Don Ameche Movies
Though his popularity rose and fell during his long career, American actor Don Ameche, born Dominic Amici in Kenosha, WI, was one of Hollywood's most enduring stars. He began his acting career in college, where he had been studying law. He had a natural gift for acting and got his first professional opportunity when he filled in for a missing lead in the stock theater production of Excess Baggage. After that, he forewent his law career and became a full-time theatrical actor. He also worked briefly in vaudeville beside Texas Guinan. Following that he spent five years as a radio announcer. He made his screen debut in a feature short, Beauty at the World's Fair (1933). Following this, Ameche moved to Hollywood where he screen-tested with MGM; they rejected him. In 1935, he managed to obtain a small role in Clive of India and this resulted in his signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. Ameche, with his trim figure, pencil-thin mustache, and rich baritone voice was neither a conventionally handsome leading man nor the dashing hero type. Instead he embodied a wholesomeness and bland honesty that made him the ideal co-lead and foil for the more complex heroes. He played supporting roles for many years before he came into his own playing the leads in light romances and musicals such as Alexander's Rag Time Band (1938), where he demonstrated a real flair for romantic comedy. In 1939, Ameche played the title role in the classic biopic The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. The film was a tremendous success and for years afterward, fans quipped that it was he, not Bell who invented the telephone; for a time the telephone was even called an "ameche." He continued working steadily through the mid-'40s and then his film career ground to an abrupt halt. He returned to radio to play opposite Frances Langford in the long-running and popular series The Bickersons. During the 1950s he worked occasionally on television.He began appearing infrequently in low-budget films during the '60s and '70s, but did not make a comeback proper until 1983, when he was cast as a replacement for the ailing Ray Milland in the comedy Trading Places. The success of this film brought Ameche back in demand. In 1985, the aging actor received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work as a retirement home Casanova in Cocoon. He followed up that role to even more acclaim in 1988's David Mamet-Shel Silverstein concoction Things Change, in which Ameche played the role of a impish shoemaker chosen to take the fall for a mob hit. Before his death in 1993, Ameche rounded out his career with brief but memorable performances in Oscar (1991) and Corrina, Corrina (1994). ~ Sandra Brennan, 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
- Starring:
- Alice Faye, Don Ameche, (more)
- 1993
- G
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Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, Disney's 1993 remake of the 1963 hit The Incredible Journey, follows three household pets as they travel across mountains and plains on their way to find their owners. A misunderstanding leads the animals to mistakenly believe that they have been abandoned by their loved ones, when in reality they have been left in the care of a friend while the family has moved from the country to the city for the father to take a temporary assignment . All three pets--a golden retriever (Don Ameche), a cat (Sally Field), and a bulldog puppy (Michael J. Fox)--can talk, and they bicker and crack jokes as they set off on a truly incredible journey chock full of misadventures as they wend their way back to their owners. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Hays, Kim Greist, (more)
In Old Chicago was 20th Century-Fox's spin on MGM's San Francisco--a personal saga played out against the backdrop of a famous 19th Century disaster. Alice Brady plays Mrs. O'Leary, a widow who brings her two young boys to the sleepy village of Chicago. As the city grows in prominence and prestige, so do the boys: One son (Tyrone Power) becomes a rascal who dreams of creating his own entertainment empire, while the other son (Don Ameche) matures into an honest, straight-laced lawyer. Both boys woo a beautiful singer (Alice Faye), who favors the more reckless of the two. As the headstrong son gains control of the more disreputable forms of Chicago entertainment, the serious son becomes the city's Mayor. The requisite rivalry between the two reaches a fever pitch just before their mother's cow knocks over a lantern and sets off the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The O'Leary boys unite in trying to fight the conflagration and rescue the populace; the mayor dies, and the wastrel son vows to mend his ways and help build a "new" Chicago. In Old Chicago is climaxed spectacularly by the famous fire, a masterwork of special effects courtesy of 20th Century-Fox's Fred Sersen. The film, which originally ran 115 minutes, is currently available only in its shorter (and better paced) reissue version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, (more)
- 1945
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
- Starring:
- Fred Allen, Jack Benny, (more)
- 1938
In this musical comedy of errors, David Brassard, Sr. (William Collier, Sr.) has his heart stolen from him by a conniving, gold-digging nightclub singer named Josette (Tala Birell). Brassard's two sons, Pierre (Robert Young) and David Junior (Don Ameche) are both horrified and vow to lure the temptress away from their dad. However, they somehow become convinced that the woman in question is Renee LaBlanc (Simone Simon), who is merely posing as a chanteuse in order to help out her friend Barney Barnaby (Bert Lahr), whose nightspot is in trouble. In time, Pierre and David Junior both realize that they've been chasing the wrong woman -- but they also realize that they've both fallen in love with her. The supporting cast includes William Demarest and Lon Chaney, Jr., the latter only a year before One Million B.C. would reshape his career and make him a star of horror and science fiction films. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Ameche, Simone Simon, (more)
- 1941
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
- Starring:
- Mary Martin, Don Ameche, (more)
- 1936
Ladies in Love transplants 20th Century-Fox's favorite film plot--three girls on the prowl for rich husbands--into the Budapest of the mid-1930s. Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young and Constance Bennett combine their earnings to rent a luxurious apartment, in hopes of attracting wealthy potential husbands. Young falls for a nobleman (Tyrone Power), who is engaged to another woman. She contemplates taking poison, but the lethal dose is accidentally ingested by Gaynor, whose plight results in a house call from Dr. Don Ameche, whom Gaynor has worshipped from afar. It is Bennett who snags the wealthy husband, middle-aged businessman Wilfred Lawson. Though Tyrone Power's part was small, he clicked immediately with the audiences, prompting the studio to give Power the big buildup. Ladies in Love would be reworked several times in the future, most obviously as How to Marry a Millionaire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young, (more)
- 1939
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
Lillian Russell is the sanitized musical biopic of the legendary (and much-married) 19th century musical comedy star. Discovered in 1880 by bandleader Tony Pastor (Leo Carrillo), Lillian Russell (Alice Faye) wastes no time rising to fame and fortune on the Broadway stage. Along the way, she curries the favor of such eligible bachelors as newspaperman Alexander Moore (Henry Fonda), composer Edward Solomon (Don Ameche), and railroad tycoon Diamond Jim Brady (Edward Arnold). She marries the first two, and has a high old time (albeit chastely) with the third. The story ends with Russell's retirement in 1912, and her reunion with the one true love of her life. The film's hands-down highlight is a timeworn but classic routine involving those two Broadway comedy giants Joe Weber and Lew Fields, both of whom had appeared on-stage with the real Lillian Russell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alice Faye, Don Ameche, (more)
- 1937
Slightly reminiscent of Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde (31), this screwball comedy features those two stalwarts of 1930s comedies: The brash reporter and the giddy heiress. Tyrone Power is the reporter, who makes his living writing about the foibles of the idle rich. His special target is heiress Loretta Young, the daughter of an influential financier (Dudley Digges). Young gets even by announcing her engagement to Power; now it's his turn to have his every movement scrutinized by the Public. Both reporter and heiress connive to embarrass one another, but (as expected) they're headed for the altar at fadeout time. Love is News was remade in 1949 as That Wonderful Urge, with Tyrone Power reprising his role and Gene Tierney in the Loretta Young part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tyrone Power, Loretta Young, (more)
- 1937
In this detective adventure, a young woman is accused of stealing a valuable necklace from her boss and takes off for Spain just before the Civil War. She is trailed by a detective form Scotland Yard. He finds her and soon falls in love and the two try to flee on a British ship. The story does not reveal whether the girl was innocent or not. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Loretta Young, Don Ameche, (more)
Paramount's screwball comedy Midnight is the first collaboration between director Mitchell Leisen and screenwriting duo Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. The film merges Brackett and Wilder's early emphasis on repartee and masquerade with ex-costume designer Leisen's flair for high style and sophistication. American Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert), a wily ex-showgirl, must impersonate Hungarian royalty in order to infiltrate the Parisian jet set. Midnight begins during a midnight rainstorm as Eve arrives penniless at Paris' Gare de L'Est, owning only the gold lamé gown on her back. She attracts the attention of Hungarian cab driver, Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), but walks out on their budding romance; Eve will no longer make the mistake of dating for love rather than money. Instead, she finds shelter from the downpour by crashing a socialite's late-night soirée using a pawnticket and a pseudonym, the Baroness Czerny (the cab driver's surname). There, Eve meets aristocrat Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore), who entices her with a place in society if she agrees to remain disguised as the Baroness and seduce his wife's playboy lover. Meanwhile, Tibor Czerny has not given up his search for Eve. When he locates her whereabouts and discovers the fact that she is using his name, Tibor also travels to the Flammarion estate -- to win back Eve, and to pose as her husband, the Baron. What ensues is quintessential screwball comedy, full of deception, love, quadruple entendre, and outright farce. Midnight remains Leisen's most heralded directorial effort, as well as one of Brackett and Wilder's earliest successes. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, (more)
The first of several remakes of 1938's Three Blind Mice, the Technicolor musical Moon Over Miami stars Betty Grable and Carole Landis as Kay and Susan Latimer, two Texas carhops who journey to Florida in search of a rich husband. The plan is to have Kay pose as a millionairess, while Barbara and the girls' Aunt Susan (Charlotte Greenwood) pretend to be Kay's domestic staff. The two most likely matrimonial candidates are Miami playboys Phil O'Neil (Don Ameche) and Jeffrey Bolton (Robert Cummings), but when Kay finds out Phil is broke, she reluctantly throws him over for Jeff. Happily, romance wins out over greed, and Kay is reunited with Phil-not that Jeff ends up empty-handed (guess who he gets?). The musical highlights include the hit tune "You Started Something" and an energetic dance specialty by the Condos Brothers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Ameche, Betty Grable, (more)
- 1991
- PG
Advertised as a comedy in the style of The Gods Must Be Crazy, the crime farce Oddball Hall bears little actual resemblance to that film but for the fact that it is set in a remote African village and centers on cross-cultural differences between the natives and a quartet of jewel thieves who have been hiding out for a few years waiting for the cops to give up their search so they can fence their loot and move to Rio. The crooks are allowed to stay because they have convinced the people that they are members of the fraternal order, Oddball Hall and have magical powers. These powers are put to the test when a naive native youth, the son of a chieftain shows up and they mistake him for the real leader of the Oddballs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1936
Norwegian skating sensation Sonja Henie made her Hollywood screen debut in the splashy 20th Century-Fox musical One in a Million. While preparing for the 1936 Winter Olympics, Swiss skater Greta Muller (Henie) is discovered by American theatrical entrepreneur Tad Spencer (Adolphe Menjou). This fateful meeting results in our heroine losing her amateur status, thereby disqualifying her from Olympic competition. But there's a happy ending for all concerned when Greta makes her spectacular New York bow at Madison Square Garden -- and wins the love of leading man Bob Harris (Don Ameche), to boot. Prominent throughout the proceedings are the zany Ritz Brothers, who reach their comic apogee with a roller-skating routine wherein the three silly siblings impersonate Captain Bligh, Peter Lorre and The Frankenstein Monster! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sonja Henie, Adolphe Menjou, (more)
Sylvester Stallone gives comedy another try in this farce set in the 1930s. Angelo "Snaps" Provelone (Stallone) is the wealthy and powerful head of the Chicago mob, but his ailing father (Kirk Douglas) doesn't approve of his life in crime, and on his deathbed, Dad makes Snaps promise to go straight. Determined to honor his late father's wishes, Snaps decides to go into banking -- just as his life has fallen into chaos. Anthony Russano (Vincent Spano) informs Snaps that he's hijacked $50,000 of his money and wants to marry his daughter. Snaps discovers that his daughter Lisa (Marisa Tomei) is actually involved with the chauffeur, Oscar (Jim Mulholland), but Anthony's girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Barondes) has convinced her beau that Snaps is her father. Snaps hopes to use this misunderstanding as a way of getting his money back, but in the meantime, he has to deal with a wary banking board, rival mob boss Vendetti (Richard Romanus), prissy elocution coach Thornton (Tim Curry), and Snaps' one-time girlfriend Roxanne (Linda Gray). Oscar's stellar supporting cast includes Don Ameche, Chazz Palminteri, Harry Shearer, Eddie Bracken, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Bruce Davison. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sylvester Stallone, Ornella Muti, (more)
The "pals" of the title, played by Don Ameche and George C. Scott, are Army chums living a sedentary retirement. Occasionally the twosome becomes a threesome when Scott's mother Sylvia Sidney shows up. All three are resigned to living out their lives on fixed incomes in a Georgia trailer park-and then, Ameche and Scott discover a large sum of money in an abandoned car. Well, "large" is putting it mildly: they find nearly four million bucks. They also find a heap of trouble when mobster James Greene, who'd stashed the cash in the first place, starts nosing around. The made-for-TV Pals was originally telecast February 28, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1970
Don Ameche guest stars as George, the deceptively charming uncle of Steve Elliott (Mike Minor). No sooner does Uncle George arrive in Hooterville than he lives up to his reputation as a grade-A troublemaker, inadvertently leaving dissension and hurt feelings in his wake. Former series regular Rufe Davis briefly returns to his old role as engineer Floyd Smoot, substituting for the ailing Byron Foulger (Wendell Gibbs). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1966
A young girl is deeply traumatized after she sees her mother burned to death in a house fire and spends the rest of her youth locked in a mental hospital. By the time she is released, her father has married a nasty woman who only wants his money. Knowing that the recently returned daughter is mentally unstable, the stepmom does all she can to drive the fragile girl over the edge. Unfortunately for the conniving bride, things don't quite turn out as planned. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Ameche, Martha Hyer, (more)
- 1979
Don Ameche guest stars as Harry Whitehead, a retired magician whose protégé Mark Santini drowns while performing Whitehead's famous underwater-escape trick on a live TV special. Quincy (Jack Klugman) investigates the tragedy and unearths evidence of a possible murder scheme--while the elderly Whitehead prepares to perform the same stunt on another nationwide broadcast. This Columbo-style episode was originally scheduled to air on September 28, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1936
First filmed in 1910, the venerable Helen Hunt Jackson novel Ramona was remade in 1936 in full Technicolor (20th Century-Fox's first such production). Loretta Young plays Ramona, a half-Indian girl raised by a white family in Spanish California. She falls in love with the young man of the household (Kent Taylor), but her joy turns to sorrow when the matriarch of the household expresses disgust at "race-mixing." Ramona turns instead to the family's Native American servant (Don Ameche), a relationship that proves fatal for him. Ramona is rare for a 1930s film in that it depicts its racist characters as being totally in the wrong, rather than treating them compassionately so as not to offend the bigots in the audience. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Loretta Young, Don Ameche, (more)
- 1967
Join host Don Ameche as he introduces some of the most famous acts of international circuses in Rings Around The World. The film is an expanded version of a weekly series on NBC-TV entitled International Show Time. Gunther Gebel Williams and his trained tigers appears along with acrobats, jugglers, clowns, elephants, and the majestic Lipposoner stallions. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Ameche
- 1956
Nanette Fabray and Joey Faye repeat their original Broadway roles in this live, 90-minute TV adaptation of the 1948 Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn musical comedy hit High Button Shoes. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Stephen Longstreet, the story is set in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the year 1913. Returning to his home town after many years, glib con artist Harrison Floy (a part immortalized on stage by Phil Silvers, but played here by Hal March) hopes to find at least few people he hasn't already fleeced. Floy targets his former girlfriend Sara Longstreet (Fabray) and her husband Henry (Don Ameche), smooth-talking them into unwittingly participating in a land scam. As if that wasn't enough skullduggery, Harrison and his cohort Pontdue (Joey Faye) even try to fix the upcoming Princeton-Rutgers football game. The musical numbers include "I Still Get Jealous", "Papa Won't You Dance With Me?", "You're My Girl", "Nobody Ever Died for Dear Old Rutgers" and "The Cops and Robbers Ballet" (originally titled "The Mack Sennett Ballet until former comedy-movie producer Sennett sued for unauthorized use of his name). An abridged version of High Button Shoes was later staged as a 1966 episode of The Garry Moore Show. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1968
Elveron is one of those corruption-ridden towns just ripe for reforming by idealists like doctor James Franciscus. He has tried to conduct business honestly, while all the powerful folks around him have pulled strings and paid off authorities to keep certain awkward business and personal deals under the rug. But now, a murder trial involving important people threatens to become one more farcical cover-up. Franciscus vows that the truth will be heard, despite strongarm threats from crooked law officer Leslie Nielsen. The fact that Shadow Over Elveron is a 1968 TV movie should leave no doubt as to the outcome for this strident little civics lesson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1936
A bell ringer's wife dies while giving birth to his second son who turns out to be deaf. His oldest son moves to America where he becomes a successful engineer. Meanwhile, back at home in Austria, the bell ringer gives his remaining son to a monastery and then wanders off to become a bum. Years pass and eventually the hearing-impaired boy grows up. During WW I, an explosion miraculously restores his hearing. He then becomes a musician and moves to America where he not only finds fame and fortune, but also renewed family ties. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Hersholt, Don Ameche, (more)
