Walter Pidgeon
This documentary, hosted by actor Burgess Meredith, explores the life and career of movie director Otto Preminger, whose body of work includes such memorable films as Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Laura, Forever Amber, Advise and Consent, In Harm's Way, The Moon Is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm, and many other movies made from the '30s through the '70s. Interviews with actors Frank Sinatra, Vincent Price, James Stewart, Michael Caine, and others who worked with the flamboyant and sometimes control-obsessed director add information and insight to the story.
A short film using parts of the storyboard drawings for Fritz Lang's Man Hunt given to the French Cinémathèque to recreate a scene to showcase a part of the directors' creative process.
A would-be filmmaker and actress shake up the industry with a trick dog who gets discovered by a studio bus driver in the 1920s.
Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire present more golden moments from the MGM film library, this time including comedy and drama as well as classic musical numbers.
In 1976, William Wyler became the fourth recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, following John Ford, James Cagney and Orson Welles.
A psychotic sniper plans a massive killing spree in a Los Angeles football stadium during a major championship game. The police, led by Captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston) and SWAT commander Sergeant Button (John Cassavetes), learn of the plot and rush to the scene. Still, they may be too late, as an all-star cast finds itself lined up in the sights of a gun-toting madman.
Fact-based story of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr., son and namesake of the famed pilot, and ensuing trial of accused and convicted killer, Bruno Hauptmann.
On a flight to London, a note is found stating that there will be murders taking place on the airliner before it lands.
A disturbed man wants his girlfriend's love and his wife's money, and will stop at nothing to get them, even murder.
Various MGM stars from yesterday present their favorite musical moments from the studio's 50 year history.
A television producer decides to find out the whereabouts of a former movie actress whose career has long since faded, then discovers that his inquiries have set off a string of murders.
After being cryogenically frozen for more than 30 years, a woman wakes to find her husband an old man and her children older than she is. Her daughter has also developed a psychotic obsession with her and may be out to kill her.
A master thief (James Coburn) and his drug-addicted partner teach two aspiring crooks (Michael Sarrazin, Trish Van Devere) how to steal wallets.
When an underwater ocean lab is lost in a earthquake, an advanced submarine is sent down to find it and encounters terrible danger.
A wealthy former mental patient goes home to her estate to rest and recuperate. While walking the grounds one day she hears the screams of a woman coming from underneath the ground who has been buried alive. Her family, however, refuses to believe her story, and sees the incident as an opportunity to prove the woman's mind has snapped so they can take control of her money.
Intrigue, romance, and the customary angry natives are the major elements in this tale of a hunt for a priceless gold mask in the jungles of Ethiopia.
A detective investigates the disappearance of the promiscuous wife of a timid salesman, and finds that everything is not quite as it appears.
The story of the life of comedienne Fanny Brice, from her early days in the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, to the height of her career with the Ziegfeld Follies, including her marriage to and eventual divorce from her first husband, Nick Arnstein.
A blind professor (Walter Pidgeon) masterminds the theft of treasure from St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
A man who completes compiling a dossier on a mysterious billionaire begins to get the feeling that he is becoming the victim of a conspiracy.
Pounded by the press for shooting a doctor, an ousted Los Angeles policeman (David Janssen) works his own case.
After the success of the live 1957 Cinderella on CBS (with Julie Andrews), the network decided to produce another television version. The 1957 premiere had been broadcast before videotape was available, so only one performance could be shown. CBS mounted a new production in 1965, with Richard Rodgers as Executive Producer and written by Joseph Schrank. The new script hewed closer to the traditional tale, although nearly all of the original songs were retained and sung in their original settings. Added to the Rogers and Hammerstein score was "Loneliness of Evening", which had been composed for South Pacific in 1949 but not used in that musical. The 1965 debut had a Nielsen rating of 42.3, making it the highest-rated non-sports special on CBS from the beginning of the Nielsen ratings until 2009, and the 50th highest-rated show of any kind during that period.
Wealthy sportsman James Haggin (Walter Pidgeon) lives on a Quebec estate called Wintapi. Émile Fornet (Émile Genest), handler of Haggin's hunting dogs, and Émile's wife Therese (Janette Bertrand), Haggin's cook and housekeeper, live in a separate house on the estate. To start a line of top show dogs, Haggin purchases the winner of the Montreal Kennel Club show, an Irish setter named Red.
A Senate investigation into the President's newly-nominated Secretary of State gives light to a secret from the past, which may not only ruin the candidate, but the President's character as well.
During the WWII Italians and English take and retake a village between the Albanian and Greek borders. It happens so often that not only do they use the same hotel as their headquarters, but also they find the time to become friends.
The crew of an atomic submarine battle to save the world from global destruction.
This adaptation of the classic 1944 film musical explores the lives of the close-knit Smith family -- mother, father, grandfather, and five children -- who live in St. Louis in the year 1903.
Starship C57D travels to planet Altair 4 in search of the crew of spaceship "Bellerophon", a scientific expedition that has been missing for 20 years, only to find themselves unwelcome by the expedition's lone survivor and warned of destruction by an invisible force if they don't turn back immediately.
Captain Edward Hall returns to the USA after two years in a prison camp in the korean war. In the camp he was brainwashed and helped the Chinese convince the other prisoners that they were fighting an unjust war. When he comes back he is charged for collaboration with the enemy. Where does loyalty end in a prison camp, when the camp is a living hell?
Sailor Danny Xavier Smith and two other gobs try to save his sister Susan's virtue. She wants to get a role in the show "Hit the Deck". After wrecking the producers hotel suite, they land in the brig. But Danny's father is a Rear Admiral...
M-G-M presents the heroic story of what happened to the MEN OF THE FIGHTING LADY
Charles returns to Paris to reminisce about the life he led in Paris after it was liberated. He worked on "Stars and Stripes" when he met Marion and Helen. He would marry and be happy staying in Paris after his discharge and working for a news organization. He would try to write his great novel and that would come between Charlie, his wife and his daughter
When the head of a large manufacturing firm dies suddenly from a stroke, his vice-presidents vie to see who will replace him.
Clemson Reade, a business tycoon with marriage on his mind, and Effie, a U.S. diplomat, are a modern couple. Unfortunately there seems to be too much business and not enough pleasure on the part of Effie. When Clemson meets Tarji, a princess trained in all the arts of pleasing men, he decides he wants an old fashioned girl. Princess Tarji's father is king of oil-rich Bukistan. Because of the oil situation and to maintain good political relations during the courtship between Clemson & Tarji, the State Department assigns a diplomat to maintain protocol until the wedding - Effie!
After their orphanage burns down, a group of children are being transported west by train to Manitoba. All of them are available for adoption and at a stop at Scourie, Ontario little Patsy meets Victoria McChesney. Victoria and her husband Patrick have no children and she immediately decides to adopt the girl. The only condition imposed on them is that as Patsy has been baptized a Roman Catholic the Protestant McChesneys agree to raise her as a Catholic. Patsy is a well-behaved little girl whose only real problem is a school bully, also one of the orphans, who spreads stories that she set their orphanage on fire.
After overcoming polio, Annette Kellerman achieves fame and creates a scandal when her one-piece bathing suit is considered indecent.
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
A scrupulously honest lawyer discovers that the client he"s gotten off was really guilty.
Set against the back drop of Rome in crisis, General Marcus Vinicius returns to the city from the battle fields and falls in love with a Christian woman, Lygia. Caught in the grip of insanity, Nero's atrocities become more extreme and he burns Rome, laying the blame on the Christians. Vinicius races to save Lygia from the wrath of Nero as the empire of Rome collapses around them.
Bulldog Drummond leaves retirement to help a Scotland Yard Sergeant catch thieves armed with radar.
The Second World War is over, and the Miniver family is trying to keep themselves together in post-War Britain, among continuing shortages and growing tensions within the family.
Soames and Irene Forsyte have a marriage of convenience. Young Jolyon Forsyte is a black sheep who ran away with the maid after his wife's death. Teenager June Forsyte has found love with an artist, Phillip Bosinny. The interactions between the Forsytes and the people and society around them is the truss for this love story set in the rigid and strict times of the Victorian age.
Julia and William were married and soon separated by his snobbish family. They meet again many years later, when their daughter he has raised invites her mother to her wedding, with the disapproval of William's mother.
High-ranking officers struggle with the decision to prioritize bombing German factories producing new jet fighters over the extremely high casualties the mission will cost.
It's 1939 in the small English town of Penny Green and events in Poland are about to change lives. Mark Sabre, a writer of school text books, has married Mabel "on the rebound", after his real love Nona marries some one else. Just as war is about to break out, Nona returns home with husband Tony. Mable is sure she can hold onto Mark, though. But misunderstood good deeds on Mark's part turn life for him upside down when his relationship with a young girl starts tongues wagging. Soon, wartime casualties take their toll in Penny Green as well as on the front, as the death of fighting men affects lives back home.
Penny Addams lives in a constant state of depression stemming from the trauma of her father's death when she was just a young girl. Her brother, Chase, and stepmother, Lee, work to help Penny process her grief through psychotherapy and revisiting their past, but only the revelation of long-buried family secrets -- including her mother's secret lover and the true nature of her father's death -- can bring Penny out of her intense despair.
Christine Evans, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the widowed American ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Evans, believes that she is no longer a young girl and that she has fully matured into adulthood. Eager to make her mark in the sophisticated world of foreign diplomats living in Mexico, Christine appoints herself as organizer of her father's social activities and takes over the planning of a big garden party he will be hosting. Because he loves his daughter,
Anything can happen during a weekend at New York's Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary war correspondent and mistakes him for a jewel thief; a soldier learns that without an operation he'll die and so looks for one last romance with a beautiful but ambitious stenographer; a cub reporter tries to get the goods on a shady man's dealing with a foreign potentate.
In this family saga, Mrs. Parkington recounts the story of her life, beginning as a hotel maid in frontier Nevada where she is swept off her feet by mine owner and financier Augustus Parkington. He moves them to New York, tries to remake her into a society woman, and establishes their home among the wealthiest of New York's high society. Family and social life is not always peaceful, however, and she guides us, in flashbacks, through the rises and falls of the Parkington family fortunes.
This short celebrates the 20th anniversary of MGM. Segments are shown from several early hits, then from a number of 1944 releases.
Joan Lyons and her friend Patricia Drew are autograph hounds spending most of their day bumping into, and having tea, with the likes of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Based on misinformation from a meddling old-maid governess, Miss Featherstone, Joan also devotes some time to working on the no-problem marriage of her parents to the extent of hiring Dr. Hercules, the strong man from a side show to pay attention to her mother in order to make her father jealous, despite the good advice received from Walter Pidgeon.
The famed female scientist fights to keep her marriage together while conducting early experiments with radioactivity.
English middle-class family, The Minivers, experience life in the first months of World War II.
In Africa early in World War II, a British rubber plantation executive reminisces about his arrival in the Congo in 1910. He tells the story of a love-hate triangle involving Harry Witzel, an in-country station superintendent who'd seen it all, Langford, a new manager sent from England for a four-year stint, and Tondelayo, a siren of great beauty who desires silk and baubles. Witzel is gruff and seasoned, certain that Langford won't be able to cut it. Langford responds with determination and anger, attracted to Tondelayo because of her beauty, her wiles, and to get at Witzel. Manipulation, jealousy, revenge, and responsibility play out as alliances within the triangle shift.
At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans (he stern, she gentle) raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life. Lots of atmosphere, very sentimental view of pre-union miners' lives.
Edna marries Texan Sam Gladney, operator of a wheat mill. They have a son, who is killed when very young. Edna discovers by chance how the law treats children who are without parents and decides to do something about it. She opens a home for foundlings and orphans and begins to place children in good homes, despite the opposition of "conservative" citizens, who would condemn illegitimate children for being born out of wedlock. Eventually Edna leads a fight in the Texas legislature to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from birth records in that state, while continuing to be an advocate for homeless children.
A newsman (Walter Pidgeon) falls in love on Cape Cod with the judge (Rosalind Russell) his angry boss (Edward Arnold) expects him to discredit.
In this second Carter mystery, a mysterious rash of cargo ships sinking in Panama leads insurers Llewellyns of London to hire vacationer Nick Carter and his eccentric associate Bartholomew to investigate. Nick recognizes influential nightclub owner Al Taurez as a shady operator, but getting the goods on him depends on slick diversions involving the heavyweight champ of the Pacific Tuna Fleet, a Panamanian bombshell armed with American slang, a young couple in love and a whole raft of crooks and cutthroats.
This final Carter film is a lot of fun, with Nick (unwillingly, at first) taking on a ring of Fifth Columnists (since this was filmed before the US entered the war, we're not told the villains are Nazis, but it's pretty clear anyway). Of course, the helpful and persistent Bartholomew is at his side--much to Nick's irritation. To further complicate things--and to make them still funnier--Joyce Compton is along for the ride too, as a delightfully brainless "detective" named Christine Cross.
A rookie flyer, Ens. Alan Drake, joins the famous Hellcats Squadron right out of flight school in Pensacola. He doesn't make a great first impression when he is forced to ditch his airplane and parachute to safety when he arrives at the base but is unable to land due to heavy fog. On his first day on the job, his poor shooting skills results in the Hellcats losing an air combat competition. His fellow pilots accept him anyways but they think he's crossed the line when they erroneously conclude that while their CO Billy Gray is away, Drake has an affair with his wife Lorna. Drake is now an outcast and is prepared to resign from the Navy but his extreme heroism in saving Billy Gray's life turns things around.
An aspiring actress is offered the lead in a major new play, but discovers that her mother, a more seasoned performer, expects the same part. The situation is further complicated when they both become involved with the same man.
This short documentary, presented and directed by MGM sound engineer Douglas Shearer, goes behind the scenes to look at how the sound portion of a talking picture is created.
Nightclub owner Steve Larwitt (George Raft) sees his empire of investments collapse as he faces tax evasion charges and attacks by rivals. Believing Steve will be safer in prison for one year, his wife, Brenda (Joan Bennett), testifies against him on advice from his lawyer, Slant Kolma (Lloyd Nolan), who is in love with her. After Steve receives 10 years in Alcatraz, Brenda moves to be near him and avoids advances of airplane builder Tim Nolan (Walter Pidgeon), who knows nothing about her past.
When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local banker. Politics is in the air however. It's just prior to the civil war and there is already a sharp division in the Territory as to whether it will remain slave-free. When he gets the opportunity to run for marshal, Seton finds himself running against the respected local schoolteacher, William Cantrell. Not is what it seems however. While acting as the upstanding citizen in public, Cantrell is dangerously ambitious and is prepared to do anything to make his mark, and his fortune, on the Territory. When he loses the race for marshal, he forms a group of raiders who run guns into the territory and rob and terrorize settlers throughout the territory. Eventually donning Confederate uniforms, it is left to Seton and the good citizens of Lawrence to face Cantrell and his raiders in one final clash.
An attorney handling a murder case in unaware his own wife played a crucial role in the killing.
Detective Nick Carter is brought in to foil spies at the Radex Airplane Factory, where a new fighter plane is under manufacture.
A highly successful assistant district attorney who is framed for taking bribes and finds himself serving time with the same men he earlier prosecuted and convicted.
Society lawyer Christopher Durant agrees to defend his friend Phil Siddall when Siddall is arrested for the murder of an ex-girlfriend. With the help of nightclub singer Pat Abbott and crime boss Tony Gazotti (a former client), Durant launches his own investigation of the murder in order to prove his friend's innocence
Chris Hunter is a sly newsreel reporter. While in Shanghai doing reports on the Chinese-Japanese war, he meets pilot Alma Harding. At first she doesn't trust him, but by a trick he manages to get her hired as his assistant. During an adventurous expedition through the jungles of South America he manages to change her view of him.
Mary Robbins is a moderately educated, beautiful, young woman who owns the saloon called "The Poker". She is the only woman in the town of Couldee - making her the fancy of all the men there, especially to Sheriff Jack Rance. On the way to Monterey to sing at a mass officiated by Father Sienna, her stagecoach is held up by the infamous masked bandit, Ramerez. He too takes a fancy to Mary, and decides to secretly follow her, taking on the identity of an officer named, Lieutenant Johnson. While in Monterey, he dances, sings and courts Mary, who has now fallen in love with him. He then has to make a quick getaway. In the mean-time, Sheriff Jack has set up a trap to catch Ramerez at "The Poker". When Ramerez does arrive he soon discovers that Mary is the owner, and quickly changes to the identity of Lieutenant Johnson. How long can this charade last?
During WWI Bill Pettigrew, a naive young Texan soldier is sent to New York for basic training. He meets worldly wise actress Daisy Heath when her car nearly runs him over.
To stop Pinkie's widowed, struggling mother Dottie from marrying a well-off older man they know she doesn't love, teenager Pinkie and her best friend Buzz kidnap her in the family travel trailer to live a carefree life on the open road. They then get the idea to find Dottie a financially secure husband whom both she and Pinkie would like.
A young woman inherits a newspaper whose editor refuses to hire lady reporters.
When a boss proposes marriage to his secretary, she discovers that the arrangement is solely for tax purposes.
A beautiful woman suspected of being a jewel thief is actually a detective tracking down a ring of bond thieves.
Sassy manicurist Eve Fallon is recruited as an even more brassy reporter and she helps police detective boyfriend Danny Barr break a jewel theft ring and solve the murder of a baby.
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. ...
A woman murders her husband's mistress and someone else gets accused of the crime.
This Vitaphone short has Hugh Herbert tossing in some comedy lines while Walter Pidgeon relates the history of the new-fad (in 1936) game of Badminton. Ace badminton players Bill Hurley and George F. (Jess) Willard, not to be confused with boxer Jess Willard, play the fast-and-furious game.
When a famous doctor kills his adulterous wife, he is defended by his best friend, an attorney who suspects that his own wife is having an affair.
Classes clash when a poor riveter and wealthy society woman fall in love with each other, much to the shock of her friends and family.
An officer of the French Military is in love with a shop girl, but his aristocratic father wants him to marry in his class and convinces the girl that marriage would be a mistake. The officer goes off to war and she becomes an opera star.
As they are leaving the church following their wedding, Count Adrian Beltrami and Countess Anna-Marie are told that the Austrians are marching on the town to quell an Italian uprising. The bride and relatives induce the count to flee to his castle, but Tangy, a silhouette cutter, brings word from the revolutionary committee asking him to return; the count goes, asking Tangy to pose as the count and protect Anna-Marie.
Broadway actress leaves New York to become a star in Hollywood, and succeeds despite sleazy directors and her own ego.
Kitty Bellairs, a flirtatious young woman of 18th Century England, cuts a swath of broken hearts and romantic conquests as she visits a resort with her sister.
Rollo and Lane just happen to be tossed off the train at White Beach where Robert Story -Air ace and writer- is supposed to stop. It is a case of mistaken identity as no one knows what Story looks like. So they get free room and meals at the Palm Inn and everything is going well until they want Story to fly in the race on Saturday. Rollo has never even be up in a plane, never mind fly one, so he must figure a way out. But the girls have everything bet on his winning the race. Written by Tony Fontana
A series of murders that take place in an old, dark mansion are suspected of being committed by an ape. (lost film)
Mr. and Mrs. Warner Bros. Pictures and their precocious offspring, Little Miss Vitaphone, host a dinner in honor of Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee, attended by most of the major players and song writers under contract to WB at that time.
This sentimental Romberg-Hammerstein operetta was made late in the first cycle of movie musicals, and the glut of product at the time crowded it out at the box office. Which is too bad, because it's an excellent example of its kind -- well-crafted, well-cast, and in handsome two-tone Technicolor.
A English aristocrat causes a scandal when she divorces her husband and runs off with a young American.
Laura Sergeant (Leatrice Joy), together with her husband, Humphrey Sergeant (Sidney Blackmer) operates a scam scheme to extort money from millionaires through blackmail and victimization until she mistakenly victimizes Tony Williams (Walter Pidgeon), the man she really loves.
Historically significant as Universal's first 100% all-talkie, the production suffered from having a tight shooting schedule. Carl Laemmle was only able to rent the Fox Movietone sound-on-film recording system for one week, having to be filmed at night while the Fox Studio was closed down for the evenings.
John Griffith Wray silent South America romantic melodrama starring Dolores Del Rio, Walter Pidgeon, Anders Randolf, Lesle Fenton, and Noble Johnson.
A young Russian peasant feels pity for the Princess Anastasia and saves her life by accidentally wounding her in the massacre of the Romanovs during the Russian Revolution.
Woman Wise is a 1928 American silent comedy drama film directed by Albert Ray and starring William Russell, June Collyer, and Walter Pidgeon.
Turn Back the Hours is a 1928 American silent drama film directed by Howard Bretherton and starring Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, and Sam Hardy.
A 1927 American mystery film directed by Edward Laemmle and written by Charles Logue and Walter Anthony. It is based on the 1908 play Counsel for the Defense by Henry Irving Dodge.
Gervas Carew's wife, Elinor, has deserted him while he was fighting for France, for Lord Clyde Geraldine, a cad of the first order, but Elinor, in turn is cast off when Lord Geraldine turns his attention to an Irish lass, Marny. Marny has no idea of Geraldine's past nor his brutal nature.
The father of an heiress dies broke leaving her destitute without inheritance. She falls in with a group of hobos traveling incognito cross country dressed as a man.
