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Neville Brand plays one of his earliest good-guy roles in Return from the Sea. Brand plays a sailor named Maclish, who is a boisterous, love 'em and leave 'em type--until he meets a lonely waitress named Frieda (Jan Sterling). Through her example, Maclish realizes that he too has been lonesome all his life, just waiting for the "right girl" to come along. Falling in love, Maclish and Frieda begin saving up for a little ranch of their own. When Maclish is seriously wounded in battle, however, it looks as though their dreams for happiness and security will be dashed again. . .but the movie isn't over, yet. Return From the Sea was directed by Lesley Selander, who helmed so many films for Allied Artists during this period that he must have slept and taken meals at the studio.

This delightful adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's swashbuckling novel stars Stewart Granger as Andre Moreau, an 18th-century French nobleman who is publicly humiliated by the Marquis de Maynes (Mel Ferrer). Challenged to a sword duel by the Marquis, Andre, who knows nothing about fencing, runs away, taking refuge with a theatrical troupe. He hides behind the personality of Scaramouche, a zany clown, and in his spare time romances his sexy leading lady Lenore (Eleanor Parker). Seeking revenge against de Maynes, Andre takes fencing lessons from swordmaster Doutreval (John Dehner). It isn't long before Andre has developed a reputation as the finest swordsman in France--which, as intended, arouses the ire of de Maynes. The two opponents face off in a deserted theater; the ensuing sword duel, running nearly seven minutes, is one of the best ever committed to film. Before he can plunge his blade into de Maynes, Andre discovers that he and the Marquis are half-brothers. The two men instantly forget their differences, and Andre's honor is fully restored. He ends up not in the arms of the sensuous Lenore but with a woman of his own class, Aline de Gavrillac (Janet Leigh)--while a gag ending reveals that Lenore has found herself a new and highly influential boyfriend. Lewis Stone, star of the 1923 silent version of Scaramouche, appears in the remake in the supporting role of Georges de Valmorin.

In this comedy, a woman is left destitute after her father dies. To make ends meet, she begins working as a secretary to a wealthy fellow. Soon the two fall in love and begin planning their wedding, much to the delight of the woman's creditors. When her fiancé learns that she is deeply in debt, he begins questioning her true motives for marrying him. He ends up putting off the union. The plucky lass then becomes determined to prove that she does indeed love him for himself. Mayhem ensues, but romance prevails.

Forty minutes is more than enough screen time for Spanish director Luis Buñuel to state his case in Simon of the Desert. Claudio Brook portrays fifth-century Christian Simon (later St. Simon Stylites) who dispenses religious sagacity while standing on a tall column in the middle of the desert. Typical of Buñuel's hatred of the Church, the Devil (Silvia Pinal) is a far more entertaining and articulate spokesperson for his point of view than Simon is for Christianity. An abrupt, ill-suited ending suggests that Buñuel either tired of the subject and wanted to move on to other things, or that he ran out of money and had to wrap before the process servers showed up. This Mexican film was originally titled Simon del Desierto.

Sol Madrid isn't a western, as might be gathered, but a drug-ring melodrama. David McCallum shows up early in the film as a spaced-out junkie. But Man From UNCLE fans need not worry: McCallum is actually an undercover agent, looking for the source of heroin being trafficked by the Mafia. The top man in the Mexican-based narcotics operation is the man you'd least likely expect -- especially when one remembers the sort of roles the guilty party had previously played in his long career. Based on Robert Wilder's novel Fruit of the Poppy, this went out to British moviehouses under the title The Heroin Gang.

An unwelcome intruder has an unexpected effect on a married couple.

On Christmas Eve., Santa Claus, James Coco, visits a psychiatrist, Jon Pertwee, to find out who he is and why there are so many on him ringing bells on street corners.

