Mary Gordon Movies

In this action film, an officer is thrown off the force by his father the chief of police. The bitter ex-cop then joins a racketeering operation. The ring leader assigns him to drive a truck-load of armed hoods to ambush his father. Unbeknownst to the crooks, the ex-cop is still active on the force. The whole affair was a ruse to capture them. The brave cop succeeds in warning his peers of the ambush and the bad-guys die in a hail of bullets. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this mystery, a Times Square doctor rescues a chorus girl who, as part of a publicity stunt, was preparing to leap off a building. He later becomes friends with a killer who asks the doctor to take $100,000 to his estranged daughter. Before the doctor can run his errand, mobsters show up and shoot the killer. They then steal the key to the safe deposit box carrying the cash leaving the doctor to be blamed for the murder. Fortunately, he is able to capture the crooks and clear his name. He also manages to again save the chorus girl from a second attempt at jumping off a building. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Filmed in 1929 and released early in 1930, Dynamite was Cecil B. DeMille's first all-talking feature. As one observer has noted, this 128-minute opus has enough plots for seven pictures. The basic storyline here involves spoiled heiress Cynthia Crothers (Kay Johnson) who will lose her fortune if she isn't married right away. Her love Roger Towne (Conrad Nagel) isn't interested in marriage, so Crothers decides to wed convicted murderer Hagon Derk (Charles Bickford). Her plan: Derk will die, then she'll be a millionaire, free to chase after Towne without benefit of clergy. Unfortunately for Crothers, Derk is pardoned at the last minute when the real killer (Leslie Fenton) confesses. Crothers tries to drive Derk out of her life by humiliating him at a fancy party, only to discover that the conditions of her inheritance require that she live with her husband for a set period of time. She swallows her pride and heads for Derk's home town, a grimy mining village. Touched by Crother's inept efforts to keep house and cook dinner, Derk eventually falls in love with her--though he makes it clear that he wants no part of her money. Crothers, in turn, falls genuinely in love with her brutish but basically decent husband. It must needs be that fortune-hunting Towne arrives in the mining village, leading to a powerful climax wherein Derk, Crothers and Towne are trapped in a mine cave-in. Though the dialogue is occasionally quite silly (after the killer commits suicide in a crowded restaurant, one of the patrons is heard to complain "It's ruined my dinner!") and the performances overripe at times, Dynamite actually holds up better than you'd expect. DeMilles' utilization of sound is both innovative and imaginative, especially during the noisy climactic sequences. The film was a success, paving the way for DeMilles' camp classic Madame Satan (1930). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Not precisely the best film of 1947, the Republic comedy-mystery Exposed is nevertheless consistently enjoyable. Adele Mara is a delight as wisecracking female private eye Belinda Prentice, who has to put in a lot of overtime when her first client is murdered. Following the clues to an apartment house chock-full of suspicious characters, Belinda predicts-correctly, as it turns out--that there'll be several more killings unless she can pinpoint the guilty party and ascertain his or her motives. Meanwhile, her police-inspector father (Robert Armstrong) wishes aloud that Belinda would give up the p.i. business and settle down with a nice young fellow. Some choice moments are provided by Joyce Compton as Belinda's garrulous secretary, William Haade as her cloddish assistant, and Bob Steele as a neurotic gunman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The innovative direction of Robert Siodmak lifts the inexpensive imitation-Hitchcock Fly By Night well above the ordinary. Richard Carlson plays young intern Jeff Burton, who impulsively offers a lift to an odd-looking gentlemen (Miles Mander). It soons turns out that Jeff's passenger is an inventor has just escaped from a shady sanitarium, where he has been held prisoner by Nazi spies. When the stranger turns up dead, poor Jeff is held on suspicion of murder. Escaping, he forces innocent bystander Pat Lindsay (Nancy Kelly) to pose as his wife and drive him around in search of the genuine killers. Eventually, of course, Pat falls in love with Jeff and accepts his protestations of innocence, but not before both have fallen into the clutches of those pesky Nazis. The film's ironic payoff is a honey, beautifully enacted by spy-flick veterans Albert Basserman and Martin Kosleck. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", Fort Apache stars John Wayne as captain Kirby York and Henry Fonda as Custer clone Lt. Col. Owen Thursday. Resentful of his loss in rank and transfer to the West after serving gallantly in the Civil War, the vainglorious Thursday insists upon imposing rigid authority on rough-and-tumble Fort Apache. He is particularly anxious to do battle with the local Indians, despite York's admonitions that the trouble around the fort is being fomented not by the so-called savages but by corrupt white Indian agents. Thursday nonetheless ends up in a climactic set-to with Indian chief Cochise. He and his men are needlessly slaughtered, but the Eastern press builds "Thursday's Charge" into an incident of conspicuous valor--and York, ever loyal to the cavalry, is not about to tell the whole truth. The bare bones of Fort Apache's plotline are fleshed out with several subplots, including the romance between Thursday's daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple) and Lt. Mickey O'Rourke (John Agar), the son of Fort Apache veteran Sgt. Michael O'Rourke (Ward Bond). There's also plenty of time for the expected drunken-brawl humor of Victor McLaglen. Not in the least politically correct, Fort Apache is a classic of its kind, and together with Rio Grande (1950) the best of the John Ford/John Wayne Cavalry films. ~ 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

