Dudley Murphy
The singer here is Hoagy Carmichael on the piano singing the title song whose lyrics is by Johnny Mercer. He has a couple of beautiful white women at his side while Dorothy is a maid who's trying to keep butler Peter Ray from letting a tray with pitcher on it from falling off his head.
Soundie, in which Jacky Green impersonates Eddie Cantor, and The Five Spirits of Rhythm are porters shining shoes.
The negligent owner of a tenement slum becomes romantically involved with one of the building's residents. Future film director Sidney Lumet plays a key supporting role in this social-consciousness drama from 1939.
Standard tale of husband and wife living a party lifestyle. He works in a gambling hall and she occasionally models and sings. Because they want to start a family wife feels the need to change their situation. Situation is changed and husband gets a new job and then a promotion but is tricked into a bad business deal and wants to go back to his old life.
Young Austrian Archduke Paul "Gustl" Gustave is in an arranged engagement to Princess Matilda, but his uncle, the emperor, decides to let Gustl continue his fling with ballet dancer Lisl Gluck. Lisi is not Gusti's lover, but a decoy.
Unscrupulously ambitious, Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and through bluff and bravado he finds himself the emperor of a Caribbean island.
Two Dartmouth football players fall in love with the same girl following college graduation. Directed by Dudley Murphy, this 1932 film stars Joel McCrea, William Gargan, Marian Marsh, Walter Catlett and Robert Benchley.
A young college student gets pregnant by the man she loves, but circumstances prevent their marrying, so she marries a classmate she doesn't love. Soon, however, her lover returns, and she finds herself in a dilemma as to who to choose.
A young woman's elderly husband dies and leaves her $5 million. She travels to Paris and becomes part of the "Continental" set and is pursued by a rich playboy and a lawyer who works for her.
In this all-black cast short, legendary blues singer Bessie Smith finds her gambler lover Jimmy messin' with a pretty, younger woman; he leaves and she sings the blues, with chorus and dancers.
This is a typically benign silent comedy/drama whose only distinction is that it is set among the skyscrapers of 1928 NYC. Either the location work is real (hard to beleive they'd take chances with the lives of stars) or the matte work is extraordinry for its day. Blondy and Swede are gruff best friends who build skyscrapers. Blondy gets sweet on a girl he saves from a falling beam, Sally, but when he is injured in an accident and temporarily crippled, he rejects her. Swede tries every desperate measure to get Blondy to fight back, to try to walk, even masquerading as stealing Sally away from him. It all comes right in the end. Oscar nomination for Screenplay
Ballet Mécanique (1923-4) is a Dadaist post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy (with cinematographic input from Man Ray). It has a musical score by the American composer George Antheil. However, the film premiered in silent version on 24 September 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna presented by Frederick Kiesler. It is considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking.
The Black Death is ravaging Spain. As Camille Saint-Saëns's "Danse Macabre" plays on the soundtrack, a mix of animation and acted scenes tells the story of Youth and Love meeting one night. They dance, embrace, and kiss. As the night wears on, exuberant Death, a skeletal figure with a violin, pursues the couple. They try to elude him. Eventually, Love swoons. Youth is powerless to protect her. Is she doomed?
Influenced by California Pictorialist photography of the preceding decades, it was in its own day recognized as an avant-garde film, but nevertheless it secured successful commercial distribution.
