Jean Yarbrough

Featuring the routines that made them comedy legends like “Who’s On First?,” and “The Lemon Bit,” this digitally restored and re-mastered “Best Of” collection includes six of the Abbott and Costello Show’s most beloved episodes.

Classic comedic western, Captain Oren Hayes of the Texas Rangers takes a break to visit his daughter in a neighboring town. When he arrives he find's his daughter Hannah's husband Jeff is running for Mayor against a corrupt town boss, Nard Lundy. Lundy has no intention of allowing the free election of the honest Jeff Rose, so he has his henchmen beat them up. Hayes then calls for the help of some his old buddies in the Rangers. Upon arriving in town, they realize quickly that age has caught up with them and they must rely on their sheer wits to out-smart and defeat Lundy.

6.2/10

Country singers on their way to Nashville have car trouble, forcing them to stop at an old haunted mansion. Soon they realize that the house is not only haunted, but is also the headquarters of a ring of international spies after a top secret formula for rocket fuel.

2.6/10

Bill sketches an animated person, Mr. Man, who takes us back through history to explain how people developed a need to communicate, and shows us devices that helped to do so.

5.9/10

Directed by Jean Yarbrough Ex-con Joseph Braden (Ron Hagerthy) has his car temporarily stolen by a pair of bank robbers who hide their loot in the vehicle's spare tire. After the car is repossessed, it's sold to the kindly Rev. Daniel Sheridan (Don Beddoe), who immediately sets out on a fishing trip. Not knowing that his new automobile was recently used in a heist, Father Dan gets the surprise of his life when he's suddenly stopped by a police officer.

5.1/10

McHale's Navy is an American sitcom that aired 138 half-hour episodes over four seasons, from October 11, 1962, to April 12, 1966, on the ABC network. The series was filmed in black and white and originated from an hour drama called Seven Against the Sea, broadcast on April 3, 1962. Universal commissioned the colorization of the series in the 1980s for syndication in hope of reviving its popularity.

7.4/10

Pony Express is an American western television series about the adventures of an agent in the 1860s of the Central Overland Express Company, better known as the Pony Express. The half-hour program starring Grant Sullivan was created by California National Productions. Pony Express ran for thirty-five episodes in syndication from the fall of 1959 until the May 1960.

8/10

Two detectives investigate the strangulation murder of a man whom everyone seemed to like.

6.2/10

An electric shock enables Sach to predict numbers.

6/10

In this western, a Mexican bandit and an angry rancher team up and take on a crooked saloon keeper.

6.1/10

Sach and the gang baby-sit a bratty TV star.

5.6/10

The widows and children of survivors of the H.M.S. Bounty rule Pitcairn Island, fighting off sailors and intruders.

6.2/10

Navy Log is an American drama anthology series that initially aired for one season on CBS. It relates the greatest survival war stories in the history of the United States Navy. This series premiered on September 20, 1955, but the following year, it was moved to ABC, where it aired until September 25, 1958. The program aired for a total of three seasons and 102 episodes.

8.1/10

I'm the Law is the title of a 30-minute syndicated American television police drama series which aired in 1953 starring George Raft as Lt. George Kirby, a NYPD detective involved in solving a variety of crimes in New York City. The series first aired on February 13, 1953 and ended on July 31, 1953.

6.4/10

Bud & Lou get jobs in Mr. Fields' Drugstore. Originally filmed as the first episode of the Abbott and Costello TV show, it was released on film and shown theatrically in certain markets.

7.9/10

After two volunteer firemen rescue a gold prospector from suicide, they discover discover that the police mistakenly want them for murder.

6.4/10

A young boy trades the family cow for magic beans.

6/10
4.3%

Poverty Row revue

5.1/10

The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok is an American Western television series which ran for eight seasons from 1951 through 1958. The Screen Gems series began in syndication, but ran on CBS from 1955 through 1958, and, at the same time, on ABC from 1957 through 1958.

7.8/10

Mrs. Hoyle, a retired school teacher, resides in a hotel bought by Morganti, a gangster, who evicts most of the tenants but allows Mrs. Hoyle and Angela Brown, a dance-hall girl to remain. Mrs. Hoyle's influence for good is felt quickly by Morganti and all of his henchmen with the exception of Rogan. Ther latter, despite Morganti's orders to go straight robs a market with his accomplice Slatterty. Mrs. Hoyle is arrested when the robbery money and jewels are found in her apartment.

6.3/10

Short film cobbled from the Abbott & Costello feature In Society for the home movie market.

Slip and the gang (Bowery Boys) take the rap for a robbery they did not commit.

6.2/10

In this musical, an ambitious young singer and her band leave their small hometown to head for the Big Apple in hopes of finding fame and fortune.

5.8/10

In the third movie in Monogram's "Father" series, patriarch Henry Latham buys a cow in order to bypass the town's milk tax.

5.1/10

Newlyweds Joe and Anne Palooka are delayed in their honeymoon plans by the helpful Humphrey Pennyworth and by considerably-less-helpful manager, Knobby Walsh.

6.2/10

A crooked boxing promoter tries to shake down Joe's manager by setting up a rigged fight in Humphrey Pennyworth's hometown.

6.5/10

A Treasury Department agent on the trail of an international jewel smuggling ring joins a carnival that he thinks the gang is using as a front. He finally locates the jewels hidden as the eyes of wax figures.

6.1/10

Logging-camp drama.

5.5/10

When Sach eats too much sugar, he goes into a trance whereby he's able to predict the future. Slip tries to make some money off of Sach by using him as a fortune teller in a carnival, until a mad scientist kidnaps Sach to use him in an intelligence-switching experiment with a monster.

6.3/10

While working as a hotel busboy, aspiring bandleader Carlos Estrada (Desi Arnaz) tries to persuade singer Lolita Valdez to join him in a rhumba contest in Havana.

7.1/10

Slip and the gang stray from newspaper work to detective work.

6.8/10

Henry Latham and town Mayor Colton continue their misadventures in Smalltown, America. This time, twelve-year-old David Latham is testifying at the trial of his father, Henry, who is accused of burning down the McCluskey bridge.

5.3/10

Bixby College needs to win the girls' basketball tourney prize-money in order to survive, but a pair of gamblers have brought in some Amazonian ringers to play for the opposition and Lou, in drag, is playing for the Bixby team.

Mobster Thomas Nagle and his gang take over a ship to use running guns and counterfeit money into Lisbon.

6.7/10

Lou and Bud start their new job as live-in caretakers on a college campus by trying - very trying - to get their own quarters cleaned up.

The first of Monogram's "Father" series was Henry, the Rainmaker, assembled in a fast seven days. Raymond Walburn stars as Henry Latham, an average family man who is galvanized into entering a mayoral race over the issue of garbage disposal. When incumbent mayor Colton (played by Walburn's lifelong friend Walter Catlett) solves this issue himself, Henry turns his attentions to the current water shortage. His efforts to become a rainmaker prove cataclysmic, to say the least.

7.4/10

A man listens to his wife and fakes his own death so that she can get her hands on his insurance policy.

6.4/10

Bulldog Drummond investigates the murder of a sea captain who died before revealing the location of his hidden gold.

6.7/10

Dr. Morgan (Onslow Stevens) and Dr. Cavigny (Ralph Morgan) star as a brace of scientists who return from the West Indies with a potent, phosphorescent serum that allegedly changes human beings into cats.

4.9/10

A young heiress finds evidence suggesting that at night she acts under the influence of a family curse and has begun committing ghastly murders in a nearby park.

5.3/10
1.7%

A facially disfigured and mentally unhinged man wreaks his revenge on those he blames for his condition.

4.3/10

A pair of married ex-convicts trying to go straight get jobs at a department store. A gangster who knows about their past threatens to expose it unless they agree to help him rob the department store.

5.9/10

An unsuccessful sculptor saves a madman named "The Creeper" from drowning. Seeing an opportunity for revenge, he tricks the psycho into murdering his critics.

