John Halliday
Lydia MacMillan, a wealthy woman who has never married, invites several men her own age to her home to reminisce about the times when they were young and courted her. In memory, each romance seemed splendid and destined for happiness, but in each case, Lydia realizes, the truth was less romantic, and ill-starred.
The Grand Hotel formula that was so overworked in the 1930s made an encore appearance in 1940's Escape to Glory. The story is given timeliness by placing the characters on a British merchant ship on the very day that World War II is declared. The ship is attacked by a Nazi U-Boat, resulting in a variety of reactions from the diverse passengers--one of whom (Erwin Kalser) is a German doctor. Constance Bennett is glamorous, Pat O'Brien is boozy, John Halliday is pensive, and everybody else (except for the German medico) is plain fearful.
When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.
Guests at a women's residence club help a jilted small-town girl turn to modelling.
A concert violinist becomes charmed with his daughter's talented piano teacher. When he invites her to go on tour with him, they make beautiful music away from the concert hall as well. He soon leaves his wife so the two can go off together.
Dashing reporter Vincent Bullit has just returned from covering the Spanish Civil War. His boss, newspaper magnate Fullerton, has more plans to send him off to China. However, first Fullerton invites Bullit to the peace and quiet of his own home to write a series of European affair articles. When Fullerton's adolescent daughter Alice develops a crush on Bullit, her suitor, boyscout Ken Warren, doesn't seem to stand a chance. Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton, Ken Warren, and even Vincent Bullit himself do their best to sway young Alice's feelings away from the older man. It's a difficult task though, as she is at 'that certain age.'
With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston. When Blakeford's daughter, Patricia, ask him to desist for the sake of his ex-wife, Carlotta Blakeford, he attempts to break his contract with Winston.
On her debut as an opera star, Marion Stuart is interrogated and possibly implicated in the death of a male acquaintance. Released, although thoroughly shaken-up, Marion attempts to perform but loses her voice onstage. Humiliated, but driven to sing, she travels to South America under the assumed name of Maria Delasano, and works in an opera company under the tutelage of Feodor Glinka, who wants her to shun men and save herself for her art. Mary resists the persistent attentions of wealthy young Phil Roberts, who follows the company in hopes of marrying her. ...
Architect Peter Ibbetson is hired by the Duke of Towers to design a building for him. Ibbetson discovers that the Duchess of Towers, Mary, is his now-grown childhood sweetheart. Their love revives, but Peter is sentenced to life in prison for an accidental killing. Mary comes to him in dreams and they are able to live out their romance in a dream world.
Kitty Vane, Alan Trent, and Gerald Shannon have been inseparable friends since childhood. Kitty has always known she would marry one of them, but has waited until the beginning of World War I before finally choosing Alan. Gerald graciously gives them his blessing. Then, Gerald and Alan go to war. Angered over a misunderstanding involving Alan and Kitty, Gerald sends Alan on a dangerous mission that will change all their lives forever.
A French military officer is convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island. His wife takes it upon herself to obtain the stolen document and prove his innocence.
Society heiress Joan Bradford rebels against her mother's choice of a future husband by masquerading as a working class girl and dating a window washer.
Jack Brookfield, a gambler with clairvoyant and hypnotic powers, is able to win at cards through his unique gift. But when he inadvertently hypnotizes young Clay Thorne, Thorne kills an enemy of Brookfield's while under a trance. No one believes Brookfield's protestations that Thorne is innocent of any murderous intent, so Brookfield teams up with retired lawyer Martin Prentice in hopes of saving the young man from the gallows.
In this sudsy hospital melodrama, a married nurse finds herself falling in love with one of two surgeons when her husband goes mad and needs an operation. One of the surgeon's regards his pursuit a lark, while the other harbors genuine affections for the nurse.
Virginia, who studies at a boarding school for upper-class girls, falls in love with a medical intern who works as a waiter for a living. Both the director of the school and her mother oppose such a relationship.
Nan Reynolds encourages her copywriter husband Bill to open his own agency. Nearly out of business, he finally gets a client. Former girlfriend Patricia Berkeley writes a very successful commercial for the client and neats up their old romance. Wife and girlfriend struggle over Bill.
A temperamental movie star storms off the set of her latest picture in order to carry on a fling with an ambitious, publicity-hungry prizefighter.
A young couple decide to marry under the condition that they agree never to disagree. That agreement is soon put to the test when the husband finds himself attracted to a beautiful young woman.
An ocean liner is found at sea with everyone on board dead. An investigation is begun to find out what happened.
A beautiful chorine marries a handsome rich socialite, but her idyllic life ends when she visits a dying old beau and is charged when he commits suicide.
Jeffrey and Glenda are two lovers about to embark on a three-day cruise to nowhere. Their plan is to be married on board by the ship's captain. As Glenda is packing to leave, she receives a threatening phone call from her obsessed, former lover Leo. Glenda confronts Leo and tells him that it's over. Leo, a high-powered attorney calls a hit man to have Jeffrey eliminated. Glenda knocks Leo over the head before he can give the hit man a name. Leo is dead. Glenda sneaks back into her apartment, goes off on the cruise with Jeffrey and pretends that all is swell. Leo's partner, Stephen Bessemer, suspects Glenda and follows her to the ship. Bessemer stages a mock trial aboard the ship and cleverly draws a confession from Glenda. Jeffrey, also an attorney, represents Glenda when she is arrested upon arriving on shore. A skeptical district attorney, and the fact that Jeffrey horsewhips the star witness (the hit man), combine to get Glenda completely off the hook.
A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is torn between true love and a life of sin.
A 1932 American Pre-Code film made by Fox Film Corporation, directed by Alan Crosland, and starring by Joan Bennett, Ben Lyon and John Halliday. -From Wikipedia.com
Fresh from his success with the moody melodrama Murders in the Rue Morgue, director Robert Florey dashed off The Man Called Back at bargain-basement Tiffany Studios. The film is set in the tropics; Conrad Nagel tops the cast as a dissipated, derelict doctor, hopelessly in love with married socialite Doris Kenyon. Doris' insane husband John Halliday commits suicide, but arranges the evidence so that his wife will be charged with murder.
When a young South Seas sailor falls overboard, the beautiful daughter of a Polynesian king dives in and saves his life. Thus begins the romance of Johnny and Luana. Though Luana is promised to another man, Johnny whisks her away, and for a brief time the lovers live very happily together. But, when a local volcano threatens their lives, Luana knows that she must sacrifice herself to the volcanic gods in order to save her island.
College co-eds struggle with the moral, societal and human aspects of romance.
A mob boss has a change of heart when his daughter convinces him to move on from crime.
As Diana Barry is preparing to leave New York to marry inventor Tommy Mason she is offered financial assistance from her ex-lover Dick Kent, who still has a thing for her. Refusing she heads to Sparta, where she informs Tommy of her affair with the older man. Tommy tells her that he doesn't want to know the man's name or any details and Diana is happy to forget the past and move on. This decision comes to bite them a year later though, when Kent returns into the picture.
In this comedy, two men make an extravagant $50,000 dollar bet that one of them will be able to successfully court a lovely woman with out spending any money. To foil his scheme, the other bettor hires two henchman to stop him.
As a luxurious ocean liner makes its way across the Atlantic Ocean, the audience is made privy to the travails of several of its passengers. Edmund Lowe heads the cast as Monty Greer, a suave gambler who falls in love with Judy (Lois Moran), the daughter of immigrant lens grinder Rudolph Kramer (Jean Hersholt). In trying to recover some valuable securities stolen from banker Henry Graham (John Halliday), Greer finds himself in the middle of a fierce gun battle in the ship's engine room. Meanwhile, Graham, who has been cheating on his wife Kay (Myrna Loy) with sexy dancer Sigrid Carline (Greta Nissen), is murdered by person or persons unknown. And that's only three of the plot strands in this marvelously complex shipboard thriller.
Bobby Jones teaches a group of truant businessman how to improve their chip shots.
Young Bill Emory is a typical mischievous, rambunctious boy, but his father William is a strict disciplinarian, and Bill is constantly being punished for simple childhood transgressions. Finally Bill can take no more of his father's excessive punishments and runs away. Complications ensue.
A society man's loving, devoted wife, upon learning that he has been unfaithful and is planning to leave her for the other woman, strategically pretends to be having an affair of her own. The woman's friends gladly assist in the deception.
An ordinary man is confronted by gangsters who have reason to believe a treasure is buried somewhere on his property.
A sportswriter jilted by his globe-trotting girlfriend marries a woman jilted by her boyfriend.
Nora Mason becomes entangled in a family mix-up of murder and scandal that threatens to ruin her career and entire future; Unless the mother she does not know can find a way to save her.
In this drama, a 50-year-old married man (played by John Halliday) goes with his wife (Belle Bennett) and son (Junior Durkin) to a nightclub in a fancy hotel in Detroit. He meets a gold-digger (Dorothy Burgess) there, singing the theme song of the picture, and eventually ends up going out with her on a subsequent occasion and falls in love with her. His wife finally finds out and this leads to her leaving him and getting a divorce in Paris. He is married to the gold-digger but finds life with her and her "jazz friends" to be too much for him. He begins to long for his old wife when he finds her in a nightclub with another man and becomes jealous.
In this comedy, Constance Talmadge plays Babs, a girl who is thrown out of boarding school because she's more interested in studying romance than she is in studying books. The object of her affections is Jim Winthrop, but before they can wed, he has to find suitable mates for his two plain sisters, Dorcas and Matilda -- and Winthrop's elderly aunt, too. To speed things up, Babs takes it upon herself to find them all men.
The story of a group of young Colonial patriots battling in the Revolutionary War against the hated British and their murderous American Indian allies.
Jim and Mary are a betrothed couple whose devotion to each other is tested when a famous actress comes to town.
