James Kirkwood Movies

The winning combination of producer Benedict Bogeaus and director Allan Dwan once more struck box-office gold with Passion. Set in 19th century California, the film stars Cornel Wilde as a young rancher seeking vengeance for the murders of his wife Yvonne de Carlo and his parents. The guilty parties are a group of terrorists, headed by Rodolpho Acosta, whom Wilde, now a fugitive from justice himself, intends to knock off one by one. Loyally standing by her man is the sister of Wilde's slain wife, also played by Yvonne de Carlo (one character is demure, the other fiery). Featured in the cast is Raymond Burr as a police chief determined to follow the letter of the law--at least, until things get too personal. Passion was effectively color-photographed on location in the mountain ranges between California and Nevada. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director John Ford, notoriously difficult to please, regarded The Sun Shines Bright as his favorite film. Laurence Stalllings' screenplay is based on several short stories by Kentucky humorist Irvin S. Cobb, some of which had previously been cinematized in Ford's 1934 Will Rogers vehicle Judge Priest. Charles Winninger stars as Judge William Pittman Priest, whose down-home, common-sense approach to his job has endeared himself to most of the residents of his small Kentucky home town, while alienating many of the "better" people. Up for election, Judge Priest is challenged by a Yankee upstart who has most of the influential citizens in his pocket. Almost deliberately courting defeat, the doggedly honest Priest champions several unpopular causes. In the film's most memorable scene, the Judge arranges a fancy funeral procession for an impoverished town prostitute. The film retains much of the charm of its predecessor Judge Priest; unfortunately (at least by P.C. standards), The Sun Shines Bright also retains the most questionable aspect of the earlier film: the stereotyped routines of African-American comedian Stepin Fetchit. One hardly knows how to react to the sequence in which the supplicative Fetchit tries to hush up a defiant young black man who is in danger of being lynched (Ford plays this scene for laughs!) While Fetchit's participation will hardly endear the film to modern audiences, it is unfair to write off the rest of The Sun Shines Bright, which otherwise fully lives up to director Ford's affectionate assessment. Long available only in its 90 minute release version, the film has in recent years been restored to the 100-minute "director's cut." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Winning of the West was Gene Autry's first western vehicle for 1953. It was also one of Autry's better offerings, with the star cast as a territorial ranger with an uncharacteristically nasty streak. When a local newspaper publisher is slain by an outlaw gang, Gene hesitates to pull his gun because he recognizes his own brother (Richard Crane) as one of the outlaws. As a result, he is relieved of his duties and forced to fend for himself. After a series of hair-raising adventures, Autry is compelled to face his brother in a showdown. Somehow, a happy ending arises from all this, though it wouldn't be fair to tell how. Gene Autry is supported by his usual cohorts Smiley Burnette and Gail Davis; he also offers four musical numbers, of which "Find Me My Trusty .45" is the best. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The life of Stephen Foster, one of America's greatest and best-loved songwriters of the 19th century, sets the stage for this musical biography. Foster (Bill Shirley) is a shy bookkeeper who writes songs in his spare time. He is madly in love with Inez McDowell (Muriel Lawrence), but she isn't interested in him, and she eventually gives him the brush-off. However, Inez's sister Jeanie (Eileen Christy) carries a torch for Foster, and in time, he finds happiness with her. Jeanie's inspiration leads Foster to write some of his best known songs, which brings him success in the music business and allows him to leave bookkeeping behind. Along with the title tune, the soundtrack features such Foster classics as "My Old Kentucky Home", "Swanee River", "Camptown Races", "Oh! Susannah", "The Old Folks at Home", "A Ribbon in Your Hair", and "I Still See Her in My Dreams". ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The creative team of producer Harry Joe Brown and star Randolph Scott turned out some of the best westerns of the 1950s, and Santa Fe is no exception. Set in the years following the Civil War, the film casts Scott as Britt Canfield, one of four ex-Confederate brothers who head West to carve out a new life. While his three siblings (Jerome Courtland, Peter Thompson and John Archer) cast their lot on the wrong side of the law, Britt accepts a job with the Santa Fe Railroad. Inevitably, Britt is obliged to bring his wayward brothers to justice, though he knows full well that the person responsible for their downfall is "untouchable" gambling boss Cole Sanders (Roy Roberts). In a well-staged climax, Britt squares accounts with the evil Sanders and his hulking henchman Crake (Jock O'Mahoney). Curiously, many TV prints of Santa Fe were processed with the soundtrack slightly out of sync with the action. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rod Cameron and Wayne Morris star as Civil War officers who become federal agents. The duo is sent west to investigate a series of stage hijackings. The criminals tend to bypass gold and valuables, and are seemingly interested only in the weapons carried on these coaches. It turns out that the hijackers are secret secessionists, hoping to achieve victory for the Southern cause. Stage to Tucson manages to pack a passel of thrills into its 82 minutes, compensating for the film's paucity of plot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The saga of the Hatfield-and-McCoy feud is romanticized in Samuel Goldwyn's Roseanna McCoy. Newcomer Joan Evans stars as the title character, whose elopement with Johnse Hatfield (Farley Granger) serves to further fuel the flames of the deadly mountain feud. The opposing patriarches, Devil Anse Hatfield and Old Randall McCoy, are vividly realized by Charles Bickford and Raymond Massey. In West Virginia and Kentucky, the debate still rages over what started the hostilities, but there's no question that the end result was tragedy for all concerned. In Goldwyn's version, the feud comes to a halt because Roseanna and Johnse demand it; would that real life were this simple and clear-cut. Based on a novel by Alberta Hannum, Roseanna McCoy was released through the distribution channels of RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

All cruel jokes aside, actor Sonny Tufts did on occasion deliver something resembling a good screen performance. In the Columbia B-plus western The Untamed Breed, Tufts plays a Texas rancher hoping to improve his breed of cattle. The play is to purchase an expensive Brahma bull and allow the animal to commiserate with Tufts' bovine stock. Unfortunately the bull is not agreeable to this setup; it goes on a rampage, killing off much of the cattle on neighboring ranches. Untamed Breed wavers between some well staged dramatic sequences and the usual all-stops-out gunplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Allan Dwan directs the family-oriented drama Driftwood, starring nine-year-old Natalie Wood. Orphan Jenny Hollingsworth (Wood) is found in a rural small town in Nevada that is ravaged by Rocky Mountain fever. She meets the local doctor, Steve Webster (Dean Jagger), who is working on a research project. Steve plans on leaving the girl with his girlfriend, Susan Moore (Ruth Warrick), while he goes to San Francisco to do research. However, enny's dog attacks a little boy and gets taken away by Sheriff Bolton (James Bell). Jenny develops Rocky Mountain fever from the dog and gets deathly ill. Also starring Walter Brennan as Murph, Charlotte Greenwood as Mathilda, and Jerome Cowan as Mayor Snyder. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Detective Chester Morris and his nosy wife Jean Parker set up housekeeping in a small Reno hotel room, whence Morris conducts his investigation of a kidnap case. It appears that the abduction has some tenuous connection with a recent bank robbery. As Morris digs deeper, he finds that virtually all of his neighbors either have something to do with cases at hand, or else they have something to hide. Its screenplay sticking fairly closely to the source novel by Daniel Mainwaring (writing under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Holmes), No Hands on the Clock is a rare foray into mystery for Paramount's action-picture production team of Pine and Thomas. The title refers to a handless clock hanging inside a Reno mortuary--which of course turns out to be a vital clue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally designed for exhibition at the 1939 World's Fair, Land of Liberty is a 137-minute compendium of filmclips from past American historical epics. The project was sponsored by the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc. and supervised by Cecil B. DeMille, who also edited the film with the assistance of his crack Paramount production staff. The narration was written by old DeMille hands Jeannie MacPherson and Jesse Lasky Jr. and spoken by a talented team of uncredited announcers (one of whom sounded suspiciously like old C. B. himself). Clips from such Hollywood productions as America (1924), Abraham Lincoln (1930), Alexander Hamilton (1931), Show Boat (1936), Man of Conquest (1939) and DeMille's own The Plainsman (1936), The Buccaneer (1938) and Union Pacific (1939) are woven together into a chronological continuity, tracing American history from the Revolutionary War to the "present," which is largely represented by newsreel footage of President Roosevelt, the TVA project, and other current personalities and events. In later years, Land of Liberty was redistributed on the classroom circuit, with new footage added from historical dramas of the 1940s and 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

My Pal the King may not be the best of Tom Mix's talkie westerns, but it is the one that comes closest to the spirit of his silent films -- and it's the one that everyone seems to remember the most. The scene is a mythical European kingdom, where 10-year-old King Charles (Mickey Rooney) yawns his way through cabinet meetings dominated by the scheming, covetous Count DeMar (James Kirkwood). Escaping his royal environs, Charles scurries to the town square (actually the village set from Frankenstein!) where visiting Wild-West showman Tom Reed (Mix) is leading a parade. Quickly befriending Tom, Charles and his entourage are invited to a special presentation of Reed's travelling circus. Reciprocating, Charles welcomes Tom into the palace, where the down-to-earth Westerner introduces the young monarch to the concept of democracy. Sensing that Charles is being swayed by Tom's egalitarian point of view, the evil DeMar kidnaps the boy and traps him in the catacombs of the Count's country estate. As Charles's underground prison slowly fills with water, Tom and his buddies race to the rescue. In the best tradition of Universal Pictures, My Pal the King offers a million dollars' worth of entertainment on a very modest budget; in addition, the film offers the modern viewer a tantalizing glimpse of what Tom Mix's real-life Wild West Show must have been like (among the performers is former Olympic champion Jim Thorpe). The film falters only when star Mix comes "out" of the picture, exhorting the kids in the audience to imagine what it must be like for King Charles to experience his first western show; impressive though he is on a physical level, Mix was never much of a verbal actor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide