Though it was hard to top the "pregnancy" throughline that permeated the second season of I Love Lucy, the series maintained its ranking as America's favorite TV program throughout its third year on the air. Back for more fun and laughter were Lucille Ball as wacky housewife Lucy Ricardo, Desi Arnaz as her long-suffering Cuban bandleader husband ...
Even though I Love Lucy was still America's top-rated series as it entered its fourth season, the producers -- including Desi Arnaz, who also starred as Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo -- decided it was time to freshen up the format a bit with a change of scenery. Thus, Ricky, his zany wife Lucy (Lucille Ball) and their friends Ethel and Fred Mertz ...
America's third most popular TV show during its first season, I Love Lucy skyrocketed to number one during Season Two -- no small thanks to the fact that the real-life pregnancy of Lucille Ball was brilliantly written into the script (though such was TV censorship at the time that the would "pregnant" could never be spoken). On January 19, 1953, ...
I Love Lucy boasted a new sponsor (General Foods, taking over from Philip Morris Cigarettes), a new director, and new addition to its writing staff for its fifth season on the air. Otherwise, it's the same old zany redhead Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) making life hilariously chaotic for her Cuban bandleader husband, Ricky (Desi Arnaz), and the ...
Mickey Rooney may have been born to play Mark Twain's legendary hellraiser Huck Finn, but 1939's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is so MGM-ized that Rooney seems to be sedated. Otherwise, this is a slick retelling of the Twain classic, with Huck escaping both the oppressive kindliness of the widow Douglas (Elizabeth Risdon) and the brutality of ...
In this musical comedy, a girl with a lively imagination gets in hot water when she tries to make her tall tales real. Gloria Harkinson (Deanna Durbin) is the teenage daughter of Gwen Taylor (Gail Patrick), a well-known Hollywood actress who has shipped Gloria off to a boarding school in Switzerland to keep the girl out of the public eye, partly ...
By the time the first 35 episodes of I Love Lucy had been shown on CBS' Monday night lineup, virtually everybody in America loved zany redhead Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), her Cuban bandleader husband Ricky (Desi Arnaz) and their landlords and best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance, William Frawley). The series admirably set up most of ...
The Fighting Seabees is Republic Pictures' rip-roaring tribute to the US Navy's Construction Batallions (C.B.), without whom no plane would ever have gotten off the ground during WW2. John Wayne stars as Wedge Donovan, head of civilian construction company stationed in a pre-Pearl Harbor South Pacific war area. Despite Donovan's pleas to the Navy ...
The 1936 comedy-mystery The Princess Comes Across might well have been inspired by a real-life incident during the silent-movie era, in which a crafty San Francisco stenographer hoodwinked the Hollywood elite into believing that she was a Spanish princess. Carole Lombard stars as an alluring Swedish beauty who travels under the name of Princess ...
This barely-disguised portrait of singer Fanny Brice led to Brice's lawsuit against 20th Century Fox for defamation of character, a case which was settled out of court. Alice Faye plays Rose Sargent, a New York singer of the 1920s who falls for handsome, cocky wheeler-dealer Bart Clinton (Tyrone Power in a role patterned on Brice's troubled real ...
In this drama an eager-beaver reporter loses his job when he prints a false story about a society girl. The unemployed reporter, anxious to redeem himself, then gets involves in a gangster backed smuggling operation. Meanwhile the wronged socialite falls in love with him. Unfortunately, he will not marry her because she is to wealthy. But when the ...
A semi-sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Columbia's Down to Earth is a camp- and kitsch-lover's delight. More beautiful than ever, Rita Hayworth stars as Terpsichore, the Goddess of Dance. From her perch Up Above, Terpsichore discovers that Broadway producer Danny Miller (Larry Parks) intends to put together a musical satire, lampooning herself and ...
In this frothy romantic adventure, Marlene Dietrich plays Madeleine de Beaupre, a devious jewel thief. After sneaking a valuable string of pearls away from jeweler Aristide Duval (Ernest Cossart), Madeleine attempts to flee Paris, leaving a trail that will instead implicate psychiatrist Dr. Pauquet (Alan Mowbray). While headed for the Spanish ...
Musical comedy star Eddie Cantor stars in this story, well suited to his talents, as Eddie Pink, a meek gentleman who works as a tailor and has a terrible crush on Joyce (Ethel Merman), a nightclub singer. Eddie buys a book (through the mail, of course) called Man or Mouse: What Are You?. Taking its advice, he tries to become more confident and ...
Released in April of 1962 to take advantage of the new baseball season and the enthusiasm surrounding some of its better-known players, this sports-oriented children's story by Walter Doniger centers around some ill-advised bragging by a young Little Leaguer. Hutch Lawton (Brian Russell) has just told his friends that he and his Dad are good ...
In this mystery, a private detective is falsely accused of murder by his secretary who wants to protect her little sister who has been formally charged with the crime. The detective must solve the crime before it is too late. To do so, he gathers all the suspects at a radio student and reenacts the crime. The killer is revealed. ~ Sandra Brennan, ...
Battling Hoofer is the reissue title of the 1936 James Cagney vehicle Something to Sing About. Cagney plays Terry Rooney, a New York bandleader who heads to Hollywood when he is offered a movie contract. The down-to-Earth Rooney resists the "star treatment," an attitude misinterpreted by movie executive Bennett O. Regan (Gene Lockhart) as ...
John Wayne is not the title character of Flame of the Barbary Coast: that honor goes to second-billed Ann Dvorak. Wayne plays a Montana cattleman who is lured into a San Francisco gambling joint by dance-hall girl Dvorak. Though Ann at first brings Wayne luck, he ends up losing his shirt to cardshark Joseph Schildkraut. Chastened by the experience ...
Rhubarb is an amusing, if not entirely faithful, adaptation of the H. Allen Smith novel of the same name. When Thaddeus J. Banner (Gene Lockhart), multimillionaire owner of the Brooklyn baseball team, passes away, he wills the team -- and his $30 million estate -- to his pugnacious pet cat Rhubarb. Banner's press agent Eric Yeagar (Ray Milland) ...
One of the most frequently revived of the Pine-Thomas productions of the 1940s, Wildcat is set amongst the oil fields of Oklahoma. With the help of his pal Chicopee Nevins (Elisha Cook Jr.), foresighted oil speculator Johnny Maverick (Richard Arlen) buys up a great deal of property in hopes of coming up with a gusher. Maverick's business practices ...
Produced on a reasonably lavish scale by the usually parsimonious Mascot Pictures, Harmony Lane was the first of three filmed biographies of 19th-century songwriter Stephen Foster (the others were Fox's Swanee River [1939] and 1952's I Dream of Jeannie, produced by Mascot's successor, Republic Pictures). Douglass Montgomery stars as Foster, with ...
The original title for Rancho Notorious was Chuck-a-Luck, which is also the title of the soundtrack ballad (written by Ken Darby) which unifies the plotline, à la High Noon. Frontiersman Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) wanders throughout the West in search of the man who robbed and murdered his fiancée. He is told that he'll probably find the ...
Best known to posterity as the third wife of Cary Grant, Betsy Drake enjoyed a substantial film career during the postwar era. In Pretty Baby, Drake plays Patsy Douglas, an enterprising young lady who always assures herself a seat on the subway by carrying a doll wrapped in baby bunting. Through a series of complications that could only happen in ...
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