If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that anticipated the complex themes and characters that would dominate the 1970s. John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a former Confederate soldier who returns to his brother Aaron's frontier cabin three years after the end of the Civil War. Ethan still has his rebel uniform and weapons, a large stash of Yankee gold, and no explanations as to where he's been since Lee's surrender. A loner not comfortable in the bosom of his family, Ethan also harbors a bitter hatred of Indians (though he knows their lore and language well) and trusts no one but himself. Ethan and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), Aaron's adopted son, join a makeshift band of Texas Rangers fending off an assault by renegade Comanches. Before they can run off the Indians, several homes are attacked, and Ethan returns to discover his brother and sister-in-law dead and their two daughters kidnapped. While they soon learn that one of the girls is dead, the other, Debbie, is still alive, and with obsessive determination, Ethan and Martin spend the next five years in a relentless search for Debbie -- and for Scar (Henry Brandon), the fearsome Comanche chief who abducted her. But while Martin wants to save his sister and bring her home, Ethan seems primarily motivated by his hatred of the Comanches; it's hard to say if he wants to rescue Debbie or murder the girl who has lived with Indians too long to be considered "white." John Wayne gives perhaps his finest performance in a role that predated screen antiheroes of the 1970s; by the film's conclusion, his single-minded obsession seems less like heroism and more like madness. Wayne bravely refuses to soft-pedal Ethan's ugly side, and the result is a remarkable portrait of a man incapable of answering to anyone but himself, who ultimately has more in common with his despised Indians than with his more "civilized" brethren. Natalie Wood is striking in her brief role as the 16-year-old Debbie, lost between two worlds, and Winton C. Hoch's Technicolor photography captures Monument Valley's savage beauty with subtle grace. The Searchers paved the way for such revisionist Westerns as The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and its influence on movies from Taxi Driver (1976) to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) testifies to its lasting importance.

Joel McCrea plays 19th-century miner Rick Nelson in The San Francisco Story. The year is 1856, and Frisco is a wide-open town. To stem the activities of crooks and con artists, newspaper editor Jim Martin (Onslow Stevens) organizes a group of peace-keeping vigilantes. Nelson, an old friend of Martin's, arrives in the Golden Gate city to help out. The villain of the piece is political boss Andrew Cain (Sidney Blackmer), who regards San Francisco as his own personal fiefdom. When not battling Cain's bought-off flunkies and hulking henchman, Nelson dallies with Cain's erstwhile girlfriend Adelaide McCall (Yvonne DeCarlo). Not so much a western as a historical actioner, The San Francisco Story is tip-top entertainment.

Illicit office romances provide the basis of this melodrama. The story centers around an older man's secretary who drops her real boyfriend to seduce her boss. When he discovers that his wife has begun fooling around with younger men he lets his secretary have her way. Fortunately, the boss's wife files for divorce and now everyone is free to fool around.

Often (and accurately) described as a model of the whodunit genre, The Kennel Murder Case stars William Powell, making his fourth screen appearance as S. S. Van Dine's dilettante detective Philo Vance. This time the story involves intrigue at the Long Island kennel club. The murder victim is Robert H. Barrat, who works overtime making himself a much-hated target in the first ten minutes. With the aid of a Doberman, Vance solves not only Barrat's murder but a follow-up killing designed to deflect attention from the killer. The suspects include Mary Astor, Ralph Morgan, Jack LaRue, Helen Vinson, Paul Cavanaugh and Arthur Hohl, all of whom have "done it" from time to time in other murder mysteries (movie buffs, however, will have little trouble spotting the killer; the person in question has probably been the hidden murderer in more films than any other member of the Screen Actor's Guild). Kennel Murder Case was William Powell's last "Philo Vance" film; it would be remade in 1940 as Calling Philo Vance, with James Stephenson as Vance and a new World War II angle added to the plot.

Ace the Wonder Dog, RKO's Rin Tin Tin-wannabe, plays Picardy Max, a mongrel dog adopted by Dan Preston (James Ellison) when both are thrown in jail for vagrancy. Dan's legal problems are quickly done away with but his pretty boarder, Shirley Haddon (Helen Wood), is increasingly troubled by Dan's obsessive competitiveness with fellow dog owner Robert Mabrey (Robert Kent). In fact, the young man's grudge against the entire Mabrey family threatens to ruin his burgeoning relationship with Shirley but everything works out fine when Picardy helps locate a kidnapped Marian Mabrey (June Clayworth). Almost a Gentleman was the second of three programmers starring Ace the Wonder Dog and produced by RKO 1938-1940. Ace also worked for Republic Pictures and was featured in the 1943 serial The Phantom.

