Mae Busch Movies

True Confession was one of the unfunniest of the "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, and its musical remake, Cross My Heart, isn't much of an improvement. Betty Hutton steps into the old Carole Lombard role as Peggy, a compulsive liar who'll do anything to help her attorney fiance Oliver Clarke (Sonny Tufts) get ahead. When it looks as though an unsolved murder case will be Clarke's ticket to success, Peggy, sticking her tongue in her cheek (as she always does when she's about to tell a whopper), glibly confesses to the killing. Peggy's plan is to allow her boyfriend to prove her innocence, thereby cementing his reputation as a man of integrity-but things don't go quite as planned. The subsequent trial is enlivened by the antics of looney Russian actor Peter (Michael Chekhov), who may or may not be the actual murderer. Betty Hutton's song numbers are just about as mediocre as the rest of the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Technicolor musical Masquerade in Mexico is Mitchell Leisen's remake of his own Midnight. Stranded in Mexico City without a dime, glamorous Angel O'Reilly (Dorothy Lamour) is rescued by wealthy Thomas Grant (Patric Knowles). But Grant's motivations are anything but altrustic. In order to get his wife Helen's (Ann Dvorak) mind off handsome bullfighter Manolo Segovia (Arturo de Cordova), Grant passes Angel off as a Contessa at a weekend party, reasoning that Segovia will switch his attentions to our heroine. Screenwriter Karl Tunberg has added a jewel-theft angle to the original Edwin Justis Mayer/Franz Spencer story, which improves things not at all. Masquerade in Mexico is admittedly a handsomer production than Midnight, but the remake lacks the sparkle of the original film's stars Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer, Mary Astor et. al. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bland former child actor Johnny Downs earns top billing in this low-budget horror film, but the real star is that most psychotic of all the mad doctors George Zucco. The British-born character actor plays Dr. Lorenzo Cameron, a discredited -- and quite mad -- medico who has discovered a way to turn his helper, Pietro (Glenn Strange), into a wolf man. The lycanthropic experiments succeed only too well and although Dr. Cameron spouts plans of turning his discovery into a weapon in defense of the civilized world ("men who are governed by one collective thought, the animal lust to kill without regard for personal safety! Such an army will sweep everything before it," Dr. Cameron promises), he instead unleashes his creation on those fellow scientists who had engineered his ouster from academia in the first place. Before long, however, the good doctor is unable to control the wolf man, who threatens to kill everything in his past, and only newspaper reporter Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs) and Lenora (Anne Nagel), Cameron's innocent daughter, may be able to stop the monster. A perennial cult favorite, The Mad Monster was released on the heels of The Wolf Man (1941), but cost a fraction of Universal's elaborate lycanthropic exercise. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Silver fox pelt thefts require the expertise of a federal investigator and his faithful canine. ~ All Movie Guide

Paramount's "B" pictures of the early 1940s were generally more interesting than their star-studded "A"s, as witness Women without Names. Ellen Drew and Robert Paige star as newlyweds Joyce and Fred MacNeil, whose honeymoon comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt when Fred is accused of murder. Railroaded into prison through the efforts of politically ambitious assistant DA Marlin (John Miljan), Fred awaits his doom on Death Row, while Joyce works overtime on the outside to clear her husband's name. Fred fate rests in the hands of Peggy Athens (Judith Barrett), the spiteful girl friend of Joyce's ex-husband, and the only person who knows the identity of the real murderer. Women Without Names was based on a play by Ernest Booth. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Shirley Ross plays an innocent young girl convicted for complicity in a crime committed by her boy friend (Lloyd Nolan). The male crook is sentence to six months on a prison farm populated by both men and women (segregated, of course). Ross is also incarcerated, suffering the cruelties of the sadistic male and female guards (including J. Carroll Naish and future "Ma Kettle" Marjorie Main!) Since this film leaves no cliche unturned, an escape attempt is inevitable, but Ross is ultimately rescued from her plight for the obligatory happy ending. Nowhere near as exploitive as the later Linda Blair films of the same ilk, Prison Farm was considered reasonably realistic in 1938, earning back its modest cost and then some. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anna May Wong, who cornered the 1930s market in Eurasian heroines, stars in Daughter of Shanghai. Wong is on the trail of the criminals who murdered her father. The villains are running an illegal-alien operation, smuggling cheap Chinese and Mexican labor into San Francisco and killing those unlucky souls who prove "inconvenient". Wong takes a job as an exotic dancer in a Central American nitery, hoping to trap the murderers in the act. Though J. Carroll Naish and Buster Crabbe are top-billed, the actual hero of Daughter of Shanghai is Chinese actor Philip Ahn, playing an FBI agent protecting Wong from the bad guys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The excellent box-office returns for the previous Laurel & Hardy comic operas The Devil's Brother and Babes in Toyland encouraged Hal Roach to cast the team in still another operatic adaptation, a self-styled "comedy version" of William Balfe's The Bohemian Girl. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play members of a gypsy tribe wandering through middle Europe sometime in the early 19th century. As if he hasn't got enough trouble trying to train dimwitted Stan to be a "first-class pickpocket," Ollie is also saddled with a faithless wife (Mae Busch), who is in love with dashing gypsy robber captain Devil's Hoof (Antonio Moreno). While trying to break into the palace of gypsy-hating Count Arnheim (William P. Carleton), Devil's Hoof is captured and flogged. In retaliation, Ollie's wife kidnaps Arnheim's little daughter Arline (Darla Hood of "Our Gang" fame) and leaves the child in Ollie's care, explaining that the baby is his ("I didn't want to tell her who her father was until she was old enough to stand the shock!") Twelve years later, Arline (now played by Jacqueline Wells) has grown into a beautiful young woman who's forgotten all about her aristocratic childhood, except whenever she dreams "she dwelt in marbl'd halls" (from the song of the same name). By coincidence, Arline one day finds herself wandering around the grounds of her ancestral home. She is captured by the Captain of the Guards (James Finlayson) and sentenced to be flogged, whereupon her foster-daddy Ollie and her drink-besotted Uncle Stanley race to her rescue. There's a happy ending for Arline, but not for Stan and Ollie, who wind up the picture with one of their famous "physical distortion" gags. A troubled production, The Bohemian Girl had to be extensively reshot and re-edited after previews because of the sudden (and still unsolved) death of co-star Thelma Todd, who was originally cast as the Gypsy Queen. It was decided out of respect for Todd to retain only one of her musical numbers and to refilm the rest of her scenes with other actors; as a result, Bohemian Girl is one of the patchiest and most uneven of the Laurel & Hardy features. Fortunately, Stan and Ollie's scenes are well up to par, especially the classic bit wherein Stan inadvertently becomes progressively drunker as he tries to bottle a cask of bubbling wine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a social worker employed by Traveler's Aid finally is able to show her love to a construction foreman responsible for building the Golden Gate Bridge. She has loved him for nine years and is delighted that they can finally be together. Unfortunately, both of them are so busy that it is difficult to be together. Fortunately, they do eventually connect. The film contains actual footage of the construction of the great San Francisco Bridge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this musical, an insurance agent falls in love with a pretty girl. When the self-righteous agent discovers that she is a cabaret singer, he dumps her. Soon after, his sister quits her telephone operator's job to become a chorine. Songs include: "Blue Sky Avenue", "Let's Put Two and Two Together", "I Like It That Way", and "Goin' to Town". ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Apparently inspired by Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet, Beloved is a lush, lachrymose musical romance set in Vienna, South Carolina and New York City. John Boles stars as Austrian composer Carl Hausmann, whose musical career is very nearly cut short during the 1848 revolution. Carl is whisked off by his mother (Dorothy Peterson) to the American South, where he establishes a respectable reputation in the years just prior to the Civil War. Forced to relocate to New York with his new bride Lucy (Gloria Stuart), Carl languishes professionally for several years, then gives up composing to support his wife and child as a music teacher. Tragedy strikes once more during the Spanish American War, when the Hausmann's son is killed. Carl and Lucy invest all their love in their grandson Eric (Morgan Farley), a Gershwin type who grows up to become a jazz musician in the post-WWI era. As Eric grows richer and more successful, the Hausmanns continue to live in genteel poverty, with Carl all the while struggling to finish the symphony he began so many years before. After an unpleasant episode in which Eric accuses Carl of "stealing my stuff," our nonagenarian protagonist finally hears his symphony in a radio broadcast arranged by his chastened grandson. Contented at last, Carl peacefully passes on. Ironically, leading lady Gloria Stuart was far more attractive when she really reached her 80s than when she was heavily made up as an old woman in Beloved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mae Busch never looked more menacing than she did in this Laurel and Hardy three-reeler. She plays a wealthy widow who was once dumped by an Oliver and has sworn to kill every subsequent Oliver that crosses her path. Stan and Ollie, blissfully ignorant of her scheme, see her advertisement in the personals section of the newspaper while working at their barber shop -- or "tonsorial parlor," as its window proclaims. Both of them decide to answer her ad, but Oliver only mails his own letter. She replies and has Ollie come to her mansion. Stan shows up not long after, having discovered his unmailed letter, and he now demands that he get half the cut -- not realizing how appropriate the term is. He has traded the barber shop away for a "gold" brick...and some nuts. It becomes clear to both Stan and Ollie that something is very wrong -- the butler, Jitters (Jack Barty), plays cards with an invisible deck, and their dinner, too, is invisible. Finally, Jitters confesses the widow's plan to cut Ollie's throat. Since the doors are all locked and the windows barred, it seems like there's nothing for the boys to do but stay up all night. This comedy has a number of similarities to 1930's The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, and even though it's not one of the duo's best, it still has a number of very funny moments. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide