Brian Donlevy Movies

Natalie Wood plays what was touted as her first "grown up" role in the tense melodrama A Cry in the Night. Based loosely on the Caryl Chessman case, the film showcases Raymond Burr as a psycho who stalks and attacks young couples on Lover's Lane. Overpowering Wood's boyfriend, Burr kidnaps the girl and locks her up in a seedy one-room apartment. Though he barely lays a hand on her, Wood has every reason to be terrified of her captor, who has a disturbing habit of brutally killing small animals. Meanwhile, Wood's police-captain father Edmond O'Brien brusquely ignores all manner of civil liberties as he and fellow officer Brian Donlevy turn the town inside out in search of the girl and her abductor. Carol Veazie appears as Burr's blowsy, dominating mother, while Mary Lawrence offers an interesting characterization as Wood's plain-Jane sister, who is jealous of all the attention showered on her missing sibling. Cry in the Night is a surprisingly lively offering from the normally uninspired director Frank Tuttle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hot on the heels of Columbia's The Fuller Brush Man, MGM released another Red Skelton gagfest, A Southern Yankee. Set during the Civil War, the film casts Skelton as bumbling bellboy Aubrey Filmore. Yearning to help the Northern cause by becoming an undercover spy, Aubrey succeeds beyond his wildest dreams when circumstances force him to pose as notorious Southern secret agent Major Drumman (George Coulouris), aka "The Grey Spider". Infiltrating rebel territory, our hero does his best (which is none too good) to intercept the Grey Spider's messages and smuggle them to the North. Along the way, he falls in love with pert Southern belle Sallyann Weatherby (Arlene Dahl). Many of the side-splitting gag routines were devised by Buster Keaton, notably the now-famous scene in which Aubrey gingerly walks across the battlefield between Northern and Southern lines carrying a two-sided flag -- the Northern Stars and Stripes on one side, the Southern Stars and Bars on the other -- a strategy that works until the wind suddenly changes! Though Edward Sedgwick is credited with the direction, Red Skelton later revealed that A Southern Yankee was actually directed by S. Sylvan Simon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director King Vidor intended An American Romance as the third entry in his "War, Wheat and Steel" trilogy (the War had been covered in The Big Parade, while Wheat was dispensed with in Our Daily Bread). Two years in production, the film cost nearly $3 million-little of which actually shows up on screen due to heavy post-production editing and rearranging of scenes. Brian Donlevy stars as immigrant laborer Steve Dangon, who becomes convinced early on that the only way he'll get anywhere in life is to accumulate huge sums of money. He takes a job in a midwestern steel mill, calculatedly working his way up the ladder from foreman to owner of an auto manufacturing firm. Though he regards himself as a "man of the people", Dangon resists the efforts of his workers to form a union.--even when his son Teddy (Horace McNally) is won over to the workers' point of view. A bitter three-month strike forces Dangon's board of directors to give in to the workers' wishes Disillusioned, Dangon retires from his business, but returns to work determined to switch over to the manufacture of airplanes when WW2 creates a demand for defense products. The "documentary" aspects of the story are far more compelling that the dramatic passages, with Donlevy's performance vacillating from strong to so-so. Minus any real star names (the leading lady is MGM contractee Ann Richards, a graduate of short subjects), An American Romance flopped at the box office, and Vidor in later years tended to dismiss the film as a misfire, severly damaged by studio tampering. The currently available 121-minute version stands up reasonably well, leading one to wonder if the film was not actually improved by MGM's insistence (over Vidor's protests) upon removing 30 minutes from the running time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer A.C. Lyles managed to do quite well for himself in the 1960s by making low-budget westerns crammed full of familiar faces whose stock in the film industry had slipped a bit. Starring in Arizona Bushwackers were such celebrities of yesteryear as Howard Keel, Yvonne De Carlo, John Ireland, Marilyn Maxwell, Scott Brady, Brian Donlevy, Barton MacLane and James Craig. Keel is cast as a Confederate POW who is pardoned when he agrees to patrol the West on behalf of the Union. Assigned to a wide-open Arizona town, he stands up to such disreputable types as a crooked sheriff (MacLane) and saloon-owner Ireland. When legal means fail, the ex-POW resorts to six-guns and fists to keep the peace. Yvonne De Carlo's part was to have been played by Betty Hutton, but the latter actress could not adapt to A.C. Lyles' "get it right on the first take" approach. Arizona Bushwackers may be cheaply made, but it is consummately acted by its strong ensemble cast and sturdily directed by Leslie Selander. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This second of three movie versions of P.C. Wren's adventure novel Beau Geste is a virtual scene-for-scene remake of the 1927 silent version. We open on the now-famous scenes of a remote, burning desert fort, manned by the dead Foreign Legionnaires, then flash back to the early lives of the Geste brothers. As children, the Gestes swear eternal loyalty to one another and to their family. One of the boys, young Beau (played as a youth by Donald O'Connor), witnesses his beloved aunt (Heather Thatcher) apparently stealing a valuable family jewel in order to finance the Geste home; Beau chooses to remain silent rather than disgrace his aunt. Years later, the grown Beau (Gary Cooper) again protects his aunt by confessing to the theft and running off to join the Foreign Legion. He is joined in uniform by faithful brothers John (Ray Milland) and Digby (Robert Preston), who in turn are pursued by a slimy thief (J. Carroll Naish). The crook is in cahoots with sadistic Legion Sgt. Markov (Brian Donlevy, in one of the most hateful portrayals ever captured on celluloid), who is later put in charge of Fort Zinderneuf, where Beau and John are stationed. When the Arabs attack, Markov proves himself a valiant soldier; it is he who hits upon the idea of convincing the Arabs that the fort is still fully manned by propping up the corpses of the casualties at the guard posts. Beau is seriously wounded, and while the greedy Markov searches for the jewel supposedly hidden on Beau's person, he is held at bay by loyal John. The suddenly enervated Beau kills Markov, then dies himself--but not before entrusting two notes to John, one of which requests that John give Beau the "Viking funeral" he'd always wanted (this is why the fort is in flames at the beginning of the film). After the battle, Digby Geste, a bugler with the relief troops, comes upon Beau's dead body, and appropriates the notes. As it turns out, John Geste is the only one who survives to return to England. He gives his aunt Beau's letter, which explains why Beau had confessed and run off--"a 'beau geste', indeed" comments his tearful aunt. No one missed nominal leading lady Susan Hayward in this essentially all-male entertainment. For years available only in muddily processed or truncated versions, Beau Geste was restored to its pristine glory by the American Film Institute in the late 1980s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The famous outlaw rides again in this fictionalized western that chronicles Billy's turn from criminal to fine upstanding citizen. The film received an Oscar nomination for its color cinematography. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this actioner, an auto racer becomes a cab driver for a company that is being strong-armed by avaricious gangsters trying to gain control of all of the city's taxi companies. Anyone opposing them is framed, but the brave racer isn't so easily intimidated and he decides to take on the crooks himself. He is assisted by the head gangster's moll. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Dana Andrews -- in one of the best performances of his career -- plays Logan Stuart, a bold, ambitious general store and freight company owner based in the mining settlement of Jacksonville, OR, in 1856. He and his best friend, local banker and express company owner George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), share an attraction for young, beautiful Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward). However, that's all the two men share -- Stuart sees life in the Oregon territory as a challenge, to be worked out and overcome with thought and time, with the opportunity to build something lasting and significant in the process. Camrose only sees the opportunity to get rich fast and live easy, and he's addicted to gambling at the local saloon. What no one knows is that he's been doing his gambling with the gold dust that the miners have left on deposit in his vault -- and he's been losing. He wants to get out of the territory, to someplace like San Francisco, and plans to take Lucy away. Stuart, by contrast, is as much a frontiersman as a businessman, and so much a part of the community and so trusted and liked that he might even be a potential political leader, if he ever had the time and the willingness to settle down and stay put. He finds consolation over his loss of Lucy in an engagement to Caroline Marsh (Patricia Roc), a daughter of an Englishman who came to Oregon only to see her father killed by Indians, who lives with the homesteading family of Ben Dance (Andy Devine) and his wife (Dorothy Peterson) and their children. Out of friendship, and also a little guilt over the fact that he would love to be engaged to Lucy, Stuart gives Camrose the money to get even, but Camrose can't resist one last card game, and not only loses what Stuart gave him, but the gold dust of one miner -- who shows up unexpectedly in town that night, planning on getting his dust the next day. When the man turns up drowned, Camrose is accused of murder; Stuart stands by his friend, but he's found guilty and the miners, led by hot-headed young Johnny Steele (Lloyd Bridges), plan on hanging him, and shooting anyone who tries to get in the way. But before his fate can be settled, an Indian war starts over the killing of a young Native American woman, and the lives of every white settler in and around Jacksonville are suddenly endangered. There's all of that, plus four songs (including "Old Buttermilk Sky") from Hoagy Carmichael (who does a great acting job), all convincingly woven into the drama along with one of the music legend's best acting performances. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Command Decision is a stagebound but consummately acted adaptation of William Wister Haines' Broadway play. Clark Gable, starring in the role essayed on Broadway by Paul Kelly, plays Air Force Brigadier General "Casey" Dennis. With time at a premium, Dennis sends waves of bomber squadrons into Germany to knock out the enemy's jet plane factories. Though Dennis seems utterly unconcerned about the fate of his pilots (even his superior officer Walter Pidgeon is appalled by the heavy losses), the audience knows that his duty is exacting a severe emotional toll on him. Thanks to pressure from a misguided US senator, "butcher" Dennis is replaced by the supposedly more humane Brian Donlevy. But Donlevy realizes that Gable's decisions were the correct ones, and he vows to continue his predecessor's "suicide missions". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide