Frank R. Strayer
Driving safety film sponsored as a public service by oil companies. Of five drivers who leave home in the morning, only four return, and we wait to learn who the victim is. The film gives considerable discussion to careless driving habits and depicts Angelenos from different walks of life as well as their homes, neighborhoods, streets, and freeways.
Reverend John Burnside, American missionary in the Far East, prepares to return home after twenty years to take up the fight against Communism. The Reds imprison him and send in his place a spy who is his double, but who is instructed to come out for Communism. The spy is accepted in Burnside's home town, and he reports to local Communist headquarters, where James John, prominent local businessman but in reality a Red agent, has instructions to assist him in all details of his mission. He does a series of personal appearances and radio interviews and talk shows, using an anti-Communist approach.
Nelson Leigh assumes the role of Jesus Christ in this drama that depicts such historical events as the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper while portraying the period in which Christ roamed the countryside preaching the gospel.
Just as church services are letting out, a shabbily-dressed stranger is run over by an automobile in front of the church. The stranger is helped mentally and physically by the minister and congregation members, who help him regain his self-confidence and also to accept the death of his wife as she was about to embark from Europe, as a displaced person, to join him in America.
Set at a major newspaper, this crime drama centers on a fellow who returns to newspaper reporting after he bombs as a playwright. Believing his grown son is in danger of marrying a gold digger, the paper's publisher assigns his new reporter to expose her.
A loose remake of the 1935 comedy of the same name. Thanks to the efforts of his social-climbing wife Jessie, furniture store employee Wilbur Todd is tossed headfirst into the world of small-town politics. Sized up as a patsy by crooked politician Kirkwood, poor Wilbur is plied with champagne as part of Kirkwood's scheme to land a sweetheart playground-equipment contract.
Determined to become a radio singer, a young girl runs away from her family. She hooks up with a man who is actually the real voice of a famous radio crooner, who actually can't sing at all.
When the profits of their various film series began slumping in the mid-1940s, Columbia Pictures tried to broaden the appeal of these films by disguing the fact that they were indeed series entries. Thus it was that Columbia's 13th "Blondie" picture was shipped out as It's a Great Life. The comic confusion begins when Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake), intending to buy a house, buys a horse instead. Before the film's 75 minutes have run their course, Dagwood gets mixed up in a fox hunt. But Blondie (Penny Singleton) saves the day as usual, with the help of eccentric millionaire Timothy Brewster (Hugh Herbert). After It's a Great Life and #14 "Footlight Glamour", Columbia restored the name "Blondie" to the titles of all subesequent installments in this long-running comedy series.
Mr. Dithers is trying to encourage a businessman to build a war-time manufacturing plant on land he owns while Dagwood tries to prevent the businessman from learning his daughter is involved in a local theatre production.
Cookie is born, producing unmitigated joy in the Bumstead household. Adding to the chaos a new baby always creates is the appearance of Hans Conried as a cynical author who becomes caught up in the Bumstead lifestyle.
Jonathan Peckinpaw feels he's failed in his patriotic duty when he's rejected by the army, but he sees a chance to redeem himself by exposing a secret ring of Nazi spies.
Blondie organizes Housewives of America to perform home-front wartime duties, including guarding the local dam... Blondie for Victory was twelfth in Columbia's series of comedy films based on Chic Young's popular comic strip Blondie. Anxious to do her bit for the war effort, Blondie (Penny Singleton) joins the Housewives of America, a home defense league. Husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) soon finds that Blondie is neglecting her responsibilities at home in favor of her war work; also disgruntled are Dagwood's chauvinistic boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) and a newlywed husband (Stu Erwin) whose wife is never home thanks to the defense league.
Number 10 in the Blondie series, Blondie Goes to College is predicated on the notion that Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) must receive a college diploma or lose his job with the Dithers Construction Company. Not wishing to be separated from her husband, Blondie (Penny Singleton) enrolls in college as well. But Leighton College rules stipulate "No Married Couples", forcing Blondie and Dagwood to pretend that they're not married. This causes quite a dilemma when coed Laura Wadsworth (Janet Blair) begins flirting with Dagwood and Rusty Bryant (Larry Parks) does same with Blondie. And Blondie's discovery of a very pleasant secret threatens to expose her and Dagwood's marital status too. The student body at this particular seat of learning is comprised of quite a few familiar faces, including Lloyd Bridges, Sid Melton, and Adele Mara.
The 8th film in the Blondie series - Blondie Goes Latin. Mr. Dithers invites the Bumstead's on a South American cruise. Somehow Dagwood winds up as the female drummer in the ship's band, while Penny Singleton gets to show off her Broadway background in some lively musical numbers.
Dagwood brings home a pedigreed Great Dane which an important company client wants and which Blondie enters in the big dog show. A highlight of this film is the canine burping display.
A young woman arrives in the western town of Headstone and helps the locals outsmart a gang of outlaws.
Things get under way when Blondie Bumstead demands that her husband request a raise from his boss Mr. Dithers, so that she can afford to hire a maid. But Dithers has no time for any salary disputes: his construction firm is currently stuck with an unsaleable old mansion that is rumored to be haunted. To disprove this theory, Dithers asks the Bumstead family to spend a night in the crumbling old house, throwing a retinue of servants into the bargain.
The Bumstead family is off to see relatives in the country when Blondie runs into Charlie and Millie, an eloping couple needing her help.
Dagwood wants to join the trout club and Blondie wants a fur coat. Jealousy reigns when Dag's old girlfriend Joan shows up, but nothing else matters when a drawing at the movie theatre provides money for the coat.
Dagwood inadvertently gets cornered in to resigning. When his wife Blondie tries to ask Dagwoods boss Mr. Dithers for his job back, he ends up hiring her instead. This doesn't sit too well with Dagwood. Blondie's sister comes to visit, and Dagwood is put in a compromising situation with another woman.
Blondie and Dagwood are in charge of operations at a mountain motel. The elderly owners of the establishment are in danger of losing their life savings. Among other things, arson threatens.
Baby Dumpling, the six-year-old son of Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead disappears from sight during his first day at school. While Dagwood frantically combs the city in search of the boy, Baby Dumpling spents a nice, safe afternoon with poor little rich girl Melinda Mason, who with her new playmate's help arises from her sickbed to walk across the room for the first time in months.
The Jones family drugstore is robbed and it looks like the culprit is a boy the family has taken a liking to.
The Jones family's uncle George enters his trotting horse in the fair grounds race. The family helps raise the entrance fee and care for the horse.
A small town drugstore owner (Jed Prouty) hopes to strike it rich by investing his savings in an oil well. Comedy.
A man convicted of murder escapes from jail and hides out in the home of a small town newspaper publisher who has befriended him. She knows who the real killer is.
A famous detective is invited to a swanky party at an elegant mansion, but before the night is over he finds himself involved with gangsters, blackmail and murde
A theatre actor makes the crossover to movies and becomes a star, but his new-found fame puts his family relationships at risk.
Bob Randall, temporarily in command of the Coast Guard vessel Niobe, expects a promotion and the captaincy of his ship. Instead, he is replaced by Lieutenant Mays, son of the area commander. Mays is afflicted with a fear of the sea, although he has served well in Coast Guard aviation. His father, however, thinks Mays can overcome his fear by taking command of the Niobe. When seal poachers kidnap Bob Randall's girlfriend Connie, Bob and Mays disagree about the proper means of rescuing her and capturing the seal poachers. When Mays's inexperience and phobia foil their attempts at rescue, Bob comes up with his own plan.
There is this old concertmaster of the Cosmopolitian Orchestra and he is about to realize his life-long ambition of appearing as a soloist with the orchestra, when an accident robs him of use of his right hand. His children, upon learning of his misfortune, immediately desert him knowing he will no longer provide them with money. So Adolph Greig sinks lower and lower and becomes a street beggar, too proud to ask for help from his friends and unable to find his son or daughter. One night, standing in front of the concert hall, he sinks to the street from hunger and fatigue. He is picked up by two men associated with the orchestra, Mancini and Rozzini, and they take him to Rozzini's and they develop a plan whereby they will set up Greig in a next-door studio where he can give violin lessons. A young violin genius named Carl Rupert shows up and, with the aid of Mancini and Rozzini, Greig starts the boy off on a brilliant career. Or, what promised to be a brilliant career until his ...
A department store clerk, wrongly accused of stealing by her lecherous boss, becomes involved in a romantic relationship with the boss's son.
After a series of murders, a man finds out that his mother was bitten by a vampire bat during her pregnancy, and he believes that he may be the vampire committing the murders.
