Laugh And Get Rich (1931)

This Depression-era comedy takes place in the boarding house run by the indomitable Sarah Austin (Edna May Oliver). Sarah's indigent husband Joe (Hugh Herbert), spends most of his time cooking up pie-in-the-sky get-rich-quick schemes, few of which come to fruition. In time-honored "domestic comedy" tradition, one of Joe's wacky inventions is purchased by a major manufacturer, saving the household from bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Sarah and Joe's daughter Alice (Dorothy Lee) experiences an endless series of romantic travails. Director Gregory LaCava reportedly allowed the actors to improvise much of their dialogue during rehearsals; even so, the fine comedic hand of veteran scenarist Ralph Spence is evident throughout the film.

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Attraction (2000)

Writer/director Russell DeGrazier makes his feature debut with this dark tale of four twentysomethings and the destructive relationships between them. Originally titled Stalk, the film concerns the decidedly ungentlemanly behavior of Matthew (The In Crowd's Matthew Settle), part-time alternative-newsweekly columnist, part-time rude-boy radio talk-show host, and full-time torch-carrier for ex-girlfriend Liz (Gretchen Mol). In keeping with her "been there, done that" stance on their relationship, Liz objects to Matthew's obsessive displays of affection (parking his car outside her apartment for hours on end, attempting to break down her door). Luckily, two forces intervene: her friend Corey (Samantha Mathis) and her current boyfriend, Matthew's editor Garrett (Tom Everett Scott). In a chance meeting at a local watering hole, Corey befriends the tortured Matthew, and the two begin an intensely carnal relationship that not only distracts him from stalking Liz but also -- as an added bonus -- makes Liz jealous. Unfortunately, Garrett is still worried that Liz's loose-cannon ex might still be hung up on her, so he begins his own cat-and-mouse game with Matthew. Attraction premiered at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival.

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It Started In Naples (1960)

With top stars Clark Gable as the American Michael Hamilton and Sophia Loren as the very Italian Lucia Curcio, this comedy by director Michael Shavelson already has a lot going for it. Michael is a lawyer who arrives in Naples to wrap up the estate of his dead brother, killed in an automobile accident. At issue is not so much his material possessions as the ten-year-old son Nando (Marietto) that he left behind. Nando's mother also died in the accident and her unmarried sister Lucia has claimed him as her own. As Michael and Lucia clash over legal custody of the young orphan, romantic sparks start to fly from all that friction, making the situation of Nando's custody just a little more complicated.

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Island In The Sun (1957)

Political intrigue and romantic gamesmanship send an already torrid Caribbean community to the boiling point in this drama. Maxwell Fleury (James Mason) and David Boyeur (Harry Belafonte) are two men running for political office in a British-controlled island in the West Indies. Maxwell is the son of a wealthy and socially prominent white family, while David is a black labor leader with a groundswell of popular support but little money. A scandal erupts in the press alleging that Maxwell is of mixed racial ancestry, but Maxwell is actually pleased about the news, thinking that it may endear him to black voters. Maxwell is not pleased, however, when he hears that his wife Sylvia (Patricia Owens) has been having an affair with the urbane but rootless Carson (Michael Rennie), taking the matter seriously enough to murder Carson himself. Maxwell's younger sister Jocelyn (Joan Collins) is also in hot water, romantically speaking; she has set her sights on Eun Templeton (Stephen Boyd), the son of the Island's governor, and she hopes to snare him into marriage by allowing him to get her pregnant. Elsewhere on the island, David is secretly having an affair with a white woman, Mavis Norman (Joan Fontaine), while David's former girlfriend, Margot Seaton (Dorothy Dandridge), has become involved with a white man, Denis Archer (John Justin). Based on the novel by Alex Waugh, Island in the Sun also features songs from Harry Belafonte, including "Lead Man Holler" and the title tune.

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Hot Lead (1951)

Tim Holt comes to the aid of a young telegrapher wrongly accused of murder in this average western from RKO. The telegrapher, Dave Collins Ross Elliott, is released on parole and on his way west when hi-jacked by the same gang that caused his imprisonment in the first place. Gang leader Turk Thorne (John Dehner) needs Dave's help in an upcoming train heist but before he can "persuade" the youngster to go along with the scheme, Dave is rescued by cowpokes Tim Holt and Chito Rafferty (Richard Martin). But Thorne does not give up that easily and soon Dave is accused of killing the local telegrapher (Paul E. Burns), a crime actually committed by Thorne himself. Tim believes in Dave's innocence, however, and agrees to help him by setting a trap for Thorne and his henchmen.

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Home On The Prairie (1939)

Home on the Prairie finds Texas ranger Gene Autry trying to halt an anthrax epidemic. The villains are cattlemen Walter Miller and Gordon Hart, who've been knowingly transporting diseased cattle across the US-Mexico border. The bad guys try to pin the blame on female rancher June Storey, but Gene doesn't buy this subterfuge. Despite the unpleasantness of its storyline, Home on the Prairie is likeable entertainment, especially when Autry dismounts long enough to sing of couple of songs. Joining in on the tunefests are Gene's sidekick Smiley Burnette and a radio aggregation called the Rodeoliers.

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Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969)

Tara Nicole (Holly Near) is an 18-year-old girl from a wealthy family. She rebels against her parents by taking up with a rock band lead by Bogart (Jordan Christopher). Singer Lou Rawls and Roddy McDowell make up part of the band, whose members end up seducing the young teen and her mother Astrid (Jennifer Jones). Tara's mom makes her first and last jump from an airplane with a faulty parachute and her father (Charles Aidman) is found hanging from the diving board poolside. The band manages to wreck Tara's life in this implausible feature. Holly Near would go on to become a feminist folk singer and begin a series of college tours in the 1970s, promoting peace.

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The Girl He Left Behind (1956)

The peacetime draft is given the teen-idol treatment in The Girl He Left Behind. Hollywood hunk Tab Hunter is starred as a spoiled young man who is whipped into shape--and humility--by his two years of compulsory military service. Natalie Wood plays the girl who...well, look at the title. Director David Butler would have preferred to cast a minor actor who was making his film debut in the leading role, but Butler was committed to Warners contractee Tab Hunter. Thus it was that young James Garner would have to wait his turn.

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The Devil And Miss Jones (1941)

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 activists without detection. Once he himself is subjected to the humiliating treatment afforded his employees, Merrick starts to wise up -- and soften up. As things develop, it is Merrick himself who spearheads the union movement after discovering how duplicitous his hand-picked executives can be. The film also introduces Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings as fellow employees who fall in love before fadeout time. Keeping with the film's insistence upon equal treatment for everyone, Merrick himself is permitted a romance in the person of Elizabeth Ellis (Spring Byington). The Devil and Miss Jones was written by Norman Krasna and directed by Sam Wood.

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The Clay Pigeon (1949)

Richard O. Fleischer made his feature-film directorial debut with the well-crafted melodrama Clay Pigeon. Inspired by a true story, the film stars Bill Williams as Jim Fletcher, whose wartime experiences in a Japanese POW camp have left him with profound emotional problems. Awakening from a coma in a naval hospital, Jim is astonished to learn that he's been accused of murder. Not quite certain of his own guilt or innocence, he escapes from the hospital in search of his best friend, another ex-POW named Ted Niles (Richard Quine). En route, he is forced to kidnap Martha Gregory (Barbara Hale, Williams' real-life wife), the widow of the murdered man. Martha despises Jim at first, but is won over to his side when it becomes obvious that someone has set Jim up as a fall guy. Clay Pigeon was the first RKO film produced under the new Howard Hughes regime.

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Always Leave Them Laughing (1949)

Milton Berle was enjoying the first flush of his television success when his musical-comedy movie vehicle Always Leave Them Laughing hit the screens. Though his character name is Kip Cooper, Uncle Miltie more or less plays himself: an ambitious comedian who rises to fame by stealing other performers' material. Surprisingly, Berle seems to delight in painting himself in as unsympathetic a light as possible, though the audience can be assured that he will find redemption before fadeout time. In contrast, Bert Lahr turns in a warm-hearted performance as an ageing burlesque comic who teaches Berle the ropes--whereupon our "hero" repays the favor by wooing Lahr's avaricious young bride Virginia Mayo. Ultimately, it is nice girl Ruth Roman who wins Berle's heart, though she certainly has her work cut out for her. Featured in the cast are such veteran troupers as Grace Hayes(the mother of Peter Lynd Hayes), Julius Tannen and Wally Vernon. But it's Berle's show all the way, and he makes a feast of it.

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A Very Honorable Guy (1934)

A Very Honorable Guy is an interesting if not terribly funny change of pace for comedy star Joe E. Brown. This Damon Runyon adaptation casts Brown as Feet Samuels, a compulsive gambler known for his determination to keep his word at all costs. To pay off his mounting debts, Feet sells his body to science, well in advance of his demise. The fun begins when genially crazy scientist Dr. Snitzer (Robert H. Barrat) demands to "collect" our hero's body immediately, observing that there was nothing in their agreement that said Feet had to be dead before "paying off." Alice White, a silent-screen favorite whose career had been in abeyance for quite some time, is the nominal heroine. Even Joe E. Brown felt that A Very Honorable Guy was one of his lesser works, informing the press that he hoped to be out of the country before it was released!

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A Southen Yankee (1942)

Hot on the heels of Columbia's The Fuller Brush Man, MGM released another Red Skelton gagfest, A Southern Yankee. Set during the Civil War, the film casts Skelton as bumbling bellboy Aubrey Filmore. Yearning to help the Northern cause by becoming an undercover spy, Aubrey succeeds beyond his wildest dreams when circumstances force him to pose as notorious Southern secret agent Major Drumman (George Coulouris), aka "The Grey Spider". Infiltrating rebel territory, our hero does his best (which is none too good) to intercept the Grey Spider's messages and smuggle them to the North. Along the way, he falls in love with pert Southern belle Sallyann Weatherby (Arlene Dahl). Many of the side-splitting gag routines were devised by Buster Keaton, notably the now-famous scene in which Aubrey gingerly walks across the battlefield between Northern and Southern lines carrying a two-sided flag -- the Northern Stars and Stripes on one side, the Southern Stars and Bars on the other -- a strategy that works until the wind suddenly changes! Though Edward Sedgwick is credited with the direction, Red Skelton later revealed that A Southern Yankee was actually directed by S. Sylvan Simon.

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A Lady's Morals (1930)

Metropolitan Opera diva Grace Moore made her film debut in MGM's A Lady's Morals. The film purports to be the biography of "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, who was ballyhooed to stardom by 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum (Wallace Beery, who'd re-create the role in 1934's The Mighty Barnum). Most of the story, however, is given over to the fabricated romance between Lind (Moore) and young composer Paul Brandt (Reginald Denny), who gives her up when stricken with blindness. As if this wasn't trouble enough, Lind loses her voice at the height of her career; she regains her golden throat, but Paul is lost to her forever. Grace Moore sings seven songs during the film's amazingly brief (75-minute) running time, two of them operatic classics. The anemic box-office showing of A Lady's Morals and her follow-up vehicles briefly squelched Grace Moore's hopes for film stardom, but a few years later she enjoyed enormous success in a series of Columbia musicals.

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A Date With The Falcon (1942)

This second entry in RKO Radio's "Falcon" series begins with Gay Lawrence (George Sanders), aka the Falcon, promising to give up his private-eye activities for the sake of fiancee Helen Reed (Wendy Barrie). This resolves lasts for about eight minutes, whereupon Lawrence tackles the case of a missing scientist named Waldo Sampson (Alec Craig), the inventor of a synthetic-diamond process. Kidnapped by Sampson's abductors, Lawrence manages to escape, only to be kidnapped again and later accused of murder. The resolution of the plot hinges on the old mistaken-identity device (one of the principal characters has an identical twin, and that's all that can be said without giving the game away). Carryovers from the first "Falcon" film include Allen Jenkins as Lawrence's dimwitted sidekick Goldie and character actor Hans Conried, here cast as a snotty hotel night clerk. A Date with the Falcon was unofficially remade as The Falcon's Adventure, the final entry in the RKO series.

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We're In The Money (1935)

Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, the female Laurel and Hardy of Warner Bros., share top billing in We're in the Money. This time Blondell and Farrell are cast respectively as Ginger and Dixie, intrepid process-servers for goofy lawyer Homer Bronson (Hugh Herbert). Things go from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous when the girls are ordered to serve a summons to Ginger's wealthy boyfriend C. Richard Courtney (Ross Alexander), who's entangled in a breach-of-promise suit. Our heroines are also called upon to deliver their missives to a nightclub singer (Phil Regan), a brawny wrestler (Man Mountain Dean) and a surly gangster (Lionel Stander), with predictable but hilarious results. With so many expert farceurs in the cast, poor Ross Alexander virtually ends up as dramatic relief!

