The once-in-a-lifetime teaming of Mae West and W.C. Fields in My Little Chickadee had the potential for comic greatness: what emerged, though generally entertaining, was, in the words of critic Andrew Sarris, "more funny strange than funny ha-ha." Mae West dominates the film's first reel as Flowerbelle Lee, a self-reliant woman who is abducted by ...
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), ...
This upbeat WW II-era musical features performances by the Andrews Sisters and Harry James as it tells the story of a rebellious young inductee who has trouble toeing the line until he meets a retired officer's lovely daughter. James and his band are also drafted and decide to perk up their camp by putting on a big show. Of the many songs featured ...
The comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey made their fourth film appearance of 1930 in the hectic comedy-melodrama Hook Line and Sinker. This time the boys are cast as itinerant insurance salesmen Wilbur Boswell and J. Addington Ganzy ("Not Pansy -- Ganzy, with a 'G'"!) After talking their way out of a traffic ticket, Wilbur and Addington ...
Like Prohibition, Franklin-Blank Productions' The Villain Still Pursued Her is best regarded as a "noble experiment". Using the hoary old stage melodrama The Drunkard: or, the Fallen Saved as its inspiration, the film is a contemptous send-up of all such Victorian mellers, its "serious" moments deliberately and broadly played for laughs. The tone ...
Thirty years after its release, Buster Keaton admitted that his first feature film was essentially three two-reel comedies strung together. Perhaps this was a way for the comic filmmaker to play it safe; he had achieved success for his short films and if Three Ages wasn't going very well, its trio of storylines could have been chopped up into ...
"Klopstokia: A Far-Away Country. Chief Exports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Imports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Inhabitants: Goats and Nuts." This introductory title ushers in Million Dollar Legs, one of the zaniest comedies ever to emerge from a major studio. W.C. Fields stars as the president of Klopstokia, who will hold on to his office so long as he can ...
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 ...
Cowboy Millionaire is one of the last and best of George O'Brien's western vehicles at the Fox Studios. O'Brien is in charge of a dude ranch, where his newest customer is wealthy English girl Evelyn Bostock. They fall in and out of love, and soon Bostock is heading back to the British Isles. O'Brien follows her, setting British society on its ear ...
In his first in a series of well-mounted Westerns and action melodramas for independent producer Sol Lesser, George O'Brien plays Ernest Selby, a young Easterner who cannot get rid of his inheritance -- an Arizona ranch -- soon enough. But when Sam Hepburn (Henry Hall), the wheelchair-bound operator of his ranch, mistakenly assumes that the ...
Based on the barnstorming stage play by George W. Peck, Peck's Bad Boy stars Jackie Cooper in the title role. Cooper's discomfort upon discovering that he was adopted by his dad (Thomas Meighan) is doubled when his obnoxious aunt (Dorothy Peterson) and repulsive cousin (Jackie Searl) move in with him. Peterson wants to break up the strong bonds ...
Colonel Breckinridge Marshall (Walter Catlett) of Clearwater, GA -- who puts on a big front but is actually only a step away from the poor house -- rents a luxurious townhouse in Manhattan in anticipation of the Carnegie Hall debut of his two daughters, singer Melinda (Gloria Jean) and pianist/singer Susannah (Martha O'Driscoll). But on their ...
Boy soprano Bobby Breen dons a pair of skates in the oddball musical Breaking the Ice. Escaping his super-strict Mennonite relatives, our hero gets a job singing at a Philadelphia ice-skating rink. Here he tries to earn enough money to help his beloved widowed mother (Dolores Costello) wrest herself free of those selfsame relatives. The plot ...
Produced at the old Mack Sennett studios by Sol Lesser's low-budget Principal Distributing Corp., this dog melodrama featured not one but two canine "stars," -- Captain and Lady. Mistreated and left to die in the desert by evil real-estate agent Joe Gilmore (Eddie Phillips), the dogs are forced to raid the local henhouses for food. Chased into ...
Olsen and Johnson's followup to their zany, iconoclastic Hellzapoppin' was the more conventional Crazy House. The premise: Having nearly laid waste to Universal while filming Hellzapoppin', O & J are thrown out of the studio when they arrive with plans for a new picture. Only momentarily daunted, our heroes decide to produce the film themselves, ...
Billy DeBeck's classic comic strip "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" was brought to the screen in the pig-bladder Monogram service comedy Private Snuffy Smith. Diminutive silent-screen funster Bud Duncan stars as hillbilly Snuffy Smith, while Sarah Padden is seen as his giant-economy-sized wife Loweezy. Upon arriving in boot camp, draftee Snuffy ...
Though it may be difficult for modern audiences to understand or appreciate the appeal of canary-voiced boy soprano Bobby Breen, the fact remains that he was one of the most popular box-office attractions of the 1930s. Adapted from Don Blandings' novel Stowaways in Paradise, Hawaii Calls stars Breen as shoe-shine boy Billy Coulter, who in the ...
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