Charley Grapewin

  • Nick Grinde – Sudden Money (1939)

    Nick Grinde1931-1940ComedyDramaUSA
    Sudden Money (1939)
    Sudden Money (1939)

    Synopsis:
    Promises of happier times dawn for the financially distressed Patterson family when father Sweeney and brother-in-law Archibald “Doc” Finney win a $150,000 grand prize in the sweepstakes contest. With their windfall, each member of the family decides to pursue a dream. Drummer Sweeney reorganizes his old high school ragtime band, while Doc bankrolls his own horse betting system. Mother Elsie, who won an art contest in high school, takes up the easel and paint brush, while daughter Mary enrolls in finishing school in hopes of snagging a rich husband, and Junior is shipped off to military school. Grandpa Casey Patterson, meanwhile, thinks that the whole brood has taken leave of their senses. Clouds begin to darken the family’s dreams when Sweeney hires the comely Yolo to spice up his band, and Mr. Jordan, the wealthy father of Mary’s suitor, Johnny Jordan, pays a surprise visit to the family and is shocked to find Yolo balancing on Sweeney’s back.Read More »

  • John Ford – Tobacco Road (1941)

    1941-1950ComedyDramaJohn FordUSA

    Shiftless Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his family of hillbilly stereotypes live in a rural backwater where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank’s plans to take over the land for more profitable farming; subplots involve the affairs and marriages of son Dude (William Tracy) and daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney).Read More »

  • Kurt Neumann – Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940)

    1931-1940Kurt NeumannMysteryUSA

    Ralph Bellamy made the first of four appearances as fictional sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia’s “Ellery Queen, Master Detective”. For reasons that defy logic, the studio elected to transform the brilliant, analytical Queen into a hopeless bumbler, who seems incapable of tying his own shoes, much less solving a murder. Set at a posh health resort, the story gets under way when wealthy physical culturalist John Braun (played by former director Fred Niblo) is killed after threatening to cut all his heirs out of his will. Read More »

  • Frank Borzage & George B. Seitz – Big City (1937)

    Drama1931-1940ClassicsFrank BorzageGeorge B. SeitzUSA

    Plot:
    Celebrate the short career (10 Hollywood films and two Oscars®*) and long life (100 years young in 2010 and an honored participant in the TCM Classic Film Festival) of one of the screen’s nonpareil stars with this threesome of the fourth, fifth and sixth films Luise Rainer made in Tinseltown. The Viennese beauty portrays a Czarist Russian spy alongside William Powell in the ornate The Emperor’s Candlesticks. Cabbie Spencer Tracy and his immigrant wife Rainer struggle to make a life for themselves in the Big City while coping with a bitter labor dispute between organized and freelance cab drivers. And Rainer is a reckless Southern belle who marries the man her sister loves but flees to the arms of a wastrel playboy in The Toy Wife. From Warner Brothers!Read More »

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