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Torch Song (1953)

Joan Crawford's first Technicolor feature has come to be known as a textbook example of "high camp." Crawford stars as musical comedy luminary Jenny Stewart, who has been hardened by the worst life has to offer. Romance enters her life in the form of her new piano accompanist, blinded war-veteran Tye Graham (Michael Wilding). The fact that Graham refuses to kowtow to the temperamental Jenny's demands, coupled with the adversarial behavior of Graham's seeing-eye dog, makes the pianist all the more attractive to the lonely songstress. Torch Song is a favorite of bad-movie buffs and female impersonators the world over: Highlights include Crawford's blackface musical number, and the now-classic scene in which she simulates blindness to better understand the taciturn Graham. Director Charles Walters, a former choreographer, appears as Crawford's two-left-feet dancing partner in the opening scenes.

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Top Speed (1930)

In this musical comedy, a bored office clerk finds much-needed excitement by masquerading as a millionaire. To do so, he borrows the speedboat of his girl friend's father. Slapstick mayhem ensues on the water until the lad ends up winning the big race. Songs include: "Goodness Gracious," "I'll Know and She'll Know," "Keep Your Undershirt On," "What Would I Care," "Sweeter Than You" (Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby), "As Long as I Have You and You Have Me" (Al Dubin, Joe Burke), and "Reaching For the Moon" (Irving Berlin).

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Tiger Shark (1932)

It is difficult to determine who is the more ferocious character in this film: The real shark seen in the underwater sequences, or star Edward G. Robinson. Robinson plays a Portuguese tuna boat skipper--the self-styled "best dam' fisherman in the Pacific"--who years earlier had lost his hand to a shark while rescuing best friend Richard Arlen. Robinson promises to look after the daughter (Zita Johann) of a recently deceased crew member. He proposes marriage; she accepts, more out of gratitude than love. The girl eventually falls for Robinson's pal Arlen, who wants to break off the relationship before Robinson gets hurt. But Robinson catches the lovers together, and vows to kill Arlen. In attempting to throw his ex-friend to the sharks, Robinson is accidentally pulled overboard to his own death. Warner Bros. would unofficially remake Tiger Shark several times over the next ten years; while the professions of the two leading male characters would change, the basic "triangle" plot remained the same.

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Those Endearing Young Charms (1945)

Robert Young stars as a WW2 pilot named Hank, who accompanies his pal Jerry (Bill Williams, in his film debut) on a furlough. Jerry introduces his girlfriend Helen (Laraine Day) to Hank, a notorious and unrepentent womanizer. In a twinkling, Hank tries to steal Helen away from Jerry-but succeeds only after proving that he's a nice guy after all. Ann Harding, one of RKO Radio's leading star of the early 1930s, returns to her old studio to play Helen's all-knowing mother. Those Endearing Young Charms is based on a Broadway play by Edward Chodorov, originally purchased for the screen by independent producer Sam Goldwyn.

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The Wrong Man (1956)

Director Alfred Hitchcock lets us know from the outset that The Wrong Man is a painfully true story and not one of his customary fabricated suspense yarns, through the simple expedient of walking before the camera and telling us as much (this introductory appearance replaced his planned cameo role as a nightclub patron). The real-life protagonist, musican Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, is played by Henry Fonda. Happily married and gainfully employed at the Stork Club, Balestrero's life takes a disastrous turn when he goes to an insurance office, hoping to borrow on his wife's (Vera Miles) life insurance policy in order to pay her dental bills. One of the girls in the office spots Balestrero, identifying him as the man who robbed the office a day or so earlier. This, and a few scattered bits of circumstantial evidence, lead to Balestrero's arrest. Though he's absolutely innocent, he can offer no proof of his whereabouts the day of the crime. Lawyer Frank O'Connor (Anthony Quayle) does his best to help his client, but he's up against an indifferent judicial system that isn't set up to benefit the "little man". Meanwhile, Balestrero's wife becomes emotionally unhinged, leading to a complete nervous breakdown. As Balestrero prays in his cell, his image is juxtaposed onto the face of the actual criminal-who looks nothing like the accused man! Utilizing one of his favorite themes-the helplessness of the innocent individual when confronted by the faceless bureaucracy of the Law-Hitchcock weaves a nightmarish tale, all the more frightening because it really happened (the film's best moment: Fonda looking around the nearly empty courtroom during his arraignment, realizing that the rest of the world cares precisely nothing about his inner torment). Hitch enhances the film's versimilitude by shooting in the actual locations where the real story occured. His only concession to Hollywood formula was the half-hearted coda, assuring us that Mrs. Balestrero eventually recovered from her mental collapse (she sure doesn't look any too healthy the last time we see her!) Watch for uncredited appearances by Harry Dean Stanton, Bonnie Franklin, Tuesday Weld and Charles Aidman.

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The Woman From Monte Carlo (1932)

In this WW II drama, the commander of the French cruiser Lafayette is sunk by a German U-boat. Following the rescue of the survivors, the commander undergoes an investigative hearing to determine his culpability in the sinking. He didn't know it at the time, but his philandering young wife was trysting with a handsome young officer and ended up stuck on the cruise. The woman survived the incident. To save her husband's career, she tearfully admits her adultery in court.

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Donovan's Reef (1963)

John Ford's last film to deal with World War II, Donovan's Reef is an alternately comical and sentimental look back on the fighting Navy men from that war, and how and where -- in Ford's eyes, and Frank Nugent and James Edward Grant's script -- they should have ended up. Michael "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne), Thomas "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin), and Dr. William Dedham (Jack Warden), a trio of navy veterans who fought on the Pacific island of Haleakalowa during the war, now live on the island. Donovan and Gilhooley, biding time and enjoying themselves, engage in rough-house hijinks among themselves, and are both part of the doctor's extended family, enjoying the good will of the islanders for whom they fought during the war. While Dedham is away on a call to a neighboring island, his grown daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth Allen), from his first marriage, whom he has never seen, announces that she is arriving from Boston to determine Dedham's fitness of character to inherit the majority shares in the family shipping business. Donovan contrives to present Dedham's three Polynesian children, whom the doctor had with the island's hereditary princess, as his own, and also squires Amelia around the island in her father's absence. In the process, the cold Bostonian woman discovers a whole world -- of passion, joy, heroism, and a life among men and women whose lives have been about something other than making money -- that she's never known. She also understands all of the good that her father has accomplished away from Boston, even though it entailed abandoning her. Sparks and even a few fists fly between Donovan and Amelia (and between Donovan and several other characters), in the usual Ford rough-house manner, before their eventual reconciliation and a romantic clinch at the end, in this sweet, sentimental comedy-drama.

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The Tattooed Stranger (1950)

A man walking his dog in New York's Central Park finds a young woman dead in a car, killed with a shotgun. Veteran Lt. Corrigan (Walter Kinsella) is assigned the case along with Detective Tobin (John Miles), a "college boy" in Corrigan's eyes, newly promoted out of the crime lab. The police can't even figure out who the woman was; her fingerprints aren't on file anywhere, she fits no missing persons description, and the only identifying mark of any significance is a small anchor-and-globe tattoo -- and it is obliterated by an alcoholic derelict who was apparently hired to enter the morgue to do the job and is killed for his trouble (but not before the coroner got a photograph of it). Corrigan and Tobin find the artist who did the tattoo, but that only raises more questions -- especially after he's bludgeoned to death. As Corrigan says, looking over the dead woman's mail, "She wasn't a girl, she was a roll call" -- the victim was a waitress and a professional grifter, specializing in marrying merchant sailors, marines, and anyone else in high-risk jobs during the war, and collecting their allotment checks and their insurance when they died. It seems like someone wanted her dead, but every man she was married to is either dead or accounted for at sea. Working closely with a botanist (Patricia White), Tobin spends his time tracking down one clue, a single blade of a species of grass found in some rare patches in the Bronx; that clue, coupled with unusual properties in the grains of sand found near the murder scene, lead the detective to within a few feet of the killer, who is equally dogged about covering his trail and killing anyone who gets in his way.

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