When Columbia Pictures secured the movie rights to Chic Young's popular comic strip Blondie, the studio executives probably never imagined that the ensuing "Blondie" series would last for 12 years and 28 episodes! Part of the series' charm was Columbia's wisdom in casting the ideal actors for the leading roles. Penny Singleton dyed her hair blonde ...
The "Crime Club" detective-novel series spawned a film counterpart in 1935, which for the next four years bounced around such studios as Warner Bros., Universal, and Chesterfield. The last-named company's contribution was Murder at Glen Athol, based on a novel by Norman Lippincott. Usually cast as an oily villain, John Miljan heads the cast as ...
Columbia's new "Blondie" series continued its winning streak with its fourth entry, Blondie Brings Up Baby. So much happens within the film's 67 minutes that it's best to boil things down to the central storyline. Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms), the six-year-old son of Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead (Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake) disappears from ...
Anxious to do her bit for the war effort, Blondie (Penny Singleton) joins the Housewives of America, a home defense league. Husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) soon finds that Blondie is neglecting her responsibilities at home in favor of her war work; also disgruntled are Dagwood's chauvinistic boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) and a newlywed husband ...
Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) is invited by his boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) to accompany Dithers on an ocean cruise to South America. Dagwood's whole family comes along, including wife Blondie (Penny Singleton), son Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) and Daisy the dog and her pups. Just before sailing, Dagwood is compelled to stay behind and watch ...
Like many Chesterfield-Invincible films of the era, In Love with Life is built around the talents of a prominent character -- in this case, curmudgeonly Claude Gillingwater Sr. Having disowned his daughter Sharon (Lila Lee), mean old millionaire Morley adopts his grandson (Dickie Moore), the only person he truly cares about. Comes the Wall Street ...
In Condemned to Live, Ralph Morgan stars as Professor Paul Kriston, the kindly and generous doctor of a tiny European village. So well-liked is Kriston that the beautiful Marguerite Mane (Maxine Doyle) is willing to marry him, even though she loves another man, young David (Russell Gleason). Things take a sinister turn when a series of murders ...
When a patient dies of heart failure, society doctor Michael Travers (Lew Cody), takes an interest in her 14-year-old daughter Judy (Sally O'Neil), whom he makes his ward. Against the wishes of his fiancée, socialite Diane Manners (Aileen Pringle), Michael leaves for an extended business trip to Europe. Upon his return three years later, the good ...
The basic difference between the Chesterfield and Invincible productions of the 1930s is that most of the Chesterfields were directed by Richard Thorpe, while the Invincibles were helmed by Frank Strayer (in truth, both studios were one in the same!) It was Strayer at the controls for Twin Husbands, a sharply-turned comedy melodrama dominated by ...
Eccentric professor Einfeld (Lee Kohlmar) is lecturing a select group of scientists at a darkened planetarium when one of the spectators is shot to death. Homicide detective Ted Mallory (Russell Hopton) can't get a straight story from the witnesses and refuses to allow reporter Kay Palmer (Lola Lane) to file her story until he can determine the ...
A sophisticated, expensively-dressed group of people gather in a spooky old mansion to watch the first performance of a play. The highlight of the production is a realistic on-stage murder, wherein the victim is shot point-blank, right through the heart, as the clock strikes 12. The audience applauds enthusiastically as the "victim" falls dead, ...
In this drama, a gun moll eludes the pursuing police by hiding out on a fishing vessel. There she meets and falls in love with captain. They get married, and she quietly--he knows nothing of her past--goes straight. Trouble ensues when the police finally capture her. Though she has a baby, they send her to prison anyway. This leads the captain to ...
Bloodsucking winged creatures who may take human shape appear to have returned after centuries of dormancy to the middle-European municipality of Kleinschloss in this atmospheric, low-budget thriller from small-scale Majestic Pictures, and the burgomaster (Lionel Belmore) demands answers. With victims scattered everywhere, all bearing the ...
It is difficult to believe that this ultra-cheapie ever actually scared anyone; it's just possible that audiences laughed as loudly at the film in 1932 as they do today. On a dark and stormy night, Hero and heroine Rex Lease and Vera Reynolds head to Reynolds's ancestral mansion to claim her inheritance. Everyone in the house takes great delight ...
Harrison Ford (the original silent era Harrison Ford) and 1924 WAMPAS Baby Star Alberta Vaughn starred in this comedy-thriller from low-budget Mayfair Pictures Corp. When fussy Ronald Courtney (Tyrell Davis) spots his fiancée, Betty (Vaughn), winking at Donald Ransome (Ford) at a friend's wedding, he demands that they get married that very night. ...
Produced at the little Tec Art studio by sound engineer Ralph M. Like, this film is one of those modest whodunits where the lights go out and someone inevitably gets hit over the head with a blunt instrument. This time, the crew and passengers from a Los Angeles-bound plane seek shelter from the fog in a deserted yet fully furnished farm house. As ...
As cheap as any other poverty-row talkie, Dragnet Patrol possesses a breezy charm that is hard to resist. Glenn Tryon stars as a rambunctious sailor who marries carnival cutie Vera Reynolds. For her sake, he hires himself out to shady business entrepreneur Walter Long, only to face extermination when Long's faithless wife Symona Boniface "comes on ...
Priscilla Dean was one of the major star names of the early 1920s. By the time the all-talking quickie Behind Stone Walls was made, however, Ms. Dean was taking any job she could get. Here she plays an adulterous wife who kills her lover. Eddie Nugent, Dean's loyal stepson, confesses to the crime himself and is carted off to prison, but eventually ...
This drama is based on a true story and chronicles the story of a veteran musician who must give up his beloved career after he is terribly injured in an auto accident. His children do little to help their struggling father. His daughter marries a wealthy man and bears a musically talented son. To tutor him, his mother unknowingly hires her ...
In the tradition of the classic scare piece Banquo's Chair, The Ghost Walks features one phony spectre and one supposedly real wraith. An actor is hired for a high-society gathering to pose as a ghost. It's all part of a plan by a struggling playwright to stir up interest in his latest production. But just as the "faux" phantom is putting on his ...
Evidently inspired by Paramount's screwball comedy Three Cornered Moon, Chesterfield-Invincible Studio's In the Money is actually more entertaining than its costlier predecessor. The main characters are members of a zany, perpetually improvident family, all of whom take polite little bows as they're introduced to the audience by narrator-co-star ...
Down on his luck in 1934, Erich Von Stroheim accepted a leading role in the Chesterfield Pictures cheapie Fugitive Road, making lemonade from a lemon by offering his services as "supervisor of military detail" (according to some sources, he also contributed to the script). Set during WW I, the film concerns a menage a trois at a border outpost. ...
This drama is a compilation of stories occurring in the Empire State Building with the focus on topics such as bank failures, love scenes and odd clerks. ~ All Movie Guide
Few of Columbia's "Blondie" films went as far off the beaten path as the bizarre Blondie Has Servant Trouble. Things get under way when Blondie Bumstead (Penny Singleton) demands that her husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) request a raise from his boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale), so that Blondie can afford to hire a maid. But Dithers has no time for ...
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