Jack Cheatham
A holiday favourite for generations... George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.
In 1918, Elizabeth MacDonald learns that her husband, John Andrew, has been killed in the war. Elizabeth bears John's son and eventually marries her kindly boss. Unknown to her, John has survived but is horribly disfigured and remains in Europe. Years later, on the eve of World War II, Elizabeth refuses to agree to her son's request to enlist and is stunned when an eerily familiar stranger named Kessler arrives from abroad and becomes involved.
A young Navy sailor has one night to find out why a woman was killed and he ended up with a bag of money after a drinking blackout.
A former reporter comes back home after serving in the army during World War I and finds that it's much more difficult to find work than he expected. Desperate, one day he crashes a wedding attended by many of the city's rich and powerful, meets a beautiful girl named Kay who turns out to be his ticket to meeting those rich and powerful people, and he soon manages to land a job on a newspaper. He gets caught up in the "make money at all costs" game, but receives a rude awakening when the stock market crashes in 1929.
Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.
A criminal psychologist treats an artist whose blackouts coincide with a series of murders.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of PT-boat crews in the Philippines must battle the Navy brass between skirmishes with the Japanese. The title says it all about the Navy's attitude towards the PT-boats and their crews.
A forger steals and kills for a rare book from a library in order to make forgeries to sell to rich suckers.
An actor becomes a suspect in the murders of four New Yorkers injected with rattlesnake venom.
A detective investigating kidnapping case discovers the victim, who may be a zombie.
Sadistic killer-for-hire Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.
A young soldier uncovers a ring of spies when he investigates his brother's mysterious murder.
Greedy heirs wait in a mansion for a rich cat lover to die, only to learn her cats come first.
A murderous gang of counterfeiters has kidnapped the government's best engraver and is forcing him to print virtually undetectable phony money. The Secret Service's toughest agent, Jack Holt, and a female reporter go after the gang.
While on their honeymoon, a reporter and his new bride stumble upon a ring of fifth columnists.
The mysteriously ill John Braun makes a new will, leaving out his daughter Barbara, over the protests of his wife. The trouble began when the daughter wanted to marry Mr. Braun's doctor, James Rogers. Mrs. Braun asks Inspector Queen to help find the long-missing Barbara. The inspector's son, Ellery, works on the case. He goes to a home frequently visited by Dr. Rogers where the bell is answered by Nikki Porter who Ellery mistakes for Barbara and insists she return to the Braun home. Nikki does, to protect Barbara, and a short time later finds herself alone in a room outside Braun's bedroom. She finds him dead - his throat cut. No weapons are found and the door to the room where Nikki had been is locked, and she is suspected. Ellery hides Nikki in his apartment. Braun's body, sent for an autopsy, disappears and in its place is a life-sized statue of the dead man.
12 Chapter Serial •1. Enemies Within •2. The Blast of Doom •3. Human Dynamite •4. Blazing Danger •5. Trapped By Traitors •6. Traitors' Treachery •7. Flaming Death •8. Hurled Through Space •9. The Plunge of Peril •10.The Toll of Treason •11.Descending Doom •12.The Power of Patriotism
Newspaper reporter John McGuire plunges into a nightmare of guilt, fearing that his "evidence" has sentenced the wrong man to death.
Street kids get sent to the country, where they get mixed up in murder and a haunted house.
In the middle of a pictorial lecture on his recent expedition to the Mongolian Desert, Dr. John Benton,the famous explorer, drinks from the water bottle on his lecture table, collapses and dies. His last words "Eternal Fire" are the only clue Chinese detective Jimmy Wong and Captain Street of the police department have to work on.
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,
A physician on death row for a mercy killing is allowed to experiment on a serum using a criminals' blood, but secretly tests it on himself. He gets a pardon, but finds out he's become a Jekyll-&-Hyde.
A retired lawman gets back into action to fight political corruption.
The life of a young kid, who starts stealing small things to fit in with the "cool crowd".
Three electrical linemen work through the hazardous conditions of the Depression Era. Sparks fly, and things become truly dangerous, when Ann (Sally Blane) comes between this band of brothers. Things get worse, after they move in together, following the death of her father, their supervisor, "Pop" Foster (Robert Homans), from an industrial accident.
Lively June (Jane Withers), teen-aged daughter of mystery writer Waldo Everett (Jon Qualen), who calls her "Angel," becomes involved in intrigue centering on movie star Pauline Kaye (Sally Blane) and her companion Stivers (Joan Davis). Reporter Nick Moore (Robert Kent), once sweet on Pauline, is convinced that her sudden disappearance is a publicity stunt, which is true -- until gangster Bat Regan (Harold Huber) decides to get involved.
Based partially on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie Taylor is an ex-convict who cannot get a break after being released from prison. When he is framed for murder, Taylor is forced to flee with his wife Joan Graham and baby. While escaping prison after being sentenced to death, Taylor becomes a real murderer, condemning himself and Joan to a life of crime and death on the road.
A society girl is suspected of murdering an artist whose brother is a notorious racketeer. In her pursuit of an alibi, she inadvertently implicates a struggling advertisement photographer. Now they must keep up the appearance of being engaged as a bumbling detective snoops around, and their initial distaste for each other blossoms into romance.
A beautiful woman suspected of being a jewel thief is actually a detective tracking down a ring of bond thieves.
When Mountain City racketeer Charles Gillette is acquitted, he arrives at the Mountain City World newsroom and vows revenge on the Better Government Committee who put him behind bars. Members of the committee include Colonel Bogardus, owner of the World , Horace Mitchell, a candidate for mayor, and Mr. Franklin, a department store owner. First Gillette buys a rival newspaper, the Sentinel , and offers a pricey editorship to World newsman Ralph Houston, who refuses the offer on principle. That evening, Ralph and his partner, Tod Swain, are greeted at home by a creditor, and Vina Swain, Ralph's fiancée, is furious to find out he turned down Gillette's offer. When she learns Ralph went into debt to put her through college, she warns Gillette of a police raid and pays back Ralph's debt with Gillette's renumeration. When Ralph orders Vina not to work for Gillette, she breaks their engagement.
Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town, leading a small town kind of life. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow moves to the big city where he becomes an instant target for everyone. Deeds outwits them all until Babe Bennett comes along. When small-town boy meets big-city girl anything can, and does, happen.
A young lawyer is determined to identify the killer who is murdering members of a wealthy New York publishing family. Director Erroll Taggert's 1936 mystery stars Bruce Cabot, Magaret Lindsay, George Zucco, Joseph Calleia, Charley Grapewin, Stanley Ridges, Vivienne Osborne, Edward Pawley, Theodore von Eltz, George Lynn, Eadie Adams, Raymond Hatton, Jonathan Hale and, in the small role of a newspaper reporter, Dorothy Kilgallen.
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
In this musical, a songwriter goes to court to claim the rights to his song that was stolen by an unscrupulous music publisher. He brings his girlfriend with him. Also going to court are the Jubilee singers, hillbillies, and some cowboys and Indians who demonstrate that the composer wrote his song by rearranging four folk tunes. He wins his song back and $50,000 in damages. Songs include: "Heading Home," "Roll Along Prairie Moon," "Tender Is the Night," "You're My Thrill," "I'm Bound for Heaven," and "The Army Band."
Captain John Kent is a pilot in charge of the border patrol. Two crooks who head up a smuggling operation, Morley and his associate Faber, are trying to outwit Kent. The smugglers hope that they can influence Kent's younger brother Doug to help them, and they employ an attractive singer in an attempt to win Doug over.
An inventor develops a new type of aircraft. A crooked businessman attempts to buy it but the inventor refuses to sell it to him, whereupon the rejected businessman and his henchmen steals the plane and its blueprints. The plane's test pilot, who is the boyfriend of the inventor's daughter, and his sidekick set out to get the plane, and the plans, back.
An auto engineer (Herbert Marshall) and a professor's daughter (Jean Arthur) pose as married servants in a mobster's (Leo Carrillo) mansion.
Well respected local good guy, "Feet" Samuels finds himself heavily in debt due to an uncharacteristic gambling binge. Feet decides the only way to settle the bill is by selling his body to an ambitious doctor who agrees to allow him one last month to live life to the fullest, then kill himself.
A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
Big Boy Williams is a gangster who is smitten with the two girls in the next apartment. With the help of his violinist friend Grady Sutton he gets acquainted with the girls by posing as a musician.
A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's. Under pressure to allow cheating, Mike "walks out," leaving tough-minded daughter Lady Lee to earn a living the only way she knows. She soon becomes a success gambling among the rich, but, falling out with the syndicate, she considers the marriage proposal of blueblood Garry Madison. Can such a match work despite snobbery and old associations?
A young woman trying to obtain proof that a gangster committed a murder is befriended by a playboy who drinks just a bit too much.
A sailor falls for a gangster's moll, leaves his wife and finds himself caught up in a life of crime.
A young couple finds themselves mixed up with mobsters planning to rob a warehouse.
Elmer, rich society loafer, falls for Mary, but she'll have nothing to do with him until (mistakenly thinking that he's hiring a new chauffeur) he accidentally volunteers for the army. Luckily, Mary's signed up to entertain the troops. Unluckily, Elmer's sergeant likes Mary, too. And worst of all, they're all about to ship out for France.