6.2/10

Unable to complete the deal by telephone, advertising executive Roberts sends his assistant Ann to Cuba to lure a Cuban band, led by Desi Arnaz, on to an American radio program. Attracted to Ann, Arnaz and his band come to New York but complications arise when the squeaky-voiced, addle-brained sponsor of the program decides she wants to be the vocalist on the program.

6/10

An Arizona teacher (Noah Beery Jr.) saves a vaudeville star (Martha O'Driscoll) and her troupe from a bandit (Leo Carrillo).

5.9/10

In the gay '90s, cardsharps take over a Mississippi riverboat from a kindly captain. Their first act is to change the showboat into a floating gambling house. A ham actor and his bumbling sidekick try to devise a way to help the captain regain ownership of the vessel.

7.2/10

Molly (Martha O'Driscoll), her brother, Slats (Abbott), and his pal, Oliver (Costello), are taxi dancers at the Miramar Ballroom. As a publicity stunt, Slats plants an article about Molly claiming her ambition is to earn enough money to attend staid, all-girl Bixby College. Bixby's progressive dean offers Molly a scholarship. Molly accepts on the condition that Slats and Oliver come along too as campus caretakers. But the pompous Chairman threatens to foreclose on the school's mortgage if Molly isn't expelled. Together, the trio, with the help of some new friends, concocts a scheme to raise enough money to save the school. The plan involves a bet on the Bixby basketball team, which is playing in a game rated at 20 to 1 by the local bookie. But the bookie has other plans for their dough and hires a group of ringers to step in for the opponents. All is not lost, at least while Oliver has the chance to turn things around for his friends-one way or another.

6.7/10

Radio's miracle show is on the screen.

7.4/10

Two bumbling plumbers are hired by a socialite to fix a leak. A case of mistaken identity gets the pair an invitation to a fancy party and an entree into high society. As expected, things don't go too smoothly

6.8/10

A run-away socialite "Babs" Bradley (Martha O'Driscoll), using an alias, wants to join the WACs, finds romance with a shipyard worker, Johnny Adams (Noah Beery Jr.), while dodging sheriffs, policemen and others who are searching for her.

A beautiful woman goes to Las Vegas in a scheme to make her husbnd jealous, but once she gets there she becomes involved with another man.

6.6/10

In this musical western, a cowboy band is offered the chance to appear in a Hollywood movie and begins the journey to the West Coast. Unfortunately, the band ends up stranded in Texas and must take a job running a ranch. Musical mayhem ensues: Songs include: "Let's Love Again," "Where the Prairie Meets the Sky," "Don't You Ever Be a Cowboy," "Texas Polka," "No Letter Today," "I Got Mellow in the Yellow of the Moon," "Sip Nip Song," "Salt-Water Cowboy," "The Blues," "Little Brown Jug" and "And Then."

To save their music publishing firm from bankruptcy, Bill "Brains' Watson creates a colorful life-story about his partner, Danny Lee, representing him as a descendant of Louisiana's famous Josh Lee family and rightful poet laureate of Dixieland.

3/10

A songwriter is sued for libel, and when he gets to court he discovers that his girlfriend is the plaintiff's attorney.

5.9/10

A farmer from Vermont travels to New York and becomes a successful singer in a nightclub.

7.1/10

Circumstances arise that result in a man impersonating his uncle. As the "uncle", he finds himself pursued by his girlfriend's aunt, who does not approve of their relationship.

6.4/10

Judy King (Grace McDonald), newly arrived in Washington, applies for a secretary job with a government agency and while being interviewed by Bob Carlton (Robert Paige), an agent with the bureau, jokingly hints she may be a spy. While investigating her, he clears Judy and falls in love with her... and then uncovers a real Nazi spy ring.

5.3/10

District Attorney Holden and his special investigator Betty Higgins are trying to convict brothers Joe and Lou Manson, silk-racket hoods, after they are indicted for murder.

