George B. Seitz

Synopsis: from TCM
Johnny Davis, the son of gambler “Natural” Davis, Byron “By” Newbold, the son of crusading newspaper editor Barton Newbold, and Kate Pendleton, the daughter of Clare Pendleton, a wealthy widow and sportswoman, are schoolmates. Barton Newbold, who is determined to publicize Natural’s illicit activities, organizes a raid on Natural’s casino, which Natural foils by quickly transforming the gambling room into a musical recital. Newbold’s men follow Natural to Lucille Baker’s apartment, where Natural accuses her of blackmailing him and his sweetheart Clare, until he realizes that Lucille is dead. Natural finds a gun near the body, and as soon as he picks it up, Newbold’s men enter and accuse him of murder.Read More »

Quote:,This intelligent drama follows a group of medical scientists as they attempt to find the cause behind the dreaded yellow fever. It is just after the Spanish-American War, and Stone (playing Major Walter Reed) is head of a medical staff stationed in Cuba. Convinced he has found the carrier of yellow fever (nicknamed “yellow jack” by the men), Stone needs five volunteers from the US Army to serve as human guinea pigs. Montgomery heads up the enlisted volunteers, understanding well the unknown dangers of what he is about to undergo. Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
For a studio specializing in glossy soap operas, costume pictures and musicals, MGM made an inordinate number of “B”-grade crime thrillers in 1937. The first on the docket that year was Under Cover of Night, starring Edmund Lowe as intrepid sleuth Christopher Cross. This time the killer is an overachieving psychopath who strikes only at night, and is unaware that he is a murderer. Thus, the question here is not “who done it,” but rather — when will Christopher Cross catch on to what the audience knows almost from the beginning. The best performance is rendered by Henry Daniell as the respectable college professor who literally moonlights as the killer. MGM would resurrect the “Christopher Cross” character as a female private eye (played by Joyce Compton) in 1939’s Sky Murder. by Hal EricksonRead More »

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 »