Goodbye, Mr. Chips, based on James Hilton's novel, is a melodrama about a shy British teacher named Mr. Chipping (Robert Donat) who devotes his life to teaching "his boys" after the death of his lovely, energetic American wife Katherine (Greer Garson). Told via flashbacks, the film features an aged Mr. Chipping looking back nostalgically at his ...
Although some purists hold out for Duck Soup (1933), many Marx Brothers fans consider A Night at the Opera the team's best film. Immediately after the credits roll, we are introduced to Groucho Marx as penny-ante promoter Otis B. Driftwood. After a sumptuous dinner with a beautiful blonde at a fancy Milan restaurant, Driftwood tries to cadge ...
Command Decision is a stagebound but consummately acted adaptation of William Wister Haines' Broadway play. Clark Gable, starring in the role essayed on Broadway by Paul Kelly, plays Air Force Brigadier General "Casey" Dennis. With time at a premium, Dennis sends waves of bomber squadrons into Germany to knock out the enemy's jet plane factories. ...
Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper paired off again after For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) with this overwrought melodrama based on the romance novel by Edna Ferber. Bergman plays Clio Dulaine, a beautiful half-Creole woman whose return to 1875 New Orleans from Paris creates a stir. Born out of wedlock, Clio's mother was a local woman who became ...
Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town is given the Hollywood treatment in this adaptation directed by Sam Wood featuring an evocative score by Aaron Copland and outstanding production design by William Cameron Menzies. Frank Craven is Mr. Morgan, the narrator and our guide through the small town of Grover's Corners in the more ...
A seemingly quiet Midwestern town is the hiding place for a number of sordid secrets in this melodrama based on Henry Bellamann's best-selling novel. Parris Mitchell (Scotty Beckett) is a young boy growing up in the town of King's Row, where he becomes close friends with Cassandra (Mary Thomas), a quiet girl who isn't popular with the other ...
The Devil and Miss Jones is a social comedy with left-wing undertones. John P. Merrick (Charles Coburn), the world's richest man, gets word that someone is trying to unionize a department store that he owns. To thwart this blatant act of democracy, Merrick changes his name and takes a menial job at the store, the better to catch the union ...
Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a romantic drama set against the turbulent tapestry of the Spanish Civil War. Gary Cooper plays Robert Jordan, an idealistic American fighting with a Spanish guerilla band. He is assigned to blow up a crucial bridge in order to halt the enemy's progress. He falls in love with Maria ...
A Day at the Races was the Marx Brothers' follow-up to their incomparable A Night at the Opera. Groucho Marx is cast as Hugo Z. Hackenbush, a veterinarian who passes himself off as a human doctor when summoned by wealthy hypochondriac Emily Upjohn (Margaret Dumont) to take over the financially strapped Standish Sanitarium. Chico Marx plays the ...
Though Ginger Rogers' starring vehicles always turned a profit for RKO Radio, many filmgoers thought of Rogers only in terms of "Fred Astaire's partner." Others considered her a delightful comedienne, but no great shakes as a dramatic actress. Thus it was both a personal and professional triumph when Ms. Rogers walked home with an Oscar for her ...
Both Van Johnson and Gregory Peck were considered for the role of baseball star Monty Stratton in the 1949 biopic The Stratton Story before settling upon the real Stratton's own first choice, James Stewart. The film covers several years in the 1930s, as Texas farm boy Stratton rises from the minors to the Chicago White Sox. Along the way, Monty ...
A remake of the 1939 French film Battement de Couer, Heartbeat reunites star Ginger Rogers with her Kitty Foyle director Sam Wood. Ms. Rogers plays Arlette, a reform school alumnus who is recruited by Faginlike Professor Aristide, headmaster at a school for pickpockets. Before long, Arlette becomes Aristide's prize pupil, and is being groomed for ...
"It's box office poison," producer Samuel Goldwyn is said to have exclaimed when he heard the idea of filming the life story of fabled first baseman Lou Gehrig. "If people want baseball, they go to the ballpark!" The story begins before World War I, when young Lou Gehrig (played as a boy by Douglas Croft) begins dreaming of becoming a professional ...
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 ...
Hollywood Party was planned as a lavish, star-studded MGM musical titled Hollywood Revue of 1933 . Under the less-than-sterling guidance of "kicked upstairs" MGM producer Harry Rapf, production dragged on interminably, using up the talents of five directors (none of whom were credited) and seven writers. The "all star" cast lineup slowly dwindled ...
There's nothing wrong with Hold Your Man that a little editing wouldn't cure. Clark Gable plays a raffish young petty crook who hides out in hard-boiled Jean Harlow's apartment after he pulls off a robbery. Harlow enjoys Gable's company, and soon the two are living together. Gable puts his criminal career on hold for a while, but when Harlow, ...
When he finds out his ex-wife has just had his child and plans to give her up for adoption, a timid English instructor dashes to the child's rescue and attempts to care for her in a hotel room. Before too long, however, his new fiancee and his ex confront him and he must decide what he will do. This light comedy starring Gary Cooper, Theresa ...
This touching drama follows the exploits of a big-hearted businessman. The financier is just about to close a major deal when he is forced to move to the desert to help his tubercular son recover. It takes two years, and during that time, the businessman's partner has written him off as a business failure. That may be true, but in other areas of ...
Produced independently by Edward Small, this surprisingly realistic gangster yarn stars stalwart Richard Arlen as Mal Stevens, an attorney recruited by the newly organized Federal Bureau of Investigation. After Mal and a couple of fellow recruits, Van Rensseler (Harvey Stephens) and Tex Logan (Gordon Jones), foil a plot by Joe Keefer (Bruce Cabot) ...
After his appearance in The Kid, little Jackie Coogan was obviously destined for stardom. For his first starring role, he was given this story written by George W. Peck, which had been made into a stage play by George M. Cohan. While the film didn't live up to the stage version (Moving Picture World said comparing the two "is to compare a two ...
The fourth cinematic version of the novel Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, this romantic caper is a virtual remake of the 1930 version. David Niven stars as A.J. Raffles, a famed cricket player of English society's upper crust. Secretly, however, Raffles is a skilled cat burglar known as "The Amateur Cracksman" to Scotland Yard, ...
In this drama, Diana (Myrna Loy) is a beautiful tourist from the United States who is visiting Cairo, accompanied by her Uncle Cecil (C. Aubrey Smith) and Aunt Powers (Louise Closser Hale). Diana is to meet her fiance Gerald (Reginald Denny) in Cairo, but she soon makes the aquaintance of Jamil (Ramon Novarro), a handsome local who works for the ...
Myrna Loy plays the glamorous member of a trio of jewel thieves. G-Man Spencer Tracy goes undercover to join the gang when it transports its stolen jewels from Paris to New York. Loy falls in love with Tracy, has a change of heart, and quits the gang. But Tracy arrests her all the same when he recovers the jewels. The girl forgives Tracy when the ...
This picture did great at the box office, and no wonder -- Paramount's biggest star of the day, Gloria Swanson, co-starred with Rudolph Valentino (whose fame was so new that his first name was still being spelled "Rodolph"), in a story written by the most famous trashy novelist of the day, Elinor Glyn. There was no way this romantic drama could ...
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