7.3/10

Bob Jackson and his three Merchant Marine shipmates have each invested $50 in a song Bob has written and which he thinks will be published for a fee of $200. In a taxicab driven by Pat Rogers, they search for the publisher's office but finally realize they have been swindled. Plus, they now owe Pat a large taxi-bill.

6.1/10

Tana, a voluptuous half-caste girl of the South Seas, falls in love with FBI agent Wally and wishes to marry him and leave the island. Wally, with his pal Jinx, is there to investigate rumored Japanese spy activity. He agrees to marry her if she will help him in his investigations. Through the discovery of a contraband radio set tuned to Japanese reception, Wally learns that the local Commandant is in league with the enemy and is planning an invasion of the island.

4.2/10

A socialite joins the Womens Ambulance Corps as both a publicity stunt and to win a bet with a newspaper columnist, who wagered $5000 that she couldn't last six weeks.

6/10

A reporter investigates the murder of a showgirl, who was the widow of a millionaire. While digging in to the mysterious murder of a showgirl (Vivian Wilcox), intrepid reporter Bob Martin (Robert Lowery) uncovers a connection between that case and another one he's been working on. An inmate (Lawrence Creighton) holds the key to the crime, but there's one problem: He's deaf and mute. Meanwhile, the murderers (Jan Wiley and Charlie Hall) appear to be working for a very powerful person.

5.2/10

Freckles Winslow comes home from college and the sheriff accuses him of murder, gangsters put him on the spot, and his girl friend, Jane, falls in love with a confidence man.

5/10

A gangster running a protection racket gets information that he's about to be prosecuted on income-tax-evasion charges. He hires a man with a photographic memory to memorize his books, then destroys them all so the police won't have any evidence to link him to the racket.

5/10

Director Jean Yarbrough's 1942 comedy, about a small town spinster with an unusually avid interest in prizefighting, stars ZaSu Pitts, Roger Pryor, Warren Hymer, Douglas Fowley, Gwen Kenyon, Elizabeth Russell abd Dick Elliott.

6.1/10

Nona Brooks, former member of a stranded theatrical troupe, earns a temporary living singing in a café in Duakwa, British Rhodesia, Africa. The café owner is secretly in league with two foreign agents with a goal of making the natives restless. American explorer Larry Mason leaves for the jungle with his servant, Jeff and a safari. Nona escapes the café into the jungle but is followed by the agents as, unknowing to her, she is carrying a report of the agent's activities. She joins the safari just as all hands are captured by a tribe of natives

5.1/10

A police reporter solves a murder case in Chicago, then moves on to St. Louis-but not voluntarily, since he has been kidnapped by the minions of the Windy City gang leader (Max Hoffman Jr.) against whom he is scheduled to testify.

6.1/10

Rawley University is about to receive a star athlete who could give it the first championship rowing team it's ever had. Unfortunately, he gets drafted into the army before he's able to join the team. Two of the team's members get the bright idea of passing off a burly truck driver as the "athlete". Complications ensue.

5.3/10

Two friends take jobs as truck drivers, unaware that the trucking company is being targeted by a gang of saboteurs who will stop at nothing, including murder, to stop them.

5.5/10

Story concerns railroad tycoon J.B. Matthews (Jed Prouty) taking over a rival line, being sent on an R&R vacation by his doctor, falling off his private train-car and landing in a hobo jungle occupied by Faylen and Hall, and being cured of all his ills, while reporter Jimmy Dugan (Frank Albertson) poses as a doctor in order to get an exclusive story about the railroad takeover.

3.8/10

Frank Faylen and Charlie Hall (a longtime Laurel & Hardy foil) star as Dolan and Doolittle, a pair of goofy druggists who join the army to escape the wrath of bill collector Mulligan

4.8/10

On the day of his daughter's wedding, a good-natured construction worker (Henry Armetta) is suspected by his wife of being involved with another woman, wrongly implicates his company's boss as a racketeer, and is arrested by police for running a shakedown operation. Comedy.

