Frankie Darro Movies

On the verge of his greatest success with MGM, personable young William Haines starred in the energetic Columbia programmer The Thrill Hunter. Haines plays an irresponsible fellow who overdoses on a health tonic named "Peppo" and dreams he has been spirited off to the mythical country of Grecovia. Here he gets mixed up in a Prisoner-of-Zenda situation when he is ordered to assume the duties of the Grecovian king. Our hero quells a revolution and wins the hand of heroine Kathryn McGuire before awakening from his dream. Ah, but was it all a dream? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A bad seed tries to keep his older brother from making the same mistakes in this crime drama. The latter is a prize fighter who is becoming entangled with the mob. The younger one is already connected and doesn't want to see gangsters exploiting his elder sibling. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Flint-eyed Tom Tyler is on the Trail of Horse Thieves in this FBO western. Once again, Tyler is aided an abetted by his diminutive, self-reliant chum, Frankie Darro. This time, the perils facing Big Tom and Little Frankie include a dark and forbidding cave and an unguarded pit of quicksand. Sharon Lynn, whose glory days as a musical-comedy leading lady were still ahead of her, plays the heroine. Manning the camera for Trail of Horse Thieves was Nick Musuraca, who stayed with FBO through its metamorphosis into RKO, and was still at the studio in the 1960s when the joint was known as Desilu. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marie Dressler plays the title character, tugboat captain Annie Brennan, in this 1933 Hollywood box office hit. Her husband Terry (Wallace Beery) is a lazy, bragging drunk. Robert Young plays their son Alec, who has big ambitions and winds up as captain of a fancy ocean liner. The ocean liner's owner is Red Severn (Willard Robertson), whose daughter Pat (Maureen O'Sullivan) is the object of Alec's longings. Young tries to get his mother to leave his father and join him on the ocean liner, but she refuses out of love for her husband and her tugboat. Terry crashes the tugboat while drunk one night, and it is sold at an auction, then repaired and converted into a garbage boat. Sequels were made in later years, with Marjorie Rambeau and later Jane Darwell in the title role, and it was made into a TV series in the 1950s. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

The chemistry between cowboy hero Tom Tyler and juvenile sidekick Frankie Darro saved this otherwise commonplace FBO Western from the doldrums. Veteran villain Harry Woods is, of all things, a Russian megalomaniac who keeps a group of miners as slaves in a hidden valley. The appearance of our two heroes ruins things slightly for the good Ivan Petrovitch. Director Robert DeLacy was the father of yet another child actor, PhilippeDe Lacy, who had played little Michael in Peter Pan (1924). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Band singer Freddie Stewart stars in the pure-'40s frivolity Vacation Days. It's a high-school musical romance, with some of the oldest "teenagers" on record. During summer vacation, Freddie and student June Preisser fall for each other. Their relationship is complicated by romantic rivalries carried over from the regular school year. Vacation Days features a spirited musical number by country-western star Spade Cooley, whose ultimate real-life destiny -- he would die in prison after murdering his wife -- retrospectively casts a slight pall on the proceedings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed at Newhall, CA, with exteriors shot at Universal City, Mascot Pictures' The Vanishing Legion became the little company's signature serial. Producer Nat Levine had managed to sign veteran cowboy star Harry Carey, blonde starlet Edwina Booth, and Olive Fuller Golden, Carey's wife, all of whom had recently just barely survived the travails of filming MGM's Trader Horn (1930) under extremely difficult conditions in what was then termed Darkest Africa. Now they were employed in a typical serial story of young Jimmy Williams (Frankie Darro) and his wild stallion (the famously intemperate Rex, King of the Wild Horses), both searching for the mysterious gang that framed Jimmy's father (Edward Hearn) in a murder scheme. The two get assistance from leathery old Happy Hardigan (Carey), who has discovered a plot by the lawless Vanishing Legion to sabotage Caroline Hall's (Booth) ancestral oil company. Behind the shenanigans is a master criminal, heard but never seen and known only as "The Voice." The identity of the villain is revealed only in the 12th and final chapter, "The Hoofs of Horror." Said identity, which of course shall not be revealed here either, was that of a venerable, old character actor who usually played kindly fathers. Of course, Mascot engaged in a bit of skullduggery themselves by having Boris Karloff as a "voice double." Also released in a re-edited feature version, The Vanishing Legion has become synonymous with Mascot Pictures and is the title of a groundbreaking biography of the little studio by Jon Tuska. Sadly, the serial proved the final film for silent screen cowboy Dick Hatton, who was killed in a car accident later in the year. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Diminutive Danny (Frankie Darro) is Wanted by the Police in this Monogram actioner. Danny is basically a good boy, but he's fallen into bad company-specifically, a gang of toughs who have a habit of taking automobiles that belong to others. The hero's Irish mother (Lillian Elliot) finally figures out what's been going on and begs Danny to cease and desist. When this fails, Mom enlists the aid of Danny's sister Kathleen (Evalyn Knapp) and Kathleen's police-officer boyfriend Mike (Robert Kent) to right old wrongs and set Danny on the proper course. Wanted by the Police was partially remade as the 1948 "Bowery Boys" entry Angels Alley, which also featured Frankie Darro. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though Frank Capra wrote the original story treatment for MGM's Westward the Women, he was too busy to direct the film, and handed the reigns instead to his former Liberty Films partner William A. Wellman. This stark, no-nonsense outdoor drama stars Robert Taylor as a trail guide named Buck, who in 1851 is hired by California settler Roy Whitman (John McIntyre) to head a wagon train full of mail-order brides from Chicago to the West Coast. Though Buck spares the brides nothing in describing the hardships they're about to face, most of the ladies agree to undertake the journey. Starting out with 104 women, Buck leads the expedition through some of the most treacherous territory in the West. Several of the women die en route, killed off by the elements, Indian attacks, and sundry unexpected mishaps. Most of the male travellers likewise fall victim to disaster, save for Buck and his courageous Japanese cook Ito (Henry Nakamura). Even when the wagon train reaches its destination, the story is far, far from over. Though second-billed Denise Darcel is the most prominent of the women, the large cast generally works as an ensemble, with everyone pitching together for the common good, just as their real-life counterparts had done back in the 1850s. Throughout, the film abruptly (and effectively) switches moods, veering precipitously from raucous comedy to profound tragedy (some of the deaths occur so suddenly that they can still elicit gasps from the audience). An expertly assembled and reasonably realistic saga, Westward the Women is one story that needs to be told in black-and-white; the currently available colorized version should be avoided like the plague. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Co-directed by former supporting player Mack V. Wright and Sam Nelson, The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok is considered by connoisseurs of the genre the best serial Columbia Pictures ever made. The star, former supporting actor Gordon Elliott (born Nance) changed his first name to Bill for the occasion and emerged a full-fledged star. He later went all the way and became known as William "Wild Bill" Elliott, hero of first-rate Republic Westerns and for years a top sagebrush moneymaker. Robert J. Fiske played Wild Bill's adversary, Morrell, a nasty character who leads his Phantom Raiders in attacks on both the old Chisholm Trail and the encroaching railroad. Wild Bill Hickok is appointed U.S. marshal and assigned to ensure safe passage for both cattle and the railroad. Columbia screenwriters George Rosener, Charles A. Powell, G.A. Durlam, Tom Gibson, and Dallas Fitzgerald made sure that there was something for everyone in this serial, including a shapely heroine (Carole Wayne) to please the adults in the audience and no less than three juvenile actors -- Frankie Darro, Sammy McKim, and Dickie Jones -- for the small fry to root for. Roscoe Ates, he of the bobbing Adam's apple, and veteran slapstick comic Monte Collins provided laughs, and producer Jack Fier rounded up a fine supporting cast that included such veterans as Monte Blue, Kermit Maynard, Chief Thundercloud, George Cheseboro, Edmund Cobb, Hal Taliaferro, Art Mix, Tom London, and Lew Meehan. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The curious but harmonious screen team of Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland are back again in You're Out of Luck. Elevator boy Frankie (Darro) is the brother of a detective (Richard Bond), and as such is eager to solve a crime himself. He gets his chance when a couple of mob murders occur in Frankie's hotel. With the tremulous assistance of Jefferson the porter (Moreland), Frankie pieces the clues together long before the police do-thereby flattening the stock of an obnoxious newspaper reporter (Tristam Coffin). Moreland so dominates the proceedings with his patented "Feet do your duty" routines that, in certain communities with heavily black populations, he was billed as the film's star. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide