Arthur Belasco Movies

This might be a film about junk mail...but it isn't. Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main are teamed again for this rambunctious western comedy. Beery plays a horse thief who romances saloon owner Main. His goal is to marry the lady and take over her lucrative mail route. He accidentally becomes a hero; she completes the reformation. Jackass Mail made money, but it just wasn't the same as the classic Wallace Beery/Marie Dressler combo of the 1930s. Great title, though. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This fourth entry in MGM's Thin Man series could just as well have been titled "Nick and Nora Charles Go to the Races". Officially retired from sleuthing, Nick Charles (William Powell) does his best to be a dutiful husband to his lovely wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and a good father to his young son Nick Jr. (Dickie Hall). But when murder rears its ugly head at the local race track, Nick is called in by Major Jason I. Sculley (Henry O'Neill), head of the New York athletic commission, to help solve the case. As usual, there is no shortage of suspects: This time the "rogue's gallery" includes high-rolling gamblers Link Stevens (Loring Smith) and Fred Macy (Joseph Anthony); Link's hoity-toity girlfriend Claire Porter (played by legendary acting teacher Stella Adler); two-bit tout "Rainbow" Benny Loomis (Lou Lubin); reporters Whitey Barrow (Paul Kelly) and Paul Clarke (Barry Nelson); and Clarke's sweetheart Molly Ford (Donna Reed). Highlights include a zany episode on a department-store merry-go-round, an outsized brawl at a fancy sea-food restaurant, and the inevitable gathering together of suspects in the offices of police lieutenant Abrams (Sam Levene). The flippant nature of Shadow of the Thin Man can be attributed to screenwriters Irving Brecher and Harry Kurnitz, both longtime friends and associates of comedian Groucho Marx. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This box-office smash comedy of manners featured the popular Myrna Loy as Margot Sherwood Merrick, the stodgy editor of a glamorous women's fashion magazine. To protect herself from suitors and jealous wives of businessmen, she wears a gold band on the third finger of her left hand and pretends that she is married. But the wolfish artist Jeff Thompson (Melvyn Douglas) is undeterred. After his efforts to romance Margot fail repeatedly, her icy exterior finally melts and the two become involved. She then has to explain the ring to all her cronies. Jeff's idea is to pretend to be her long-lost husband, but this plan backfires and leads to some comic complications. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

When Walter Pidgeon wasn't playing Greer Garson's perfect husband at MGM, he could usually be found portraying a newspaper editor. This is how we find him in My Dear Miss Aldrich, the first MGM flick in which Pidgeon was awarded top billing. Maureen O'Sullivan plays the title character, a glamorous schoolteacher who receives an inheritance from a wealthy relative. That legacy turns out to be the very newspaper managed by Mr. Pidgeon--and the usual fireworks result. My Dear Miss Aldrich was written by Herman J. Mankiewicz, a former newspaperman who would cap his cinematic reminiscences with his 1940 screenplay for Citizen Kane. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary was a notorious bestseller upon its publication in 1931, and while it was successful enough that Paramount Pictures quickly snapped up the film rights, they were forced to change enough of the story to make it fit for the screen (even in the "pre-code" era) that by the time it reached theaters the title had been changed to The Story of Temple Drake. Temple (Miriam Hopkins) is a free-spirited girl being raised by a well-respected judge (Guy Standing) after the death of her mother. Temple has a wild streak and a taste for liquor and men she can bend to her will, and while principled lawyer Stephen Benbow (William Gargan) wants to marry her, she's not willing to settle down. While joyriding with Toddy Gowan (William Collier Jr.), a young man with more bravado than sense who wrecks their car, Temple ends up in the decaying home of Lee Goodwin (Irving Pichel), who with leering, sharp suited gangster Trigger (Jack La Rue) makes and sells moonshine. While Lee's life Ruby (Florence Eldridge) and dim-witted helper Tommy (James Eagles) try to protect Temple, cold-hearted Trigger shoots Tommy, rapes Temple and takes her away to the city, where she falls into a relationship with the gangster governed by both attraction and fear. While the most sordid aspects of Sanctuary were excised by screenwriter Oliver H.P. Garrett and director Stephen Roberts, The Story of Temple Drake was still quite controversial on its initial release, and within a few months of its release, Will Hayes and Joseph Breen overhauled the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's production code and strengthened enforcement of its guidelines on content, making it virtually impossible for a major studio to make a film like it again until the 1960s. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi