Though Rudyard Kipling's poem Gunga Din makes a swell recital piece, it cannot be said to have much of a plot. It's simply a crude cockney soldier's tribute to a native Indian water boy who remains at his job even after being mortally wounded. Hardly the sort of material upon which to build 118 minutes' worth of screen time-at least, it wasn't ...
The Informer, Liam O'Flaherty's novel of the the Irish "troubles" of the early 1920s, was first filmed in England in 1929, with Cyril McLaglen in the lead. When director John Ford remade The Informer in 1935, the role of the tragic Irish roisterer Gypo Nolan went to Cyril's brother Victor McLaglen. The scene is Dublin, during the Sinn Fein ...
Returning to the Ireland of his birth, director John Ford fashions a irresistable valentine to the "Auld Sod" in The Quiet Man. Irish-American boxer John Wayne, recovering from the trauma of having accidentally killed a man in the ring, arrives in the Irish village where he was born. Hoping to bury his past and settle down to a life of tranquility ...
The second of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only one of the three to be lensed in Technicolor. In an Oscar-calibre performance, 42-year old John Wayne plays sixtyish Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles. In his last days before his compulsory retirement, Brittles must face the possibility of a full-scale attack from the ...
Mae West butts heads with Victor McLaglen in Raoul Walsh's Klondike Annie, but the real victor was the Legion of Decency, whose censorship strictures transformed a saucy and spicy gumbo into something closer to chicken noodle soup. West plays Rose Carlton, the kept woman of Chan Lo (Harold Huber), who takes her from walking the streets to pacing ...
To say that Lady Godiva is historically inaccurate is a moot point, since most historians agree that the whole Lady Godiva story never happened. At any rate, Maureen O'Hara stars in the title role, as the rebellious Saxon wife of a Norman nobleman. To show her fidelity to her people, and to protest Norman taxation, Lady Godiva rides naked through ...
Originally filmed in Sepiatone, Let Freedom Ring is a satisfying Nelson Eddy musical with patriotic overtones. Set in the years following the Civil War, the story focuses on the battle of wills between Harvard-educated idealist Steve Logan (Eddy) and bullying railroad magnate Jim Knox (Edward Arnold). Launching a newspaper aimed at combatting Knox ...
In his second film for producer Sam Goldwyn, Bob Hope is felicitously teamed with luscious Goldwyn contractee Virginia Mayo. Hope plays Sylvester the Great, a two-bit entertainer "touring" the West Indies in the 18th century. Mayo is Princess Margaret, who is kidnapped by a rough, tough buccaneer known only as The Hook (Victor McLaglen). Through a ...
Contemporary viewers who go into Dishonored expecting a musty, dated espionage melodrama will be in for a surprise. Marlene Dietrich delivers a subtle and witty performance as a Viennese prostitute who offers her services as a spy during WWI. As "Agent X-27" our heroine proves invaluable to her superiors, seducing and betraying enemy officers with ...
Trouble in the Glen was one of several felicitous collaborations between Hollywood's Republic Pictures and England's Herbert Wilcox-Anna Neagle productions. Curiously, Ms. Neagle does not appear--just as well, since the film is dominated by Orson Welles. Introducing himself with a typically self-indulgent monologue, the porcine Mr. Welles plays a ...
In this Republic musical, all heck breaks loose when the girlfriend of an aspiring composer becomes a model for the starving artist who lives next door. The story takes place at the turn of the 19th century and is set in Miss Rich's boardinghouse, the temporary home of many young artists and performers hoping to make it big in New York. Songs ...
Beefcake star Jon Hall shows off his sleek physique in the exotic melodrama South of Pago Pago. The son of an island chieftan, young Kehane (Hall) defiantly opposes the efforts by crooked pearl hunter Bucko Larson (Victor McLaglen) to invade his domain. Larson and his minions hope to dissuade our hero by introducing him to seductive Ruby (Frances ...
At first concentrating exclusively on westerns and serials, up-and-coming Mascot Pictures began branching out in the early 1930s with such lavish star vehicles as Laughing at Life. Victor McLaglen is in his element as a devil-may-care globetrotting adventurer named McHale. After risking his neck in WWI, the restless McHale heads to Mexico for more ...
Packaged and sold as an outdoor actioner, Many Rivers to Cross is as much a comedy as anything else. Robert Taylor stars as 18th century trapper Bushrod Gentry, who is himself entrapped into marriage by the spunky Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker). Escaping his marital responsibilities (which were impressed upon him on threat of death), Gentry ...
This melodrama chronicles the enduring friendship between four boys in New York's Hell's Kitchen. As boys, the made a pact that they would meet annually to renew their friendship. Trouble ensues when one of the boys accidently sets fire to a building. Another boy took the blame. He went to reform school. Years pass before he is reunited with his ...
In this lovely John Ford film, Joyce Williams (June Lang) and her young daughter, Priscilla (Shirley Temple), travel to India to live on a British Army base with Joyce's father, Colonel Williams, Aubrey C. Smith). Once there, sweet, young Priscilla manages to win the love and affection of the soldiers and her curmudgeonly grandfather, and she ...
Previously filmed in 1929, Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol was lensed by director John Ford as The Lost Patrol in 1934. Sergeant Victor McLaglen is in charge of a World War I-era British cavalry regiment, stranded somewhere in the Mesopotamian desert. McLaglen hasn't asked for the responsibility: the commanding officer has been killed by an Arab ...
In this drama, Mary (Ava Gardner) returns to her small town after she becomes a success in the city. Meeting up with her old love, Kenny (George Raft), she discovers that he is still the unambitious, lazy man he was when she left, and she begins an affair with nightclub owner Lew Lentz (Tom Conway). When a jealous rivalry arises between Lew and ...
Long believed lost, this fascinating John Ford-directed silent film was rediscovered and restored in the early 1970s. Based on the 1926 novel by Donn Byrne, the film stars Hobart Bosworth as Irish "hanging judge" James O'Brien. Even on his deathbed, O'Brien cannot stop meddling in the affairs of his daughter Connaught (June Collyer), insisting ...
This RKO Radio programmer reunites Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen in an enjoyable rehash of their earlier Quirt-and-Flagg antics in What Price Glory. The two venerable action stars are respectively cast as Curtis and McGinnis, who after several years' hiatus rejoin the Marines as sergeants. While stationed in San Diego, they duke it out over the ...
Two of Hal Roach's short-subject stalwarts, Patsy Kelly and ZaSu Pitts, are teamed in the Roach-produced feature Broadway Limited. The whole story unfolds on a Chicago-to-Manhattan express train; among the passengers are Hollywood starlet April (Marjorie Woodworth), her producer Ivan (Leonid Kinskey) and her wisecracking secretary Patsy (Kelly). ...
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