4.9/10

Secret agent Roger Pryor is dispatched below the border to protect an important scientific formula. Believe it or don't, this mixture has the ability to render things invisible.

4.9/10

During World War II, a small plane somewhere over the Caribbean runs low on fuel and is blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crash-land on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The quick-witted yet easily-frightened manservant soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies and ghosts.

5.3/10

Working stiff Tom Tupper is stopped by a 'man on the spot' reporter during his daily commute. Asked for his opinion on male/female relations, Tom tells the radio audience that he thinks men could do a better job running the household than women. When he arrives home, his infuriated wife Margaret proposes that her husband put his money where his mouth is. The couple switch roles, with Margaret going to the office and Tom cooking and cleaning. While Margaret becomes a successful entrepreneur, the man of the house comes dangerously close to having a nervous breakdown. Overwhelmed by a woman's work, Tom begs Margaret to go back to the way things were, but his now-independent wife isn't interested.

4.9/10

Dr. Carruthers feels bitter at being betrayed by his employers, Heath and Morton, when they became rich as a result of a product he devised. He gains revenge by electrically enlarging bats and sending them out to kill his employers' family members by instilling in the bats a hatred for a particular perfume he has discovered, which he gets his victims to apply before going outdoors. Johnny Layton, a reporter, finally figures out Carruthers is the killer and, after putting the perfume on himself, douses it on Carruthers in the hopes it will get him to give himself away. One of the two is attacked as the giant bat makes one of its screaming, swooping power dives.

5.6/10
5.8%

When a crime wave hits town, bank robbers find haven in Errol's home.

6.3/10

Noted child psychologist Errol marries a widow with a nasty brat, and finds none of his theories seem to work when trapped in a pullman car on the way to his honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

5.5/10

Leon's boss buys a racehorse, but doesn't want word to get out that he is the owner, so he has the papers filled out showing Leon as the owner of record. At first, Leon is excited, but the arrangement soon creates difficulty for him. First, he knows nothing about horses except how to bet on them, and second, when his wife finds out, she is furious.

5.5/10

Girl moves out of her parents house against their wishes. Gets a job in a dress shop, gets mixed up with dirty pictures and blackmail.

4.6/10

While his wife and mother-in-law are away on a vacation, Errol sub-lets their apartment and the new tenants throw a wild party.

At Dr. Van Loon's Sanitarium, swing music is the cure.

The boys are a dentist and his assistant traveling to the Old West to open a new practice. Once in town, they buy a business--only to wake up the next day and see that the entire population of this bustling town had left for the California gold fields early that morning! Then, they discover an evil plot to sell out these settlers to some hostile Indians, so they spring to the rescue.

6.1/10

Another hotel-room mix-up with the suspicious wife, Grace King (Josephine Whittell), checking up on her husband, Ford King (Ford Sterling),who is trying to sell his jewelry line to a lady buyer, Frances Brown (Kitty McHugh). The house detective (Edgar Dearing) gets involved and the room-service waiter, (Billy Dooley), constantly gets himself and his tray knocked over.

A wife whose husband is away asks her decorator to impersonate her husband, to help her deal with a pest. Soon there is quite a web of confusion that also involves the decorator's girlfriend and the wife's suddenly returned husband.

6.2/10

After being fired from his job at the Marriage License Bureau, a clerk turns to matchmaking.

6.3/10

A Mack Sennett-produced sound short about couples playing bridge through the ages.

4.8/10

The prodigal son of a Yukon prospector comes home on a night that "ain't fit for man nor beast."

6.7/10

The story involves various misunderstandings and entanglements that occur between two married couples, the Browns (Glenn Tryon & Vivien Oakland) and the Dazzles (Tyler Brooke & Anita Garvin). The two couples have apartments across the hall from one another, and all four plan to attend a costume ball together. But after each husband expresses unhappiness with his wife's costume the women angrily refuse to go to the party. The two husbands decide to go "stag" and pick up dates, but when Mrs. Brown changes her mind about attending, and Mr. Dazzle and Mr. Brown switch costumes, mix-ups result.

6.4/10