Herbert Evans
Sister Mary presides over a convent where a convicted murderess, who is being escorted to Death Row, is stranded by bad weather. She is slowly becoming convinced that Valerie is innocent so Sister Mary sets about to clear the girl and bring the real killer to justice.
Christabel Caine has the face of angel and the heart of a swamp rat. She'll step on anyone to get what she wants, including her own family. A master of manipulation, she covertly breaks off the engagement of her trusting cousin, Donna, to her fabulously wealthy beau, Curtis Carey. Once married to Curtis herself, Christabel continues her affair with novelist Nick Bradley, who knows she's evil, but loves her anyway.
The wedding of Ellen and David is halted by a stranger who insists that the bride is already married to someone else. Though the flabbergasted Ellen denies the charge, the interloper produces enough evidence that his accusation must be investigated. Ellen and David travel to the small coastal town where her first wedding allegedly occurred. There, they meet a number of individuals whose stories make Ellen question her own sanity.
The stooges are the "Day and Night" plumbers. Called out to a fancy mansion where a society party is going on, they cross the electrical and water systems and generally ruin the place. Despite their incompetent plumbing, they save the day by recovering a painting stolen by a pair of thieves masquerading as party guests.
The stooges apply for job as 'Yard Men' at Scotland Yard, thinking they'll become detectives, but instead wind up as gardeners. When they learn that detectives are need to guard a Scottish castle where valuables have been disappearing, they masquerades as Scotsmen to get the job. After a spooky night in the castle, the boys expose the servants as the crooks.
The body of a young actress is brought to her home town by the man who loved her. He knows that she wanted all the church bells to ring for three days after she was buried, but is told that this will cost a lot of money. The cheques that he writes to the various churches all bounce, but it is the weekend and, in desperation, he prays that a miracle will happen before the banks reopen. It does, but not in the way he hoped.
The film is about an unemployed banker, Henri Verdoux, and his sociopathic methods of attaining income. While being both loyal and competent in his work, Verdoux has been laid-off. To make money for his wife and child, he marries wealthy widows and then murders them. His crime spree eventually works against him when two particular widows break his normal routine.
Shy, destitute Peter Porter meets equally impoverished Nancy Crane at a Florida beach. Inspired by Peter's belief that a person can acquire wealth simply by creating an aura of success, the outgoing Nancy convinces Peter to join her in impersonating a confident and eccentric wealthy couple. The experiment works, and the couple secure a stunning wardrobe and a lavish room at a resort. Peter panics, however, when he gets a fantastic job offer.
After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar fiancée, alluring Linda, and her disappearance during the Japanese attack. But now Linda resurfaces...with amnesia and married to rich planter Van Leyden. Meanwhile, sinister fence Mauribus schemes to get Matt's pearls.
Sandra Carpenter is a London-based dancer who is distraught to learn that her friend has disappeared. Soon after the disappearance, she's approached by Harley Temple, a police investigator who believes her friend has been murdered by a serial killer who uses personal ads to find his victims. Temple hatches a plan to catch the killer using Sandra as bait, and Sandra agrees to help.
Maggi continues her forever-ever efforts to crash Manhattan's top society, while Jiggs still mingles with his old construction cronies at the bar of Dinty Moore on 10th Avenue.
When a teacher reads an essay written by Morgan Evans, one of the boys, moved by his rough poetry she decides to hold classes in her house and believes that Morgan is smart enough to attend Oxford.
After suffering a head injury during the Blitz, John Loder, a theatre actor comes to believe himself to be the Brighton Strangler, the murderer he was playing onstage.
Eddie York (MacMurray) is mistaken for playboy Francis Pemberton and gets into trouble.
A popular and beautiful woman is forced into a loveless marriage with an older man to save her brother from an embezzlement charge.
Susan travels with her father to England for a vacation. Invited to a society ball, Susan meets Sir John Ashwood and marries him after a whirlwind romance. However, American Susan never quite adjusts to life as a new member of the British gentry. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Ashwood is sent to the trenches and never returns. When her son goes off to fight in World War II, Susan fears the same tragic fate may befall him too.
Biff and Jeff, two American G.I.'s on furlough in Australia during The Second World War, are enjoying their time the way most soldiers on leave do. When they meet the beautiful Joyce, however, they both fall head over heels for her, and start competing for her attentions. As their R&R time begins to run out, the schemes they each come up with to win her affection and foil the other's plans to do the same become more and more outrageous.
A city girl on a bus tour of the West encounters a handsome rodeo cowboy who helps her forget her simpy city suitors.
Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
A grown-up Jane Withers is joined by a whole slew of former child stars in the lightweight Republic musical Johnny Doughboy. Withers capably essays the part of a teenaged movie star who tires of the spotlight and runs away from Hollywood. Adopting an alias, she joins "The Junior Victory Caravan", a group of youthful USO performers. She also pursues a romance with much-older playwright Henry Wilcoxon, only to be (deliberately) disillusioned by the man. Among the juvenile favorites making cameo appearances in Johnny Doughboy are Bobby Breen, Baby Sandy, Butch & Buddy, Cora Sue Collins, Robert Coogan (Jackie's brother) and ex-"Little Rascals" George "Spanky" McFarland and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.
J. P. Courtney wants to update the music on the radio program he sponsors, but his wife, Agatha Courtney, is the final authority and addicted to the classics and won't allow him to replace Professor Bistell and his symphonic orchestra. Conspiring with his daughter Sue and her friends, Marvo the Great, the Andrews Sisters, Anne Payne and bandleader Woody Herman, they devise a sabotage plot that gets rid of Professor Bistell, and a new sound is soon heard on the program.
An American joins the British Royal Air Force just before Pearl Harbor is attacked, and falls in love with a beautiful English girl.
A struggling singer, devoted to his young son, fears the child's super-spoiled, unloving but wealthy mother will gain custody of the boy.
Judge Hardy takes his family to New York City, where Andy quickly falls in love with a socialite. He finds the high society life too expensive, and eventually decides that he liked it better back home.
On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and is thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survives on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. Those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.
The boys get jobs as a butler and maid (Stan in drag) for a dinner party. When that ends in disaster, they resort to sweeping streets and accidentally capture a bank robber. The thankful bank president sends them to Oxford to get an education. Predictable results ensue.
Columbia's 12th serial of 57 total (following 1940's "Deadwood Dick" and ahead of 1941's "White Eagle") is another of director's James Horne's "classics" where he evidently figured that the same reactions that served him well in Laurel and Hardy films would work well in action serials where he has all hands, heroes and villains alike, doing some kind of over-the top "take", no matter the situation. This loose adaptation of an Edgar Wallace story finds Michael Bellamy (Kenne Duncan in his Kenneth Duncan period) inheriting Garr Castle, but his brother, Abel Bellamy (James Craven, as usual making Oil-Can Harry look smooth), has him imprisoned unjustly and moves into the castle himself. When Michael's wife, Elaine Bellamy (Dorothy Fay), fails to return after visiting Abel, her sister Valerie Howett (Iris Meredith), accompanied by their father,
An ungrateful girl and her little brother are transported in their dreams by a fairy to a wonderland, tasked with finding the mythical blue bird of happiness, meeting friends and foes along the way.
The European war was only beginning to erupt across national borders. Johnny Jones, an American crime reporter dispatched by his New York publisher to put a fresh spin on the drowsy dispatches emanating from overseas, has a nose for a good story—which promptly leads him to the crime of fascism and Nazi Germany's designs on European conquest. In attempting to learn more about a seemingly noble peace effort, Jones walks into the middle of an assassination, uncovers a spy ring and—not entirely coincidentally—falls in love.
Inventor Robert Fulton (Richard Greene) receives support from a tavern owner (Alice Faye) and a shipyard worker (Fred MacMurray) to help realize his dream of a high-powered steamboat.
A maker of illusions for magicians protects an ingenue likely to be murdered.
Producer Bob Temple, who's brought an American show to London, loves his star Diana, but she won't take him seriously as a lover. To show her, he picks up stranger Lady Arlington, whose financier husband neglects her. On a weekend at the Arlington country house, Bob is used by both Lady A. and her friend to make their husbands jealous; this works all too well, and Bob is in danger from both husbands.
A British doctor (Paul Muni) and his son's Austrian governess (Jane Bryan) have an affair and are accused of killing his wife (Flora Robson).
Indian aristocrat Rama Safti returns from medical training in the U.S. to give his life to the poor folk of Ranchipur. Lady Edwina and her drunken artist ex-lover Tom Ransome get in the way, but everyone shapes up when faced by earthquake, flooding, and plague.
The classic Shirley Temple film in which a little girl goes in search of her father who is reported missing by the military during the Second Boer War.
This classic family drama stars Shirley Temple as young orphan Susannah Sheldon, the sole survivor of a brutal Indian attack who's befriended by Canadian Mountie Angus Montague (Randolph Scott) and his girlfriend, Vicky (Margaret Lockwood). The couple takes Susannah under their wing and soon learn that having a precocious child around can come in handy; when the Indians return, the girl uses her charm to broker peace.Shirley is the orphaned survivor of an Indian attack in the Canadian West. A Mountie and his girlfriend take her in...
Spies force former jewel thief Michael Lanyard (Warren William) to steal defense secrets in Washington.
In 1915 France, Major Brand commands the 39th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. The young airmen go up in bullet-riddled "crates" and the casualty rate is appalling, but Brand can't make the "brass hats" at headquarters see reason. Insubordinate air ace Captain Courtney is another thorn in Brand's side...but finds the smile wiped from his face when he rises to command the squadron himself. Everyone keeps a stiff upper lip.
Gangsters are attempting to control the solutions (and winning) of the puzzles in a national newspapers picture puzzles contest craze.
A popular high school valedictorian and star athlete becomes a pariah when it's discovered that his father is a former bootlegger.
When spoiled young heiress Maggie Richards tries to charge some gasoline at an auto camp run by Bill Davis, he makes her work out her bill by making beds. Resolving to get even, she pretends to have forgiven him, and sends him to her father to get financing for a plan Bill has. What happens next was not part of her original revenge plan.
Two men running a carnival airplane ride are hired to fly to retrieve what they think are photos for a reporter. Actually, they are retrieving diamonds stolen from a noted gem dealer. As it turns out, their plane crashes on the very estate of the dealer. Thinking the duo are police officers, the dealer offers his home for their convalescence from the accident. Meanwhile, the diamonds have been snatched by a kleptomaniac dog and buried on the estate. When the smugglers track down the pair, they try to convince the dealer that they are officials from an institution from which the two have escaped. Before long, the carnival fellows, the crooks, the gem dealer and his family, along with a platoon of cops, are tearing up the grounds to find where the dog has buried the diamonds.
When a young woman named Barbara Clarke has an affair with adventurer Roger Coverman, it causes a scandal in the Puritanical town of Salem, Massachusetts. After a meddling girl arouses their suspicions, the town's elders accuse Barbara of being a witch. She is tried, convicted of sorcery and sentenced to death. As the townspeople prepare to burn Barbara at the stake, Roger tries desperately to save the woman he loves.
A detective must solve a case where a girl was murdered in a room--and all the doors and windows were locked from the inside.
In mid-nineteenth century England the medical establishment does not recognize the value of skilled nurses, cleanliness, nutrition and kindness. Florence Nightingale's heroic measures slowly changes all of this.
An heiress with a penchant for speeding runs afoul of a traffic cop. Romance develops between the two, but it's soon complicated when he believes she is responsible for killing someone due to reckless driving.
Echo Mountain (1936) is a color musical short where they sing their songs in a mountains setting.
In this romantic comedy, an aspiring socialite heads for a vacation in Monte Carlo where she befriends a wealthy widowed duchess and then begins blackmailing her after she steals a scandalous letter.
A philosophy professor accompanies his school's rowing team on a worldwide tour.
Mary wants to marriy a gangster because that is where the money is. Unfortunately, the life expectancy and finances of a gangster are unstable.
Walter Webb, thinking his gas station has been destroyed, describes a "super-deluxe" gas station run by chorus girls to his insurance agent.
A young boy, Pip, encounters an escaped prisoner, Magwitch, and steals food for him. After the convict is captured, Pip meets the reclusive Miss Havisham and her niece, Estella, eventually becoming friends with the girl. Wealth comes to Pip via a mysterious benefactor and he goes off to London for an education. As adults, Pip and Estella become romantic, and Pip learns the identity of his patron.
The stoic, proper Rev. Gavin Dishart, newly assigned to a church in the small Scottish village of Thrums, finds himself unexpectedly falling for one of his parishioners, the hot-blooded Gypsy girl Babbie. A village-wide scandal soon erupts over the minister's relationship with this feisty, passionate young woman, who holds a secret about the village's nobleman, Lord Milford Rintoul, and his role in an increasingly fractious labor dispute.
A magic lamp lets a young couple become kids again and exposes a mean old man who runs his orphanage like a prison.
An exiled archduke (John Barrymore) tries to renew romance with a former lover (Diana Wynyard) now wed to a psychiatrist (Frank Morgan).
A high living society playboy marries a nightclub singer, and she soon realizes that, though they're genuinely in love, the husband's endless partying completely dominates and is destroying their marriage.
In the 1860s, Mary Marlowe defies her father's wishes to marry a British lord and runs away with clerk John Carlton as he heads West to make his fortune. Mary and John endure the difficult journey and settle into a small cabin, then face the hostilities of a cattle rustling gang, as well as the tragic loss of their only son. With Mary's help, John defeats the gang, which propels him to political power that, over the years, gradually erodes the once-happy marriage.
A shipful of fugitives from justice pulls up on a Pacific Island where there are no extradition laws. The island is a magnet for the scum of the earth, as well as a few honest guys who were framed. Into this den of iniquity swims socialite Dorothy Sebastian, who jumped off a yacht after apparently murdering her lecherous host. To remain on the Island, Sebastian is told that she must pay $5,000 to head honcho Fred Kohler -- and if she hasn't got the money, it is implied, there are other methods of collection.
A small country on the verge of bankruptcy is persuaded to enter the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as a means of raising money.
Two brothers, Jack and Tom, are in love with the same woman, Molly. While the two brothers go off to war and Molly does her part in the effort, Tom believes that Rose is waiting for him, while in fact, she loves Jack and only turned to Tom on the rebound. Jack and Molly meet while he is on leave, and when he returns to battle, he doesn't know how to handle the situation with his brother.
Two small town widows bring their children to Hollywood, where their children become competing film stars. The girl is sweet, the boy is a killjoy sissy. For publicity, the rival families go to London to meet a middle European boy King. The three kids decide they need to escape their stifling lives and run away to the docks and join a gang.
Spendthrift Willie Hale again returns penniless to the family home in London. His father is none too pleased, but Willie smooth-talks him into letting him stay. At the same time he turns the charm on Dorothy Hope, whose father is big in linoleum and who, before Willie's arrival, was about to become engaged to a Russian aristocrat.
Speedy loses his job as a soda jerk, then spends the day with his girl at Coney Island. He then becomes a cab driver and delivers Babe Ruth to Yankee Stadium, where he stays to see the game. When the railroad tries to run the last horse-drawn trolley (operated by his girl's grandfather) out of business, Speedy organizes the neighborhood old-timers to thwart their scheme.
An expose of the methods used by a police-department to extract a confession from a suspect, regardless of innocence or guilt, and the effect and consequences on a family when an innocent member breaks under the interrogation methods and confesses to a crime he did not commit.