A mother starts to get worried when she finds out that some wealthy friends have been invited to dinner with her somewhat screwball family.
While a distinguished astronomer is giving a lecture in a planetarium, a shot rings out and one of the audience members is found dead. A tough detective and a brassy female reporter lock horns as they both try to break the case.
A scientist's obsessive jealousy about his wife, a professional opera singer, endangers their marriage.
A ghostly and deadly dinner party, which at first turns out to be an elaborate staging of a new play for the benefit of a Broadway producer, becomes a true mystery when the players start to go missing.
A man falls in love with a young woman, only to discover that she's the daughter of an ex-girlfriend who jilted him almost 20 years before.
Shortly after his arrival from South America to New York, Steven Humbolt is found dead in his apartment at the Savoia Hotel. Inspector Decker Dawes investigates the case and although the cause of death is described as apoplexy, Dawes is convinced it as murder, especially after he learns that Humbolt had been married fifteen times.
Professor John Sylvestus Applegate has been dismissed from his college teaching position for objecting too loudly to the predominant part that football and other sports play in the curriculum, and soon finds himself dead broke when publishers show no interest in the dry material he brings to them. He meets a young boy, Laury and his mother, Sharon in the park and is quite taken with them. He gets a job-prospect letter, as a private tutor, and applies at once. His employer is Mr. Morley, a surly, sour, mean-tempered old man who informs John he is to act as a tutor for his grandson, who turns out to be Laury. Sharon, Morleys daughter had eloped against her father's wishes and was abandoned by her husband after Laury's birth.
A gangster's girlfriend on the run from the police, who suspect her of helping her boyfriend commit a robbery, holes up in a waterfront bar. She stows away on a fishing boat headed out to sea, and winds up falling in love with and marrying one of the fishermen, but doesn't tell him about her past. However, a year after they're married and have a child, her ex-boyfriend gets out of jail and comes looking for her.
An Austrian officer must face up to the good and evil aspects of his own personality as he becomes involved in a war.
When the chemical company owned by eccentric Professor Higginbottom files for bankruptcy, the formerly-affluent family loses its income. Levelheaded oldest daughter Lambie struggles to make ends meet but has trouble persuading her carefree, profligate siblings to cut down on their spending. Youngest brother Dick enters a motorcycle race to win $500, but crashes his bike on the speedway and is paralyzed. Shocked into reality by the tragedy, Lambie's younger sister Babs persuades ex-prizefighter Gunboat Bimms to enter the ring one last time in hopes of winning a purse that will pay for Dick's surgery.
When the villagers of Klineschloss start dying of blood loss, the town fathers suspect a resurgence of vampirism. While police inspector Karl remains skeptical, scientist Dr. von Niemann cares for the vampire's victims one by one, and suspicion falls on simple-minded Herman Gleib because of his fondness for bats. A blood-thirsty mob hounds Gleib to his death, but the vampire attacks don't stop.
Vaudevillian Joe Pitt sweeps young Sally Patter off of her feet and steals the lovestruck girl away from her small-town family to join his act. She winds up heartbroken, pregnant and broke when Joe runs off with the magician's sexy assistant. Sally bravely persists and her immense dancing and singing talent gain the notice of prominent producer, Wade Valentine. Under Valentine's tutelage, she rockets to Broadway stardom while Joe Pitt is reduced to waiting on tables. Alone, Sally proudly gives birth to a baby son. Wade proposes marriage to his beloved protege and it appears that Joe Pitt may never learn about the son he has fathered.
The film begins with a guy waking up from a bump on the head. The people around him try in vain to convince him that five years have passed and that he's a rich guy. However, none of this makes sense to the character played by Miljan AND none of it makes any sense to the audience...none. After this plot is quickly abandoned, the film begins to get better. It seems that a wife and her business partner are trying to use Miljan as a double for her estranged and missing husband.
When a mother dies of heart failure in a doctor's office, the physician--feeling somewhat guilty because he couldn't save her--takes an interest in the woman's young daughter, and makes her his ward, but his fiancé doesn't particularly like it. After he returns from a three-year engagement in Europe, the doctor discovers that his ward is now a beautiful, full-grown woman, and finds himself falling for her--even though she's engaged to his fiancé's brother.
Gangsters scheme to get rid of a crusading District Attorney by blackmailing him through his daughter.
Esther Clay, wife of District Attorney John Clay and mother of attorney Bob Clay, is having an affair with Jack Keene. Scorned by him Esther kills Jack. Bob comes to her defense and confesses to the shooting. The father prosecutes the son who receives a life imprisonment sentence. Jack Keene's butler Druggett knows the truth and blackmails Esther. Bob's girlfriend Peg Harper summons John Clay to the scene...
Ruth Earlton has come home to her ancestral mansion to claim her inheritance. Accompanied by her boyfriend, she discovers that her father died suddenly under suspicious circumstances. Now it's her turn, as her deranged and relentless uncle targets her for death with the help of his wife and son, plus a very unhappy ape.
A young couple making plans to elope are overheard by a jewel thief, who sees a chance to turn the situation to his advantage.
The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor.
Philip Wells and his wife Helen argue a lot about the attention that Philip thinks Helen and his best friend, Dave Burton, are giving each other, but they all sail off together on Philips yacht, until "Gorilla"Larsen and his motley crew show up, scuttle the yacht, and marital-strife is no longer the issue of the day.
An airliner makes a forced landing at night in the desert. The passengers and crew take refuge in a nearby deserted house. Soon some of the passengers are found murdered, and one of the passengers reveals himself to be a detective who was guarding one of the murdered passengers, who was carrying a bag of diamonds--which is now missing. The detective must find out which of the passengers is the killer.
A young man, framed and sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit, is released after serving his stretch and vows to find those responsible for framing him. Meanwhile he sets up a mission in the slums he came from, and falls in love with a girl he meets there.
Joe Cabrone vows to kill Sam after believing him to be having an affair with his wife.
Wealthy Mr. Kennedy shoots his secretary, Channing, during a parlor game, but it turns out the gun was loaded with real bullets. Luckily, criminologist Phillip Montrose is on hand to help the police. When Kennedy quickly ends up dead as well, the police think it's a tidy murder-suicide, but the family lawyer knows of a letter that voiced Kennedy's suspicions about someone who was out to get him. Soon, the cops are on the trail of a ruthless and clever killer who is one step ahead of even Montrose.
A sailor falls for a gangster's moll, leaves his wife and finds himself caught up in a life of crime.
When a boxer is murdered a newspaper reporter tries to frame the boxer's sister, a nightclub owner, for the crime.
Peter has to be married by midnight or else his inheritance goes to his uncle... Who happens to live in a "haunted house".
A musical comedy in which a young and ambitious singer impersonates a famous operatic tenor.
After many outrageous moments, a young girl marries her former acquaintance, not with her fiancee.
After being dismissed for imitating his boss's voice on radio, former Assistant District Attorney Richard Deming witnesses a store robbery and is taken captive by the criminals. Suspected of the crime, he is sought by the police, but his sweetheart, Marie, convinced of his innocence, enlists the help of two friends, a newspaper reporter and a half-witted detective. Hoping to win the girl's favor, the two go to the gangsters' hideout, encounter a violent gang war, and accidently set off a case of police tear bombs. The police, summoned by Marie, arrive just in time to save the kidnaped attorney.
Wally and Ray are cousins intent upon getting the fortune of their Scots grandad, an aviation nut. They become mixed-up with the U. S. flying corps and are wafted over the enemy lines in a runaway balloon. Through misunderstanding they are honored as heroes of the enemy forces, and sent back to the U.S. lines to spy. Here they are captured and almost shot, but everything ends happily. Only 20 minutes of this 6 reel comedy are extant.
A poor but ambitious young girl is determined to crash high society, but isn't prepared for the reception she receives.
A baby girl is left at the door of Brady, an Irish-policeman in New York City. He and his friends bid for her, and she is won by Uncle Ben Shapiro, a pawnbroker, who raises her to young womanhood, and is known as Sweet Rosie O'Grady. One day she goes to the rescue of Victor MacQuade, a young man from the high society set, who has been attacked by some east-side gang kids. The next day Victor, dressed as the family chauffeur, calls for her to go on on a ride. He goes home to change clothes while she peeks through the door at a charity costume-bazaar, and is swept inside by some late-arriving guests. She wins first prize for best costume, although she is dressed in the best she has. She flees angry and mortified. Since he has a larger house, she moves to Brady's home, one of her other foster-parents. Victor, who has fallen in love with Rosie, goes to Uncle Ben's shop and asks his permission to marry Rosie.