Bob Hope's Technicolor western spoof The Paleface was one of the comedian's biggest box-office hits. Hope plays Painless Potter, a hopelessly inept dentist who heads west to seek his fortune. Meanwhile, buxom female outlaw Calamity Jane (Jane Russell) is engaged in undercover work on behalf of the government, in the hopes of earning a pardon for her past crimes. Jane is on the lookout for notorious gun-runner Robert Armstrong. To put up an innocent front, Jane marries the befuddled Potter, then keeps the criminals at bay by convincing everyone that Potter is a rootin'-tootin' gunslinger (actually, it's Jane who's been doing all the shooting). Armstrong, who has been selling guns to the Indians, arranges for Jane to be captured by the scalp-hungry tribesmen, but Potter comes to the rescue. Somewhere along the way, Bob Hope and Jane Russell get to sing the Oscar-winning Jay Livingston/Ray Evans tune "Buttons and Bows". There are many hilarious moments in The Paleface, but screenwriter Frank Tashlin felt that director Norman Z. McLeod failed to get the full comic value out of his material. To prove his point, Tashlin directed the side-splitting sequel, Son of Paleface (1952), which once more teamed Hope and Russell.

Set during WWII, this taut and suspenseful espionage outing chronicles the courage of a brand-new cadre of specially trained American O.S.S. agents who parachute into France to destroy the vital Corbett Mallon tunnel to stop the German invaders from shipping supplies to their troops. One of the spies is a woman, and this bothers the group leader, who doubts her abilities. She soon proves herself, and the two embark on several exciting adventures before and after the completion of their mission. Along the way, the two manage to fall in love. Unfortunately, their commitment to duty is necessarily greater than their love and one of them will make a great sacrifice.

It took nerve for writer/director Preston Sturges to lampoon the whole concept of hero worship in the middle of World War II, but once more Sturges' oddball sense of taste and propriety paid off at the box office in Hail the Conquering Hero. Eddie Bracken plays the son of a World War I Marine hero who is the first in his small town to sign up for military service. When Bracken is discharged from the Marines for hay fever, he hasn't the nerve to go home and tell his mother and the rest of the townsfolk. Fortunately, he is befriended by a bunch of good-hearted Marines, led by sergeant William Demarest. Bracken's new buddies decide to help him save face by accompanying him to his home and telling one and all that Bracken has served valiantly in the Pacific. Lauded as a hero thanks to this subterfuge, the hapless Bracken finds himself being coerced into running for mayor! When he finally does confess the truth, the townspeople decide that only a real hero would own up to his lies in public. As always, Preston Sturges' richly varied supporting cast makes the most of every scene they're in, especially Raymond Walburn as a blustering politico and Franklin Pangborn as a persnickety councilman. Special mention must be made of Ella Raines as a refreshingly non-cliched heroine, and ex-boxer Freddie Steele as a morose Marine with a Mother complex. While Eddie Bracken's nerdish mannerisms can wear on the viewer, he is kept marvelously in check throughout Hail the Conquering Hero.

Two government agents are assigned to bust up a gold smuggling ring located on the Mexican border. One of the agents, a beautiful, talented singer, goes undercover as a singer in one of the Mexican clubs. Using her considerable wiles she then begins trying to seduce the ring leader.

The sacrifice of a socialite is chronicled in this romantic drama. To be with her beloved musician, the wealthy woman gives up her wealth and social standing. Tragedy ensues when she discovers that he is having an affair with another noblewoman causing her to take up again with an old flame. When her music man becomes terribly ill, she returns to his side to help him back to health. He is so impressed by her caring and devotion that he swears he will never stray again.

This musical comedy pokes fun at the music industry as it tells of the romantic travails of two popular singers thrust together by an ingenious promoter/matchmaker as a publicity stunt. The young male needs to revive his flagging career while the female singer is trying to get her big break; so both of them reluctantly go along with their manager's harebrained scheme. You can guess what happens next. Songs include: "The Cool Ones," "A Bad Woman's Love," "Whiz Bam Opener," "This Town," "High," "Up Your Totem Pole with Love," "Tantrum," and ""Where Did I Go Wrong?""

In this historical drama based on actual events, Sweden's Queen Christina (Liv Ullmann) decides in 1654 to give up her throne in order to embrace Catholicism. However, as she studies the faith, she falls in love with Cardinal Azzolino (Peter Finch), a cleric being considered for the papacy. Greta Garbo previously played the same abdicating monarch in the film Queen Christina. Michael Dunn, who plays the dwarf in The Abdication, died during production, and several of his scenes had to be shot with another actor doubling for him.

Ben Stride (Randolph Scott, in a role originally slated for John Wayne) trudges stoically through the West, hunting down the seven men responsible for the murder of his wife in a Wells Fargo station holdup. As the film opens, we see him dispatching two of the miscreants during a driving rainstorm. Though the victims are deserving of their fate, the script is careful to detail the moral deterioration of Scott, who'd quit his sheriff's job to go on this unauthorized death hunt. Also turning up is Bill Master (Lee Marvin), not one of the bandits per se but actually a villain from Stride's past who happens upon the situation and sees a chance to make off with some loot. This film marked one of the few Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher collaborations not released by Columbia Pictures.

Set during Cuba's struggle to free itself from colonialist Spain, this exciting adventure chronicles the exploits of a tough, mercenary gun runner who learns about honor, sacrifice and caring for others when he ends up forced to smuggle his latest weapon's cache aboard a beat up stern wheeler bound for Cuba. There he meets a beautiful freedom fighter who has been in the States trying to rally her expatriot colleagues into returning to join in the battle. It is she, with her passionate idealism and unwavering courage, who turns the gunrunner's life around.

Warner Bros' Road Gang is a retread of themes first explored (and stock footage first seen) in the studio's earlier I Am Fugitive From a Chain Gang. The story takes place in an unnamed Southern state, where prisoners are forced to work on chain gangs under appallingly brutal conditions. The local newspapermen try to expose this shameful situation to the world, but are prevented from doing so by fat-cat corrupt politicians who are benefitting financially from the enforced-labor policy. It takes the intervention of a crusading Chicago journalist (Henry O'Neill) to start the wheels of justice in motion. Most of the story is told through the eyes of hapless prison laborers Jim Larrabee (Donald Woods) and Bob Gordon (Carlyle Moore Jr.), only one of whom survives until the fade-out. Road Gang was scripted by future blacklistee Dalton Trumbo.

In this action film, Wallace Storm, ace race car driver, gets into real trouble when he is accused of killing his partner over the love of a pretty girl. In court he is found guilty of tampering with his partner's car, causing it to crash during a race, and is sent to prison. While there, his good buddy Johnny works to prove him innocent. Unable to wait, Wallace escapes from jail and heads for South America, assumes an alias, and goes on to become a championship driver. He eventually returns to the States when his girl's father needs a driver for his new car. During the big race, the judge who convicted him, is so impressed by Storm's heroism, that all is forgiven and he is freed.

Paul Newman made his directorial debut and Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, stars as Rachel Cameron, a 35-year-old unmarried schoolteacher who feels as though she's wasted her life. Rachel's best friend, Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), invites her to attend a religious revival meeting. Here Rachel is swept up in the emotional fervor orchestrated by a young guest preacher (Terry Kiser). This is the first of several cathartic incidents which convince Rachel to kick over the traces and express her own needs and emotions. She has a brief sexual liaison with an old family friend (James Olson), and is delighted at the notion that she might have become pregnant. Rachel ends up alone and childless (her "pregnancy" was nothing more than a benign cyst), but still determined to forge a new life for herself. Based the novel A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, Rachel, Rachel won New York Film Critics awards for both Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, and an Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward.

A few corny moments aside, Objective Burma must rate as one of the best combat films of WW2. Errol Flynn stars as Captain Nelson, who leads a hardy band of paratroopers behind enemy lines in Burma, for the purpose of destroying a Japanese radar station. Their mission accomplished, Nelson and his men prepare to make their escape by plane, but this proves to be impossible. It is therefore necessary for the surviving paratroops to make a grueling 150-mile journey by foot through the Japanese-held jungle, in hopes of eventually reaching their own lines. With the exception of Henry Hull, who delivers a mannered, strained performance as an Ernie Pyle-like war correspondent, the performances are uniformly excellent, with Flynn, George Tobias and William Prince standing out. Director Raoul Walsh and cinematographer James Wong Howe stage the combat scenes (filmed on the "Lucky" Baldwin Santa Anita ranch) with brutal efficiency, showing little but conveying a lot in the way of gore and carnage. The strangest sequence (at least to modern viewers) has the paratroopers expressing horror and disgust at a vicious sneak attack by the Japanese-which occurs only a few reels after the Americans have staged an equally merciless attack on a Japanese unit! In England, Objective Burma was taken to task by newspaper journalist who felt that the Americans were unfairly taking full credit for the success of the Burmese campaign. The ensuing hue and cry compelled Warner Bros. to issue an apology, and to withhold the British release of the film until 1952, at which time it was accompanied by a lengthy prologue title extolling England's contribution to the Burma invasion. Originally released at 142 minutes, Objective Burma is usually shown on TV in its 128-minute reissue form.