After retiring from a boxing career, Johnny Cave (James Cagney) accepts an appointment to serve as head of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. However, when he discovers that his organization is full of corruption and lies, he sets out to uncover the scam, much to the dismay of his girlfriend, Janet (Mae Clarke), and his underhanded coworkers. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy, a vaudevillian father, wanting a better life for his son, fires the youth from their act. The deeply angry young man's devoted and creative gal, a hat-check girl, helps him land a job with a big band. But despite his resulting success, he remains estranged from his heart-broken father, until the girl friend uses her creative writing skills to effect a reunion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Kelly (Eddie Quillan) is a tough little wiseacre who can't keep his fists to himself. As a result, he loses one job after another, much to the chagrin of his faithful girlfriend (Joan Woodbury) and loving mother (Mary Gordon). Finally, Kelly lands a job as a process server, leading to quite a series of comic and not-so-comic adventures. Based on a story by no less than Dore Schary (here billed as "Jeb Schary"), Here Comes Kelly is a remake of the 1933 Ray Walker vehicle He Couldn't Take It. The above the border. The film's title, incidentally, translates roughly as Jack Called Three Times, so it can be assumed that Sandrini's character name was Jack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although this film sounds like a 1920s version of Mr. Mom, in some ways it's more enlightened than the 1983 comedy -- for one thing, being a stay-at-home dad comes quite naturally to husband Lester Knapp (Clive Brook). Nevertheless, the idea of switching traditional husband-wife roles was quite a radical one in the days when women had only recently won the right to vote, and as such, this drama (with comic touches) was not always warmly received. Knapp is an ineffectual office worker, while his wife, Eva (Alice Joyce), is a paragon of efficiency who, although she loves her children, is woefully lacking in mothering skills. When Knapp is fired from his job, he decides to die "accidentally" so that his long-suffering family can collect on his life insurance. But (according to the title card) "Lester proved a bungler even at dying," and instead he winds up a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. Eva turns down the charity of Knapp's old boss, Spencer Willing (Lester Whitlock), and instead asks for a job. He gives her one, as a saleslady at one of the company's stores. Eva flourishes at her new position and soon is earning almost twice as much as Knapp ever made. Meanwhile, Knapp's effect on the couple's three children is almost magical, especially when it comes to dealing with their formerly incorrigible three-year-old. This odd set-up is gradually accepted by the Knapp's friends and relatives, but then disaster strikes -- Eva notices Knapp's legs twitching in his sleep, and indeed, he finds out that he can walk again. But Knapp realizes that both he and Eva are ill-suited for the roles originally foisted on them by society, so he swears their reluctant physician, Dr. Merritt (the delightful George Fawcett), to secrecy. Not surprisingly, this picture was adapted by a woman, Mary O'Hara, from a novel by another woman, Dorothy Canfield. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

I Take This Oath was the first official release from Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), formerly known as Producers Pictures Corporation and Producers Distributing Corporation. Gordon Jones stars as rookie cop Steve Hannigan, who takes it upon himself to avenge the murder of his police inspector father (Robert E. Homans). The killer is the supposedly respectable head man of an insurance policy racket. As he probes farther into the case, Hannigan discovers that the culprit was not only a murderer, but a modern-day Judas as well. Joyce Compton, usually cast in dumb-blonde supporting roles, is a most effective "straight" heroine. Like so many future PRC epics, I Take This Oath was directed by Sam Newfield, here travelling under the alias of Sherman Scott. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide