Rudy Vallee
A retrospective of Chita Rivera's film, television and stage career, including interviews with Dick Van Dyke, Ben Vereen, Carol Lawrence and others. Originally aired as Episode 2 of Season 43 of the PBS series Great Performances.
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Pin-up photographer, who doesn't want to get pinned down, comes up against a girl who won't take no for an answer.
A young but bright former window cleaner rises to the top of his company by following the advice of a book about ruthless advancement in business.
Ken Murray narrates his 16mm home movies shot over 35 years in Hollywood.
Torch singer Helen Morgan rises from sordid beginnings to fame and fortune only to lose it all to alcohol and poor personal choices.
Two Broadway showgirls, who are also sisters, are sick and tired of New York as well as not getting nowhere. Quitting Broadway, the sisters decided to travel to Paris to become famous.
Marjorie Main is the whole show in the Universal programmer Ricochet Romance. Playing the outspoken new cook at a rundown dude ranch, Marjorie forces everyone around her to pitch in and bring some life back into the place. She also sets her sights on old layabout Chill Wills, scheming to rope the critter into marriage. Veteran comedy director Charles W. Lamont moves the proceedings along with style, never missing an opportunity for a low-comedy slapstick turn. The most surprising aspect of Ricochet Romance is that it is not an entry in Marjorie Main's Ma and Pa Kettle series.
Ex-WAVE encounters four fun-loving, work-hating men, all of whom want to marry her.
Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures.
Widow Abby Abbott is having serious money problems and has to dip into the family trust in order to pay for her daughter Susan's college tuition. The catch: Abby must also become a co-ed or she can't touch the money. After passing her entrance exams, Abby goes to college and becomes very popular, especially with a handsome English professor whom Susan has a crush on.
Coach George Copper's college football team is losing game after game, much to the dismay of stiff-and-stuffy but influential alumni Roger Jessup, and also having trouble at home with his oldest daughter, Connie. The team keeps losing and Coach Cooper is about to lose his job as his efforts to win the last game of the season, against the team's Big Rival, end in disaster. But, unknown to he and his wife, Elizabeth, Connie has sold an article, called "I Was a Bubble Dancer" to a 'True-Confession" magazine, and the girl-who-couldn't-get-a-date becomes suddenly popular and, because of her, the high-school football star from another town decides to play his college-ball for Coach Cooper. Jessup is forced to keep Cooper on as the school's football coach.
Saloon-bar singer Freddie gets very angry whenever boyfriend Blackie seems to be playing around. She always packs a six-shooter, so this is bad news for anything that happens to be in the way. As this is usually the local judge's rear-end, Freddie and friend Conchita are soon hiding out teaching school in the middle of nowhere.
A small town man inherits a significant fortune and takes his family to New York City whereupon they are continually shocked at the alien culture of the Big Apple.
A budding young writer thinks it's her lucky day when she is chosen to be the new secretary for Owen Waterbury, famous novelist. She is soon disppointed, however, when he turns out to be an erratic, immature playboy. Opposites attract, of course, but not without sub-plots that touch on competitiveness within marriage and responsibility.
Norwegian immigrant Marta Hanson keeps a firm but loving hand on her household of four children, a devoted husband and a highly-educated lodger who reads Charles Dickens to the family every evening. Through financial crises, illnesses and the small triumphs of everyday life, Marta maintains her optimism and sense of humor, traits she passes on to her aspiring-author daughter, Katrin.
Before he left for a brief European visit, symphony conductor Sir Alfred De Carter casually asked his staid brother-in-law August to look out for his young wife, Daphne, during his absence. August has hired a private detective to keep tabs on her. But when the private eye's report suggests Daphne might have been canoodling with his secretary, Sir Alfred begins to imagine how he might take his revenge.
Teenager Susan Turner, with a severe crush on playboy artist Richard Nugent, sneaks into his apartment to model for him and is found there by her sister Judge Margaret Turner. Threatened with jail, Nugent agrees to date Susan until the crush abates.
Twenty-three years after scoring the winning touchdown for his college football team mild-mannered Harold Diddlebock, who has been stuck in a dull, dead-end book-keeping job for years, is let go by his pompous boss, advertising tycoon J.E. Wagglebury, with nothing but a tiny pension.
Christine Hunter kills an intruder and tells her husband and lawyer that it was an act of self-defense. It's later revealed that he was actually her lover and she had posed for an incriminating statue he created.
Suzanne, a waitress, comes up with a sure-fire method for winning at the racetrack and, later, when she inherits a fortune from a customer of the restaurant, she use the same system for investing her money. Her stock broker tries to dissuade her, but she persists and her investments increases her wealth.
Margie and her daughter reminisce about Margie's girlhood in the roaring twenties. In flashback, Margie, a smarter, less popular girl at Central High, meets handsome new French teacher Ralph Fontayne. Circumstances keep throwing them together and Margie, in company with every other girl in school, develops a crush on him. Margie's date for the prom gets sick, and what happens next surprises everyone.
A comedy based on NBC's "People Are Funny" radio (and later television) program with Art Linkletter with a fictional story of how the program came to be on a national network from its humble beginning at a Nevada radio station. Jack Haley is a producer with only half-rights to the program while Ozzie Nelson and Helen Walker are the radio writers and supply the romance. Rudy Vallee, always able to burlesque himself intentional and, quite often, unintentional, is the owner of the sought-after sponsoring company. Frances Langford, as herself, sings "I'm in the Mood for Love" while the Vagabonds quartet (billed 12th and last) chimes in on "Angeline" and "The Old Square Dance is Back Again."
The ringmaster of a flea circus inherits a fortune...if he can find which chair it's hidden in.
A patriotic wartime short showcasing the U.S. Coast Guard Band, led by singer Rudy Vallee, and saluting the Naval branches of the military.
A gold-digger hopes to land a rich husband in Trinidad, but gets mixed up with a beach boy and voodoo.
Actors are seen in their new roles as military men during WWII: Robert Stack displaying his remarkable skill as an artillery training officer; Tyrone Power as a Marine drill instructor; Rudy Vallee leading a military band; and Glenn Ford in the everyday grind of a Marine private.
Gerry and Tom Jeffers are finding married life hard. Tom is an inventor/ architect and there is little money for them to live on. They are about to be thrown out of their apartment when Gerry meets rich businessman being shown around as a prospective tenant. He gives Gerry $700 to start life afresh but Tom refuses to believe her story and they quarrel. Gerry decides the marriage is over and heads to Palm Beach for a quick divorce but Tom has plans to stop her.
Narrator Hopper covers two war benefit affairs, a garden party and a USO fashion show, at Pickfair, "The White House of Hollywood."
The plot centers on a husband-wife radio team, Dick (Rudy Vallee) and Virginia (Helen Parrish). When Dick is caught in an innocent but compromising situation with brassy blonde showgirl Hortense (Iris Adrian), Virginia is encouraged to inaugurate divorce proceedings by her oily ex-beau Ted (Jerome Cowan). It all winds up in Mexico, with Dick ardently chasing Virginia until she catches him.
After a trip to Hollywood, two young ladies attempt to hitchhike home but end up at a star filled rodeo.
Studio publicist discovers Minnesota skating teacher and takes her to Hollywood. She goes back to Minnesota but he follows her.
When the representative of the Paris International Dance Exposition arrives in New York to invite the Academy Ballet of America to compete for monetary prizes, the taxi driver mistakenly brings him to the Club Ballé, a nightclub on the brink of declaring bankruptcy. The owners, Terry Moore and Duke Dennis, jump at the chance to go, despite being aware of the mistake. They hire ballet teacher, Luis Leoni, and his only pupil, Kay Morrow, to join the group, hoping to teach their two dozen show girls ballet en route to Paris by ship. Also going along and rooming with Kay is Mona, Terry's ex-wife, who wants to keep an eye on her alimony checks. Naturally, Kay and Terry fall in love.
This was one of the annual "blooper" reels screened by the Warners Club, an organization of Warners actors, crew and executives. It was meant to poke fun at the flubs and bloopers that occurred ont the set of some of the major Warner Bros. pictures of 1938.
Collection of Warner's stars blundering through missed takes.
A midwest band leader and his lead singer share a love-hate relationship as they try for success in New York.
This short shows the entrances of the various Hollywood studios, then specifically visits Warner Bros. / First National Studios. We start at the casting office, then see Busby Berkeley and choreographer Bobby Connolly working with chorus girls on production numbers. Then come some candid shots of several contract stars. Finally we see comedian Hugh Herbert filming a scene for an upcoming release, then the various behind the scenes steps that transition the raw film in the camera into the finished product.
Opening with a credit line that reads "Entire production conceived, created and directed by George White," a film evolves where the only plot line is a thin backstage romance between Jimmy Martin and Kitty Donnelly in and around a dozen or more sketches, revues, black-outs and singing and dancing turns. Made before the birth of the production code, reviewers of the day found much to object about in the implications of Alice Faye's "Nasty Man" song with the Meglin Kiddies, and the dog action in the "Your Dog Loves My Dog" number by Vallee, Faye, Jimmy Durante and Dixie Dunbar. The geometric dance arrangements used in the Vallee, Durante and Cliff Edwards "Every Day Is Father's Day" was not cause for Busby Berkeley to lose any sleep.
Jimmy Durante asks popular song writing team Mack Gordon and Harry Revel to demonstrate some of their songs. There is interplay with impersonator Florence Desmond, Ben Turpin, Rudy Vallee and many others.
Assorted wacky characters converge on a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention ... television.
Rudy Vallee cures patients at Dr. Vallee's Musical Hospital by means of music.
Sun bonneted Betty Boop takes a train to "Rudy Valley" where she gains weight and Rudy Vallee performs the title song with Bouncing Ball.
The plot involves a young woman (Mary Eaton) who wants to be in the Follies, but in the meantime is making ends meet by working at a department store's sheet music department, where she sings the latest hits. She is accompanied on piano by her childhood boyfriend (Edward Crandall), who is in love with her, despite her single-minded interest in her career. When a vaudeville performer (Dan Healy) asks her to join him as his new partner, she sees it as an opportunity to make her dream come true. Upon arriving in New York City, our heroine finds out that her new partner is only interested in sleeping with her and makes this a condition of making her a star. Soon, however, she is discovered by a representative of Ziegfeld.
A zany musical about an amateur musician in search of work who impersonates a big band leader.