The fact that star Errol Flynn had been recently embroiled in a real-life rape trial only served to increase the box-office "pull" of Warner Bros. Northern Pursuit. Flynn is cast as Canadian mountie Steve Wagner, assigned to track down and capture downed Nazi pilot Hugo von Keller (Helmut Dantine) in the snowier Hudson Bay regions. Once Wagner and fellow mountie Jim Austin (John Ridgely) catch up with Von Keller, they pretend to be on his side, hoping that he'll reveal his espionage plans. Taken in, Von Keller leads the mounties towards a secret Nazi hideaway, where the Germans have hidden a huge bombing plane, to be used against North America. The fact that Wagner is posing as a Nazi sympathizer hardly endears him to Von Keller's hostage Laura McBain (Julie Bishop), but when the truth is revealed she professes her love for him. In the light of Flynn's recent legal problems, one line in Northern Pursuit invariably brought down the house in 1943: After assuring Laura that she's the only woman he's ever loved, Wagner/Flynn turns to the camera and quips "What am I saying?"

The "suspense" in the RKO Radio musical comedy Music for Madame lies in whether or not golden-voiced Operatic tenor Nino Martini will be permitted to sing. En route to Hollywood, Tonio (Martini) is hoodwinked into serenading a wedding party while a gang of jewel thieves clean out the place. The crooks head for the hills, but not before threatening to murder Tonio if he ever sings again (his voice, you see, is the only clue the police have to go by). While pondering the future of his career, our hero falls in love with beautiful Jean (Joan Fontaine) and is sorely tempted to express his ardor in song. Music for Madame was Jesse L. Lasky's first RKO production -- and very nearly his last when the picture lost $375,000 for the studio.

The romantic hills and valleys of an advertising agency secretary provide the basis of this comedy drama. Unlike her soon-to-be-married roommate, the secretary is determined to remain single and forge a strong career. She does have a suitor, but he is not ambitious enough for her and she keeps her distance. The girl gets her chance to climb the corporate ladder after she invents a sure-fire cure for hangovers. Sure enough she begins her ascent. Meanwhile, her suitor continues to plead with her to leave her job and become his bride. But the secretary has fallen for an ambitious adman who is engaged with another who is already cheating upon him. At this point, the stage is set for considerable romantic confusion and things are a mess until the very happy end.

The Killers from Space in this low-budget sci-fier are a group of aliens bent on conquering the earth. To this end, they overtake the mind and body of atomic scientist Peter Graves, using the poor man as a combination spy and saboteur. When Graves realizes this, he tries to warn mankind, but no one believes him. Marching defiantly back to the aliens' Bronson Canyon headquarters, where the slimy villains are busily syphoning off electrical power from a nearby generator, Graves vows to stop the extraterrestrials at any cost...including his own life (or what there's left of it). The makeup used for the aliens is laughable, but the film works so long as it concentrates on Graves' plight. Produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, the brother of the more celebrated Billy Wilder, Killers from Space was distributed in the US by RKO Radio.

June Bride is based on Feature for June, a play by Eileen Tighe and Graeme Lorimer. Bette Davis plays the businesslike editor of a fashionable woman's magazine, who plans a feature on a "typical" midwestern marriage. She assigns her aide (and former fiance) Robert Montgomery to cover the story, a task he feels is beneath him. Even so, Montgomery keeps his mouth shut as Davis and her assistants Fay Bainter and Mary Wickes descend upon the hapless family of the bride and re-arrange the household so that it will be more "appealing" to the magazine's devoted readers. Unable to stand any more of this, Montgomery devilishly upsets the apple cart: he convinces the younger sister (Betty Lynn) of the bride (Barbara Bates) to elope with the groom (Raymond Roe), for whom the sister carries a torch. Infuriated by Montgomery's intervention, Davis fires him on the spot. She later relents, realizing that the change in marital plans will make an even better story than her original concept. In so doing, Davis finally admits that she's still in love with the cheeky Montgomery. One of the better Bette Davis vehicles of the late 1940s, June Bride is chock full of brisk, bright dialogue and appealing characters. Debbie Reynolds makes her film debut in the teeny-tiny part of a friend of the bride.

A two-part, four-hour documentary series honoring African-American servicemen and women.

