Richard Barthelmess

  • Mitchell Leisen – Four Hours to Kill! (1935)

    Mitchell Leisen1931-1940ClassicsCrimeUSA

    Plot:
    Adapted from Norman Krasna’s Broadway hit A Small Miracle, Four Hours to Kill is a multi-plotted effort that can best be described as “Grand Hotel goes to the theater.” Richard Barthelmess stars as Tony, a condemned murderer, who is handcuffed to Detective Taft (Charles Wilson) while en route to the death house. Tony breaks loose and heads for the theater, where the man who squealed on him is attending a play. As the killer prepares to rub out the stoolie, the action cuts away to the romance between a hatcheck boy (Joe Morrison) and his girlfriend (Helen Mack), which is complicated by the clerk’s allegedly pregnant former love (Dorothy Tree). Another subplot involves unfaithful wife Gertrude Michael and her lover Ray Milland. All the various plotlines are knitted together in the climax, wherein Tony closes in on his intended victim.Read More »

  • Michael Curtiz & Lloyd Bacon – Alias the Doctor (1932)

    1931-1940DramaLloyd BaconMichael CurtizMichael Curtiz and Lloyd BaconUSA

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    SYNOPSIS: Karl Muller and his foster brother, Stephan Brenner, leave their farm in the Austrian countryside, and travel to Vienna to study medicine. Karl is in love with his foster sister, Lottie Brenner, and would rather work as a farmer, but in deference to the wishes of his foster mother, Mrs. Brenner, he studies hard and is named valedictorian of his class. Stephan, on the other hand, enjoys drinking and flirting more than studying. One night, while drunk, he performs an illegal operation on his girl friend Anna. After she becomes very ill, he confesses everything to Karl, who agrees to try to help her, even though he does not yet have his license. While Karl is with Anna, she dies, and he takes full blame for the operation in order to spare Mrs. Brenner’s feelings. He is not allowed to graduate and spends time in prison. After he leaves prison, he returns home to find that Stephan has died. Karl is eager to return to farming, but after he successfully operates on a boy injured in an accident in front of the house, Mrs. Brenner convinces him to pose as Stephan and continue his work as a surgeon.Read More »

  • William A. Wellman & Alfred E. Green – Central Airport (1933)

    1931-1940Alfred E. GreenDramaThrillerUSAWilliam A. Wellman

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    Plot: Jack Moffitt’s original story deals with the realities of work for 1930s fliers. Jim Blane (Richard Barthelmess) is booted from his job as a commercial pilot when investigators fault him for an airliner crash in rough weather. He meets circus barnstormer Jill Collins (Sally Eilers) just as her pilot brother crashes to his death, and becomes her partner both in the air and in bed. They check into hotels separately but always take adjoining rooms.
    Jim doesn’t believe in marriage for fliers, and Jill soon takes up with his younger brother Bud (Tom Brown), also a pilot. And Jim’s timing is also off … although Jill loves him, she accepts Bud’s offer of marriage. Jim takes off for dangerous jobs in parts unknown, but we know he’ll have to come back to claim what’s his. Plot summary by ethanedwards.Read More »

  • D.W. Griffith – Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)

    1911-1920D.W. GriffithDramaSilentUSA

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    Don Druker, Chicago Reader wrote:
    One of D.W. Griffith’s most beautiful films, a 1919 tale of the chaste love of a Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess) for the frail daughter (Lillian Gish) of a loutish boxer. It perfectly fuses all the elements of Griffith’s style: tender drama played off against scenes of violence; a rich, operatic sense of character and emotion; and a dreamlike acting style, given particular force by the subtlety of Gish’s performance and the strength of Barthelmess’s.Read More »

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