Tom Fadden Movies

In this crime drama, a grizzled cabbie is scammed out of his life savings by a fake finance company. He tries to no avail to get police assistance. Finally he becomes a wanted criminal and escapes to California where he meets the girl who will become his wife. She helps him go straight by helping him set up a garage. When she gets pregnant, she talks him into to confessing his crimes to the police. He agrees, but before he goes, he decides to commit one last crime to ensure that his wife and child will not starve while he serves his prison sentence. He then steals a million dollars only to learn that the money is worthless. He is subsequently killed in a police shoot-out. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The assistant to a railroad president battles an evil empire builder in this 13 chapter adventure serial produced by Henry MacRae for Universal. The Hartford Transcontinental Railroad is advancing the line through Hell's Gate Pass when the project is stalled by an attack of marauding Indians. The raid is organized by King Carter (Harry Woods), who considers the land to be his, and a renegade half-breed known as Snakeye (Charles Stevens). During the skirmish, the railroad president's daughter, Claire Hartford (Anne Nagel), is kidnapped, and it is up to Jeff Ramsay (Dick Foran), Hartford's assistant, and his friend Tex Houston (Tom Fadden) to recover the girl. The war over the railroad line continues for 12 additional chapters until Ramsay and Carter meet face to face at the battle of Black Hawk. The Carter gang is wiped out by Ramsay and his new friend, Jim Jackson (James Craig) and a peace treaty is signed with Chief War Eagle (Chief Yowlachie). A star of Warner Bros. music Westerns in the mid '30s, Dick Foran, whose uncanny resemblance to Howdy-Doody was apparently never a handicap, is perhaps best remembered for playing Bette Davis' young suitor in The Petrified Forest (1936) and for starring opposite Abbott & Costello in Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Lola Lane and James Craig play explorers working on behalf of the British government. Lane and Craig have been assigned to venture deep into the wilds of Africa to retrieve the sacred skull of a long-deceased Sultan. Whoever possesses the skull will have total control over the native population--which is why several sinister gentlemen with Teutonic accents (America wasn't in the war yet, so no nationalities, please) also covet the skull. A reactivated volcano provides a rip-roaring climax for this Universal second feature. Zanzibar was based on a pair of short stories written by Maurice Tombragel and Maurice Wright, who collaborated on the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind formed the basis of Claire Booth Luce's satirical Broadway comedy Kiss the Boys Goodbye. By the time the film version came out in 1941, Gone with the Wind was yesterday's news, but the picture still manage to elicit loud laughter from moviegoers bombarded by bad news from Europe. When Broadway producer Bert Fusher (Jerome Cowan) decides to produce a lavish musical version of a best-selling civil war novel, he dispatches director Lloyd Lloyd (Don Ameche) and composer Dick Rayburn (Oscar Levant) to the Deep South, in search of a genuine Southern-belle leading lady. Lloyd and Rayburn end up on the Georgia plantation of Tom Rumson (Raymond Walburn), where they are forced to sit through an impromptu audition by Rumson's niece Cindy Lou Bethany (Mary Martin). Lloyd can't stand the girl, but Rayburn is enchanted by her-never suspecting that Cindy Lou is a phony, who prior to this meeting had never stepped below the Mason-Dixon line. Eventually, Lloyd and Cindy Lou fall in love and the show goes on. Many of playwright Luce's more pointed barbs have been blunted by the Hollywood censors, with the more pungent gags replaced by lavish musical numbers. Still, Kiss the Boys Goodbye is a lot of fun, especially whenever the magnificent Elizabeth Patterson (cast as Mary Martin's unreconstructed-southerner aunt) takes center stage. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