This lesser Astaire/Rogers vehicle is one of several screen versions of the venerable Hubert Osborne stage play Shore Leave. For reasons unknown, Fred and Ginger are virtually supporting players here, spending most of their time trying to patch up the romance between Fred's fellow sailor Randolph Scott and Ginger's sister Harriet Hilliard (better known as Harriet Nelson, of Ozzie and Harriet fame). One of the sillier aspects of the plot hinges on raising enough money to renovate a broken-down old ship; to do this, Fred and Ginger stage a lengthy musical number that must have cost five times as much money as they raised! But that number, a languorous dance rendition of Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance", compensates for all the nonsense that has gone before. One fringe benefit of Follow the Fleet is spotting two fresh-faced starlets named Betty Grable and Lucille Ball.

A weekend trip into the desert turns into a nightmare when four young couples discover a number of derelict cars on the roadside, and realize too little too late that they're being stalked by an unknown creature with a hearty appetite. As night falls, the few remaining survivors must fight for their lives in the cruel darkness of the desert.

Fanny was adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the final chapter of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseilles Trilogy". Pagnol's original, titled Cesar, ends with protagonist Marius returning to the sea, leaving behind his lover Fanny and their son. Expanding upon the original, Fanny picks up the narrative nine years later. Marius (Horst Buchholtz) finally meets his son and is reunited with Fanny (Leslie Caron). She tells him that Panisse (Maurice Chevalier), the elderly suitor who married Fanny to save her from disgrace, is dying. On the verge of shuffling off his mortal coil, Panisse gives Fanny and Marius his blessings, hoping that they'll marry at long last. Charles Boyer co-stars as Cesar, the philosophical gent portrayed in the 1930s film versions of the Pagnol trilogy by the great Raimu. Fanny goes its merry way without any of the songs in the original Broadway score, despite the proven musical talents of Caron and Chevalier. Producer/director Joshua Logan saved himself plenty of embarrassment when he agreed not to release this film as Joshua Logan's Fanny.

Escape from Crime is a pared-down (51 minute) remake of 1933's Picture Snatcher, with Richard Travis in the old James Cagney role. Recently paroled from jail, Red O'Hara (Travis) manages to wangle a photographer's job at the tabloid newspaper managed by hard-drinking Cornell (Frank Wilcox). Flamboyantly "grabbing" photos where no one else can, Red is able to support his wife Molly (Julie Bishop) and child, but the stigma of his prison sentence still hangs over him. Only by rounding up his former gang is Red able to square himself with police lieutenant "Biff" Malone. Though billed third, Jackie "C" Gleason has a very minor role as an overfed convict.

Although The Stooge had been filmed right after Martin and Lewis' Sailor Beware, the film was temporarily shelved so that the team could continue their winning streak of military comedies with Jumping Jacks. This time, Dean Martin plays Chick Allen, a paratrooper-in-training whose commanding officer intends to do away with all camp variety shows. In desperation, Chick sends for his old nightclub partner Hap Smith (Jerry Lewis) to change the CO's mind. In order to gain entry to the military base, Hap is forced to pose as a GI, and thus the plot proper gets under way. Most of the "awkward squad" gags are straight out of Abbott and Costello, with Lewis messing up at each and every turn while Martin lags behind for damage control. The film concludes with a routine from Abbot and Costello's Keep 'Em Flying, wherein Martin and Lewis bail out from a plane in flight, with one parachute between them. Robert Strauss repeats his Sailor Beware duties as Lewis' irascible topkick, while nominal leading lady Mona Freeman does practically nothing magnificently. Dean's songs include the deathless "Do the Parachute Jump".

Union Station is a tense crime thriller in the tradition of The Naked City that unfolds in Los Angeles. William Holden plays railroad worker Lt. William Calhoun. Calhoun goes into action when Lorna Murchison (Allene Roberts), the sightless daughter of millionaire Henry Murchison (Herbert Heyes), is kidnapped by ruthless Joe Beacon (Lyle Bettger). The abduction is witnessed by Joyce Willecombe (Nancy Olson), Murchison's secretary. Using the handful of clues provided by Joyce, Calhoun and his associate, Inspector Donnelly (Barry Fitzgerald) do their best to second-guess the kidnapper. The film's most harrowing scene finds Beacon abandoning the blind and helpless Lorna in a deserted car barn in the deepest recesses of the titular station. Jan Sterling co-stars as Marge, Beacon's conscience-stricken moll. Former cinematographer Rudolph Mate does a nice, neat job as director, seamlessly matching location shots with studio mockups.