided to dispense with the services of George Burns, leaving scatterbrained Gracie on her own to match wits (?) with ...
Groucho Marx made his first solo film appearance away from his brothers in the musical comedy Copacabana. Groucho plays two-bit theatrical agent Lionel Q. Devereaux, whose favorite client--indeed, his only client--is fireball Brazilian entertainer Carmen Novarro (Carmen Miranda). Hoping for a double commission, Devereaux gets Carmen two different ...
Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney were teamed for the only time in their careers in Smart Money. Robinson has the larger part as a small-town barber who fancies himself a big-time gambler. He travels to the Big City in the company of his younger brother Cagney, who wants to make sure that Robinson isn't fleeced by the high-rollers. Unfortunately ...
For her fourth United Artists picture, Mary Pickford once again plays a poor little rich girl. This one, Jeanne, is so neglected that when her mother, Hortense (Gertrude Astor), remarries, she is pawned off on her Belgian nurse. Five years later, when Hortense returns to fetch Jeanne, the nurse has decided to keep her and claims she has died. But ...
Silent film star Colleen Moore and Charlie Plumb's comic strip character Ella Cinders had two basic things in common: their dutch-bob haircuts and their winsome, wide-eyed charm. As played by Ms. Moore, Ella is a moviestruck small-town girl who wins a talent contest purportedly sponsored by a film studio. First prize is a trip to Hollywood and a ...
The Girl From Manhattan is a minor but watchable variation on the old "mortgage-on-the-farm" plot device. The girl of the title is Carol Maynard (Dorothy Lamour), who after several years in the Big Apple returns to her home town, where her uncle, boarding-house manager Homer Purdy (Ernest Truex) faces eviction. The villain of the piece at first ...
The titular colleen is Ruby Keeler, hired to manage a dress shop by wealthy Dick Powell. Keeler is the replacement for slatternly Joan Blondell, who'd been assigned the job by Powell's philandering father (Hugh Herbert). With Powell and Keeler at the helm, it's no time at all before the musical numbers proliferate, though none of the songs have ...
Shot on location in New York City's Winter Garden Theatre, this is essentially a filmed performance of Phil Silver's hit Broadway show in which he plays a moody and egotistical television comic (allegedly patterned after Milton Berle). Trouble begins when the ratings for Jerry Biffle's (Silvers) television show begin to sag. The producer spice up ...
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