James Stewart's last Hollywood film before entering military service, Come Live with Me teams Stewart with the hauntingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr plays a wealthy Austrian emigree, in love with a married American publisher. The girl must quickly find an American husband or she'll be deported. Along comes Stewart, an idealistic (and starving) writer given to quoting poetry in moments of crisis. He marries her on a "strictly business" basis...but Love finds a way, especially after Stewart wins fame by writing a story about his companionate marriage. Come Live with Me served as the screen debut of 80-year-old actress Adeline de Walt Reynolds, who as Jimmy Stewart's grandmother launched a twenty year career as everyone's favorite matriarch. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Sundown Jim was the second of two 20th Century-Fox westerns starring football champ John Kimbrough. The story takes place in mountain country, providing a wintry backdrop for the standard western plot devices. Kimbrough is cast as US marshal Sundown Jim Majors, whose main purpose in life is to bring a deadly frontier feud to a peaceful end. This requires him to clean out the local criminal element, which he does with grim-visaged determination. Clocking in at a mere 53 minutes, Sundown Jim is as professionally assembled as its predecessor, Lone Star Ranger, but Fox's effort to make a film star out of John Kimbrough was foredoomed by his utter lack of acting ability. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of the most often revived of Abbott & Costello's early-1940s films, Pardon My Sarong casts Bud and Lou as Chicago bus drivers Algy Shaw and Wellington Pflug. At the behest of millionaire playboy Tommy Layton (Robert Paige), Algy and Wellington hijack their own bus and speed off to California so that Tommy won't be late for an important yachting race. Our heroes are hotly pursued by bus-company troubleshooter Kendall (William Demarest), while Tommy's trail is dogged by rival yacht-owner Joan Marshall (Virginia Bruce). Eluding Kendall when they inadvertently drive their bus into the ocean, Algy and Wellington are rescued by Tommy and Joan, who through a plot wrinkle have been forced to share the same yacht. After several days of drifting aimlessly across the Pacific, the yacht ends up on a remote South Sea Island, where Algy and Wellington flirt capriciously with the local native girls. Through a fluke, Wellington is served up as a sacrifice victim and ordered to enter a sacred volcanic mountain-which happens to be the hideout for jewel thief Varnoff (Lionel Atwill) and his gang. The story wraps up with a zany Sennett-like chase, with Wellington attempting to rescue the kidnapped Joan from Varnoff's speedboat. Filled to overflowing with hilarious sight gags, cross-talk routines and throwaway lines, Pardon My Sarong scores on two levels: as a devastating send-up of Dorothy Lamour jungle epics and as a first-rate vehicle for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. One one quibble: the film certainly could have done without the scene in which Bud invites Lou to commit suicide! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dashiel Hammett's The Glass Key, a tale of big-city political corruption, was first filmed in 1935, with Edward Arnold as a duplicitous political boss and George Raft as his loyal lieutenant. This 1942 remake improves on the original, especially in replacing the stolid Raft with the charismatic Alan Ladd. Brian Donlevy essays the role of the boss, who is determined to back reform candidate Moroni Olsen, despite Ladd's gut feeling that this move is a mistake. Ladd knows that Donlevy is doing a political about-face merely to get in solid with Olsen's pretty daughter Veronica Lake. It is Ladd who is left to clean up the mess when crime lord Joseph Calleila murders Olsen's wastrel son Richard Denning and pins the rap on Donlevy. As Ladd struggles to clear Donlevy's name, he falls in love with Lake--when he's not being pummeled about by Calleila's psychopathic henchman William Bendix. Far less complex than the Dashiel Hammett original (and far less damning of the American political system), The Glass Key further increased the box-office pull of Paramount's new team of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Each of Bob Hope's "My Favorite" films (My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, My Favorite Spy) was, by accident or design, a parody of a dead-serious movie genre. 1942's My Favorite Blonde, for example, was a takeoff of Alfred Hitchcock in general and Hitchcock's 39 Steps in particular. Two-bit vaudeville entertainer Hope gets mixed up with gorgeous blonde British-spy Madeline Carroll. The "maguffin" (Hitchcock's nickname for "gimmick") which ties the two stars together is a ring which contains the microfilmed plans for a revolutionary new bomber. Hope and Carroll are forced to take it on the lam when Hope is framed for murder by Nazi-agents Gale Sondergaard, George Zucco et. al. Highlights include Hope eluding capture by impersonating a famed psychologist (watch for Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer as Hope's most contentious "patient"). Madeline Carroll also got several opportunities to shine comedically, especially when she lapsed into cloying baby talk while posing as Hope's wife. Bob Hope was hesitant to work with My Favorite Blonde director Sidney Lanfield, having heard of Lanfield's reputation as an on-set dictator. However, the two got along so swimmingly that they would collaborate on such future top-notch Hope farces as Let's Face It (1943) and The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Cattlemen Robert Paige and Noah Beery Jr. run up against a shady syndicate, set up to squash the dealing between independent dealers and cattle buyers. Paige sets up his own exchange, in direct competition with cattle baron Thomas Gomez. He also falls in love with Anne Gwynne, daughter of a man killed by Gomez's top henchman Lon Chaney Jr. (billed misleadingly as "Chango the Mad Killer"). In the hands of Universal's resident serial director Ford Beebe, Frontier Badmen exudes an energetic pace that puts many an "A" picture to shame. Western fans were particularly gratified by the presence in the supporting cast of singing cowboy Tex Ritter and onetime silent-screen action star William Farnum. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

For reasons unknown, Paramount Pictures decided to dust off the 1926 George S. Kaufman-Herman Mankiewicz stage comedy The Good Fellows for its 1942-43 release schedule. Cecil Kellaway plays Jim Hilton, a small-town family man who neglects his wife and kids, preferring the company of his lodge brothers. He spends so much time with and money on "The Good Fellows" that he's soon hopelessly in debt. An unexpected third-act financial windfall saves the day, but Hilton shows few signs of mending his ways by fadeout time. The film might have seemed fresher had not the premise been done to death in the previous decade by Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase and other 2-reel comedians. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The fact that star Errol Flynn had been recently embroiled in a real-life rape trial only served to increase the box-office "pull" of Warner Bros. Northern Pursuit. Flynn is cast as Canadian mountie Steve Wagner, assigned to track down and capture downed Nazi pilot Hugo von Keller (Helmut Dantine) in the snowier Hudson Bay regions. Once Wagner and fellow mountie Jim Austin (John Ridgely) catch up with Von Keller, they pretend to be on his side, hoping that he'll reveal his espionage plans. Taken in, Von Keller leads the mounties towards a secret Nazi hideaway, where the Germans have hidden a huge bombing plane, to be used against North America. The fact that Wagner is posing as a Nazi sympathizer hardly endears him to Von Keller's hostage Laura McBain (Julie Bishop), but when the truth is revealed she professes her love for him. In the light of Flynn's recent legal problems, one line in Northern Pursuit invariably brought down the house in 1943: After assuring Laura that she's the only woman he's ever loved, Wagner/Flynn turns to the camera and quips "What am I saying?" ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi