Don Ameche Movies

Bob Hope makes his first starring film appearance in 14 years in this made-for-TV movie. Hope stars as a seedy private eye, hoping to get one last good case before calling it quits. Don Ameche, a retired art thief reduced to working as a chauffeur, teams with his old friend Hope to solve the mystery of a missing painting. The unknown criminal has a murderous streak, resulting in a few close calls for the octogenarian heroes. Masterpiece of Murder is murder, all right, but definitely no masterpiece. Bob Hope appears to be sleepwalking, while Don Ameche does his utmost to breathe life in the tiresome proceedings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

His Aunt Sophie (Helen Westley) and his teacher Professor Heinrich (Jean Hersholt) are sure that Roger Grant (Tyrone Power) will be a famous classical violinist, but Roger's more interested in popular music. He and his friend, pianist Charlie (Don Ameche), audition at a saloon in San Francisco's Barbary Coast, using sheet music left by singer Stella Kirby (Alice Faye), which had been sent to her by a friend in New York, Irving Berlin. The number, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," proves to be a sensation, and Stella goes along with Charlie's plea to sing with the band, which soon becomes famous for its ragtime numbers. Charlie has fallen in love with Stella by the time they open at the Cliff House, but he soon realizes that she and Roger are in love. Stella is invited to New York by a famous producer, but Roger's against this, and angrily fires her, so Charlie quits, too. When Roger returns from World War I, he meets Stella, only to learn she and Charlie have been married for a year. Another year passes, and Charlie and Davey have formed a new band with Jerry Allen (Ethel Merman) as their lead singer. Charlie knows Stella still loves Roger, so he divorces her, but Roger sails for Europe with the new band. Back in New York, Roger is set for a major concert in swing at Carnegie Hall. Charlie tells Roger about the divorce, and that Stella still loves him. Unable to get a ticket, Stella listens to the concert in a cab. Explaining that he is playing it for one particular person, Roger and his band perform "Alexander's Ragtime Band" as their encore, bringing Stella into the theater, where she's reconciled with Roger. He brings her onstage to perform the number with his band. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

Don Ameche, an American news bureau chief stationed in London, is frustrated by the British government's censorship of his wildly speculative dispatches to the United States. Joan Bennett is the government Teletype operator assigned to make sure that Ameche doesn't send out any story that hasn't been cleared. At first adversarial towards each other, Ameche and Bennet fall in love while huddled in various bomb shelters during the 1940 London blitz. Clearly inspired by Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (40), Confirm or Deny was one of many "preparedness" films turned out by Hollywood in the months just prior to Pearl Harbor. Any political proselytizing, however, takes second place to the Don Ameche/Joan Bennett love story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hollywood's handful of Technicolor cameras got a real workout on 20th Century-Fox's Down Argentine Way. Don Ameche stars as Ricardo Quintana, the charming son of a less charming Argentine horse breeder (Henry Stephenson). Betty Grable is vacationing American heiress Glenda Crawford, who "collects" horses as a hobby. Separated by a family feud, Ricard and Glenda must endure all sorts of setbacks and misunderstandings before crossing the romantic finish line. Filmed on location, Down Argentine Way served to introduce Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda, performing a variety of sizzling South American numbers with her own band. Also on hand are the Nicholas Brothers, whose show-stopping dance number has been spotlighted innumerable times in various "best of Hollywood musicals" compilations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This remake of John Ford's classic WW1 drama Four Sons has been updated to the Europe of the late 1930s. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, four sons of German-Czech parentage go off in separate ideological directions. Chris (Don Ameche) remains loyal to the concept of a free Czechoslovakia; Karl (Alan Curtis) embraces the Nazi cause; Joseph (Robert Lowery) heads to America; and the youngest, Fritz (George Ernest), is drafted in the German army and is killed during the Polish campaign. The impact of the original film is somewhat muted here, since the political ramifications of WW2 were far more complex than those of WW1, and also because Archie Mayo isn't as good a director as John Ford. By far the best performance of the film is delivered by the great Russian stage actress Eugene Leontovich, making a rare screen performance as the long-suffering mother of the Four Sons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

