Only Angels Have Wings is one of the most buoyantly entertaining movies in the American cinema. It is also a razor-sharp example of the action-oriented films of Howard Hawks, the wide-ranging auteur who would go on to make To Have and Have Not, Rio Bravo and Red River.Read More »
The son of a snobbish Wall Street banker becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family not realizing that his father is trying to force her family from their home for a real estate development.Read More »
Synopsis:
A New York bank clerk,Mollie Truesdale (Jean Arthur), in the late 1930s, finds that her cherished dream of making a 17-day all-expenses-paid bus trip to the Pacific Coast and back, isn’t all she thought it would be…until she reaches Oregon and a bucking broncho tosses a rodeo performer on top of her and knocks her flat. Duke Hudkins (John Wayne), by way of apology, shows her the sights of Fairfield, Oregon, and she misses her bus, quarrels with the bewildered Duke, hitchhikes across a lot of desert…and a romance is born.Read More »
Wealthy shipowner Bruce Vail is insanely jealous of wife Irene, who divorces him for that reason. Vail schemes to get Irene in trouble with a hired gigolo; but passerby Paul Dumond rescues her, and Paul and Irene fall in love, much to Vail’s dismay.Read More »
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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) is producer/director Frank Capra’s classic comedy-drama, and considered by many to be his greatest achievement in film (and reminiscent of his earlier film, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936)). [In fact, the film project by Columbia was first announced as Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington starring Gary Cooper, in a role similar to his previous Longfellow Deeds character.]Read More »
Warner Oland makes the first of four screen appearances as Sax Rohmer’s insidious oriental Dr. Fu Manchu. The film makes an effort to explain Fu’s hatred of all whites by showing the death of the Doctor’s family during the Boxer Rebellion. Twenty years later, Fu Manchu is a full-blooded villain using a hypnotized Jean Arthur to help wipe out the British family Fu holds responsible for the deaths of his loved ones. But when Arthur falls in love with potential victim Neil Hamilton, Dr. Fu is forced to add her to his death-list. Weakened only by the excessive “silly-ass Englishman” comedy relief of William Austin, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu is a rapid-fire adventure devoid of early-talkie clumsiness.Read More »
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Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur), an upright Iowa Republican member of Congress, travels to Berlin to look into reports of corruption among the occupying American forces. She enlists an Army captain (John Lund) in her crusade and finds herself falling for him, unaware that he’s the man romantically involved with a German cabaret singer (Marlene Dietrich) who can lead army investigators to a high-level Nazi war criminal. The post-war public was not ready to accept such a witty expose of American and German hypocrisy during its original release but A FOREIGN AFFAIR is now considered one of Wilder’s most underrated and iconic films. The black and white cinematography by Charles Lang and the screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett and Richard L. Breen received Oscar® nominations.Read More »
Synopsis:
Ordinary man-in-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones leads a very straightforward life. He’s never late for work and nothing interesting ever happens to him. One day everything changes: he oversleeps and is fired as an example, he’s then mistaken for evil criminal killer Mannion and is arrested. The resemblance is so striking that the police give him a special pass to avoid a similar mistake. The real Mannion sees the opportunity to steal the pass and move around freely and chaos results.Read More »
Synopsis:
The simple story of a Wyoming range war is elevated to near-mythical status in producer/director George Stevens’ Western classic Shane. Alan Ladd plays the title character, a mysterious drifter who rides into a tiny homesteading community and accepts the hospitality of a farming family. Patriarch Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) is impressed by the way Shane handles himself when facing down the hostile minions of land baron Emile Meyer, though he has trouble placing his complete trust in the stranger, as his Marion (Jean Arthur) is attracted to Shane in spite of herself, and his son Joey (Brandon De Wilde) flat-out idolizes Shane. When Meyer is unable to drive off the homesteaders by sheer brute strength, he engages the services of black-clad, wholly evil hired gun Jack Wilson (Jack Palance)…Read More »