Edmund Purdom plays Prince Karl, but Mario Lanza sings the bold tunes coming out of Purdom's mouth, in this MGM remake of the 1927 Ernst Lubitsch silent picture based on the renowned 1924 operetta by Sigmund Romberg and Dorothy Donnelly, which itself was based on the novel and play by Wilhelm Meyer-Foerster. Lanza was signed to play the German ...
The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliantly conceived and executed anatomy of a crime -- or, as director John Huston and scripter Ben Maddow put it, "a left-handed form of human endeavor." Recently paroled master criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), with funding from crooked attorney Emmerich (Louis Calhern), gathers several crooks together ...
Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed this exquisite version of William Shakespeare's play. Louis Calhern is Julius Caesar, whose conquests have enabled him to rise to the status of Roman dictator. But his ascent to almost God-like status has given pause to influential members of the Roman Senate. Chief among them is Cassius (John Gielgud), who is ...
In this gritty urban drama, war veteran Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) wants to begin his career as a teacher and is given an assignment at a boys high school in inner-city New York. However, he soon discovers the school is overrun by delinquents, led by Artie West (Vic Morrow), an insolent hood who likes to call Richard "Mr. Daddy-O." Artie and his ...
Ann Sothern closed out her MGM contract with the Technicolor musical Nancy Goes to Rio. As Frances Elliot, Sothern is billed second to Jane Powell, who plays Nancy Barklay. A popular Broadway star, Frances heads to Rio for R&R before starting her next production. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Frances, her daughter Nancy is hired to appear in her ...
Two Weeks With Love is set in a Catskills resort in the early 1900s. Seventeen-year-old vacationer Patti Robinson (Jane Powell) feels that she's a bit too strait-laced to attract the male contingent, and dreams of being a "woman of the world." Naturally, the principal object of her affections, dashing Demi Armendez (Ricardo Montalban), prefers an ...
Clark Gable's final effort for his longtime home studio MGM, Betrayed is an exciting espionage thriller set during World War II. Intelligence agent Gable is ordered to keep tabs on suspected Nazi collaborator Lana Turner (a brunette for the occasion). Both Gable and Turner join the Dutch underground, making contact with a flamboyant resistance ...
It is said that producer Sam Goldwyn had a habit of addressing his new star of the 1940s, Danny Kaye, as "Eddie", confusing Kaye with Eddie Cantor. If true, it may be because Kaye's first starring film for Goldwyn, Up in Arms, was a remake of Cantor's Whoopee--which in turn was a musical version of that old theatrical chestnut The Nervous Wreck. ...
Lana Turner stars as an ambitious model who seeks her fortune in New York City. She is befriended by over-the-hill cover-girl Ann Dvorak, whose performance carries the story until she commits suicide twenty minutes into the film. Turner promises herself that she won't end up burned out like Dvorak, but as her fame grows, she is inexorably drawn ...
Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an accused WWII traitor, commits suicide. American secret ...
When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz beat the odds against TV stars succeeding on the big screen in The Long, Long Trailer (1954), MGM contracted America's favorite couple for a second theatrical feature. Forever Darling casts Desi as Lorenzo Xavier Vega, a brilliant scientist and Lucy as Susan, his neglected wife. Wishing out loud that her husband ...
Judy Garland was originally slated to star in MGM's film version of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, but she was forced to pull out of the production due to illness (recently discovered out-takes reveal a gaunt, dazed Garland, obviously incapable of completing her duties). She was replaced by Betty Hutton who, once she overcame the resentment ...
One critic has noted that The Prodigal was aptly titled, inasmuch as it was all too prodigal with the funds of the then-flagging MGM studios. In its retelling of the 22-verse Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, the film helpfully fills in the story details inconsiderately left out of the Old Testament. Edmond Purdon plays Micah, the wastrel son of ...
First filmed in 1928, Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey is given a ponderous treatment in this 1944 remake. Like the novel, the film begins at the end, with the collapse of a rope bridge in 18th century Peru. The story then flashes back to the lives of the five unfortunates killed in the collapse. Among the five ...
RKO Radio's spectacular production The Last Days of Pompeii utilizes the title but precious little else of the famous Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton historical novel (at least the film admits as much in the opening credits). Preston S. Foster stars as Marcus, a happy-go-lucky Ancient Roman blacksmith who is plunged into the depths of despair when his ...
Lois Weber was generally championing something or someone in her films; this time around it's underpaid white-collar workers. Professor Griggs (Phillip Hubbard) can barely afford to support his wife (Margaret McWade) and daughter, Amelia (Claire Windsor). Amelia works at a library and she has three suitors -- carefree college boy Phil West (Louis ...
Leave it to MGM to turn the Korean War into a splashy, big-budget, all-star extravaganza. Men of the Fighting Lady is set on the US aircraft career of the same name. Van Johnson stars as Lt. Howard Thayer, while other MGM stalwarts in the cast include Walter Pidgeon, Kennan Wynn and Louis Calhern. The film's highlight is the famous fact-based ...
Lana Turner stars in this musical/romantic comedy amalgam from director Mervyn Leroy. Turner plays Nora Taylor, a wealthy heiress who finds herself seeing a psychiatrist because she can't decide whether she is loved for herself or her money. When her rich boyfriend (John Lund) takes off for Brazil, Nora tags along with him, hinting that the trip ...
Louis Calhern repeats his Broadway role as Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in this 1950 cinemazation of Emmet Lavery's stage play The Magnificent Yankee. The film is for the most part confined to the Holmes home in Washington, where the good gray judge parries affectionately with his level-headed wife Fanny (Ann Harding). A steady stream of ...
Rhapsody is high-gloss soap opera in the grand MGM manner. Elizabeth Taylor stars as Louise Durant, the beautiful but spoiled daughter of millionaire Nicholas Durant (Louis Calhern). Accustomed to getting whatever she wants, Louise sets her sights on violin student Paul Bronte (Vittorio Gassman). Before long, however, she tires of Paul's all ...
Though only 19, Loretta Young was an established Hollywood star in 1932, appearing in six films in that year alone. In They Call It Sin, Young plays Marion, a church organist in a picturesque Kansas village. She falls in love with visiting city slicker Jimmy (David Manners) -- who, worse luck, is already married to Enid (Helen Vinson). Arriving in ...
One of themost acclaimed films to emerge from Republic studios, The Red Pony is an adaptation of the John Steinbeck story of the same name. Top billing goes to Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum, but the film's true star is young Peter Miles as Tom. A lonely farm boy, Tom seeks refuge from his troublesome home life and his eternally squabbling parents ...
Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph is a complicated war romance directed by Lewis Milestone. Dr. Ravic (Charles Boyer) is a refugee physician practicing medicine illegally in Paris under a false name. He saves Joan Madou (Ingrid Bergman) from committing suicide after the sudden death of her lover. He gets her a job singing ...
Having proven their box-office value in such films as A Letter of Introduction, Goldwyn Follies and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his wise-lipped dummy Charlie McCarthy were awarded with a starring vehicle of their own. While entertaining at the home of magazine publisher Court Aldrich (Samuel S. Hinds), Bergen and ...
Two barbers from an Indian reservation (Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey) are sent as the delegates of the Adoop tribe to an international peace convention in Geneva. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
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