En route to America, Irish immigrant Arleen Whelan is the victim of shipboard masher Raymond Walburn. Pushed away by the girl, Walburn is slightly injured, whereupon he brings up charges against Whelan and holds up her entry visa at Ellis Island. War correspondent Don Ameche comes to the rescue, but Whelan's problems are far from over thanks to her involvement with another immigrant, gangster Gilbert Roland. Gateway represents perhaps the best screen opportunity for 20th Century-Fox starlet Arleen Whelan, who faded from prominence in the 1940s. Other than that, the film is an intriguing glimpse of immigration procedures in the prewar years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, set in WW II, a Venezuelan rubber planter's son must travel to New York to try and secure a loan for the expansion of the family business. There he encounters an impoverished American girl whose fortune lies frozen in England until the war ends. To make ends meet, she rents her apartment to the Venezuelan and becomes his personal maid. Mayhem ensues as the two get involved in merry mix-ups, fall in love, fall out of love, and fall in love again. Eventually, she helps him get the loan he needs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This screwball comedy stars Claudette Colbert as Mary, the wife of bumbling but likeable banker Chris (Dick Foran). Foreign correspondent Joe (Don Ameche) Chris' best friend, is in danger of losing his job because he's not married (his boss insists that all his employees be married-and remember, bosses could get away with this in 1945!) Mary magnamimously offers to pose as Joe's wife, leading to all sorts of comic misunderstandings-the silliest of which finds Mary being accused of living in sin with her real husband. As one critic put it, "It's oh-ho time!" Guest Wife might have even been funnier had it not been hampered by the stringest censorship of the era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On the day of his death in 1943, the spirit of Henry Van Cleave (Don Ameche) obligingly heads for the place where so many people had previously told him to go. The immaculately dressed septuagenarian arrives at the outer offices of Hades, where he is greeted by His Excellency (Laird Cregar), the most courteous and gentlemanly Satan in screen history. His Excellency doubts that Van Cleave has sinned enough to qualify for entrance into Hades, but Henry insists that he's led the most wicked of lives, and proceeds to tell his story. Each milestone of Henry's life, it seems, has occurred on one of his birthdays. Upon reaching 15, Henry (played as a teenager by Dickie Moore) naively permits himself to get drunk with and be seduced by his family's French maid (Signe Hasso). At 21, Henry elopes with lovely Martha Strabel (Gene Tierney) stealing her away from her stuffy fiance Albert Van Cleve (Allyn Joslyn), Henry's cousin. At 31, Henry nearly loses Martha when, weary of his harmless extracurricular flirtations, she goes home to her boorish parents (Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main). Henry's grandpa (Charles Coburn) orders the errant husband not to let so wonderful a girl as Martha get away from him. Henry once more declares his love to Martha, and she can't help but be touched by his boyish sincerity. Twenty years later, Henry, now a faithful and proper husband and father, attempts to charm a beautiful musical-comedy entertainer (Helen Walker) so that she'll forsake his young and impressionable son. But Henry's gay-90s romantic approach is out of touch with the Roaring 20s, and he ends up paying the entertainer a tidy sum to rescue his son--a fact that amuses Henry's understanding wife Martha, who now knows that her husband is hers and hers alone. Ten more years pass: Henry dances a last waltz with Martha, whose loving smile hides the fact that she knows she hasn't much longer to live. Five years later, it is "foxy grandpa" Henry who must be kept in check by his conservative son Jack (Michael Ames). Finally, it is 1943: as he quietly drinks in the loveliness of his night nurse (Doris Merrick), the bedridden Henry contentedly breathes his last. His story told, Henry once again asks to be permitted to enter Hades. But His Excellency, realizing that the only "sin" Henry has truly committed is attempting to live life to the fullest, quietly replies "If you'll forgive me, Mr. Van Cleave, we just don't want your kind down here." While he allows that Henry may have some trouble getting past the Pearly Gates, the wait will be worth it, since his loving wife Martha will be waiting for him. His Excellency cordially escorts Henry to the elevator, giving the operator a one-word instruction: "Up." A charming delight from first frame to last, Heaven Can Wait is another winner from director Ernst Lubitsch, and his first in Technicolor. Samson Raphaelson's screenplay was based on Birthdays, a play by Laslo Bus-Fekete. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hollywood Cavalcade was a fictionalized history of silent films and the growth of the movie industry. Don Ameche portrays a character based on equal portions of Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith, while Alice Faye's silent star is an amalgam of Mabel Normand and Gloria Swanson. Ameche breaks into pictures with slapstick comedies, initiating the first "pie throwing" scene, with Buster Keaton the thrower and Alice Faye the throw-ee. Thanks to Ameche, Faye becomes a major comedy star, appearing in wild Keystone Kops chase comedies. But success goes to Ameche's head, and soon he's staging elaborate Intolerance-like historical spectacles. As Ameche's artistic aspirations climb, his relationship with the faithful Alice deteriorates. She finds solace with her young leading man (Alan Curtis) and becomes a top dramatic star. Having made and lost several fortunes, Ameche talks Alice into appearing in his "comeback" picture, but shortly before filming ends, she and her husband are in a serious auto accident. The husband is killed, and as Faye recuperates, Ameche agonizes over how he'll save his uncompleted masterpiece. He witnesses the premiere of Al Jolson's part-talking The Jazz Singer and decides to risk everything by scrapping his film and remaking it as a talkie. Faye, who's never really stopped loving Ameche, agrees to star in this new project. On a level of accuracy, Hollywood Cavalcade is for the birds, but it scores on its energetic performances and nostalgic appeal. As a bonus, several past movie greats appear in cameos: Al Jolson, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Jimmy Finlayson, Hank Mann and even Rin Tin Tin Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the popular Russian novel The Twelve Chairs, this stars Fred Allen as flea-circus impresario Fred Floogle. Learning that he's inherited $12 million from his uncle, Fred also discovers that the money has been stuffed in one of thirteen chairs that he's sold at auction. The rest of the film goes off on any number of hilarious tangents, each tied-in ever so tenuously to the plot. Included is an episode at the movies (Fred and his wife Binnie Barnes are continually escorted up several balcony steps and out several alleyway doors), a visit to Floogle's radio cohort Mrs. Nussbaum (Minerva Pious), a brief misadventure with Jack Benny (this time Benny has a hat-check girl in his hall closet, so that he can collect tips from visitors), an impromptu barbershop quartet session with Fred, Rudy Vallee, Don Ameche and Victor Moore, and a confrontation with the dreaded William Bendix mob (Bendix isn't really a gangster; he simply inherited the mob from his mother). Also weaving in and out of the proceedings are John Carradine as a crooked attorney, Robert Benchley as Fred's pompous in-law-to-be, Sidney Toler as a popcorn-munching detective, and Jerry Colonna as Fred's live-in psychiatrist. Two versions of this film exists, one without Fred Allen's ongoing voice over narration. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide