Sam Harris Movies

Legendary stage actress Pauline Lord made but a few films, but was always worth watching whenever she took command of the screen. In Feather in Her Hat, Lord plays cockney storekeeper Clarissa Phipps, who worries that her son Richard will grow up being ashamed of her humble vocation. Thus, she loftily pretends that she's not Richard's mother, and that the boy is actually the offspring of a prominent theatrical family. Upon reaching adulthood, Richard (Louis Hayward) becomes a prominent playwright, confident that the stage is in his blood, while Clarissa secretly sells her store at a loss to finance Richard's first production. Only on her deathbed does Clarissa reveal the truth -- and happily, Richard isn't ashamed of her in the least, and indeed is prouder of her than ever. Basil Rathbone contributes a fascinating characterization as a gin-swilling, unshaven remittance man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Previously filmed in 1931 under its original title, Theodore Dreiser's bulky but brilliant novel An American Tragedy was remade in 1951 by George Stevens as A Place in the Sun. Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Alice can't forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George's personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she'll expose him to his society friends. This predicament sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately include George's arrest and numerous other tragedies, including a vicious cross-examination by a D.A. played by future Perry Mason Raymond Burr. A huge improvement over the 1931 An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg, A Place in the Sun softens some of the rough edges of Dreiser's naturalism, most notably in the passages pertaining to George's and Angela's romance. Even those 1951 bobbysoxers who wouldn't have been caught dead poring through the Dreiser original were mesmerized by the loving, near-erotic full facial closeups of Clift and Taylor as they pledge eternal devotion. A Place in the Sun won six Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography, although it lost Best Picture to An American in Paris. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Released in Great Britain as Sealed Lips, this WWI melodrama stars Constance Bennett as Carla, aka Russian spy "K-14." Though there's no room for romance in her line of work, Carla falls in love all the same with Austrian captain Rudi (Gilbert Roland). When he discovers that she's working for the enemy, Rudi is forced to arrest Carla, a turn of events which she takes in stride as the fortunes of war. Though slated for a firing squad, Carla manages to escape and after the war is reunited with Rudi at the train station where they first met. One of the screenwriters was Worthington Miner, later a leading light of the TV anthology series Studio One. Coming at the tail end of the early-1930s "spy cycle," After Tonight lost $100,000 at the box office, forcing RKO Radio to rethink the studio's contract with Constance Bennett. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zany actress Annabel goes on a promotional tour in this lively comedy, the second in the Annabel series. During her tour, she allows her promoter to "leak" a story that she is having a romantic fling with a famous romance novelist. The ploy is successful, until she really does fall in love with the writer and decides to abandon her acting career to be with him. Unfortunately, he is already married. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Barbara Stanwyck plays Polly Fulton, rebellious daughter of a wealthy industrialist (Charles Coburn). Polly marries a conservative economist professor (Richard Hart), but she chafes at his values and leaves him for socialist professor Van Heflin. Polly nearly ruins both her father's reputation and her own by embracing Heflin's radicalism. Based on a novel by J. P. Marquand, B.F.'s Daughter emerges as an unsubtle swipe at the policies of the late president Franklin Roosevelt; perhaps this was at the behest of MGM's arch-Republican head man Louis B. Mayer. In England, where the letters "B. F." comprise a euphemism for "bloody fool", the film was retitled Polly Fulton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jed Potter (Fred Astaire) is a popular radio personality who was once a famous dancer. He also used to be friends with Johnny Adams (Bing Crosby) until they became rivals for the affections of Mary O'Hara (Joan Caulfield). Jed lost out when Johnny and Mary got married, but life hasn't been too rosy for the couple since; Johnny's career in business was a washout, and not long after the birth of their daughter, the couple decided to divorce. Mary gave Jed another chance with her, but in time she chose to patch things up with Johnny, leading Jed to a close partnership with alcohol that ended with an accident, preventing him from ever dancing again. However, the aftermath of this tragedy helps bring the three former friends back together. Blue Skies was not much more than a framework for a bunch of musical numbers featuring great tunes from the Irving Berlin catalog, but when you've got Bing singing and Fred dancing to songs like "Puttin' on the Ritz," "You Keep Coming Back Like a Song," "A Couple of Song and Dance Men," and "White Christmas," why carp? Noted stage actor and tap dancer Paul Draper was originally cast as Jed, but he was fired after several days of filming and replaced by Astaire; Draper would make only one more movie before his film career came to an end after he was branded a Communist sympathizer. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A pre-Hopalong Cassidy William Boyd is the robust star of this logging camp melodrama which also featured a very young Ginger Rogers -- who performs Bernard Grossman and Harold Lewis' "How Could I Love You" -- and Hollywood veteran Hobart Bosworth. The latter plays Jim Gannon, a lumberjack boss whose son Buck (Boyd) is neglecting his duties in favor of romancing riverboat entertainer Honey (Rogers). Father and son come to blows but their animosity ends after Buck rescues Jim from a runaway logging train. Feeling left out, Honey plans to leave with the carnival boat but decides to stick around after violence erupts at the hands of villainous lumberjack Hack Logan (Fred Kohler). Carnival Boat was filmed on location at Big Pine, CA. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

John Ford's last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford's earlier films (that was the director's story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. They have done this at the behest of chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), peaceful souls who have been driven to desperate measures because the US government has ignored their pleas for food and shelter. Since the Cheyennes' trek is in defiance of their treaty, Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), who agrees with the Indians in principle, reluctantly leads his troops in pursuit of the tribe. While there was never any intention to shed blood, the white press finds it politically expedient to distort the Cheyennes' action into a declaration of war. Thanks to the cruelties of such chauvinistic whites as Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are forced to defend themselves--and whenever Indians take arms against whites in the 1880s, it's usually misrepresented as a massacre. Only the intervention of US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) prevents the hostilities from erupting into wholesale bloodshed. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, Cheyenne Autumn is a cinematic elegy--not only for the beleaguered Cheyennes, but for John Ford's fifty years in pictures. It is weakest when arbitrarily throwing in a wearisome romance between Richard Widmark and pacifistic schoolmarm Carroll Baker, who out of sympathy for the Indians has joined them in their 1500-mile westward journey. When the Warner Bros. people decided that the film ran too long, they chopped out the wholly unnecessary but very funny episode involving a poker-obsessed Wyatt Earp (James Stewart). Contrary to popular belief, this episode was included in the earliest non-roadshow prints of Cheyenne Autumn; the scene was excised only when the film went into its second and third runs in 1966 (it has since been restored). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Ford's last film to deal with World War II, Donovan's Reef is an alternately comical and sentimental look back on the fighting Navy men from that war, and how and where -- in Ford's eyes, and Frank Nugent and James Edward Grant's script -- they should have ended up. Michael "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne), Thomas "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin), and Dr. William Dedham (Jack Warden), a trio of navy veterans who fought on the Pacific island of Haleakalowa during the war, now live on the island. Donovan and Gilhooley, biding time and enjoying themselves, engage in rough-house hijinks among themselves, and are both part of the doctor's extended family, enjoying the good will of the islanders for whom they fought during the war. While Dedham is away on a call to a neighboring island, his grown daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth Allen), from his first marriage, whom he has never seen, announces that she is arriving from Boston to determine Dedham's fitness of character to inherit the majority shares in the family shipping business. Donovan contrives to present Dedham's three Polynesian children, whom the doctor had with the island's hereditary princess, as his own, and also squires Amelia around the island in her father's absence. In the process, the cold Bostonian woman discovers a whole world -- of passion, joy, heroism, and a life among men and women whose lives have been about something other than making money -- that she's never known. She also understands all of the good that her father has accomplished away from Boston, even though it entailed abandoning her. Sparks and even a few fists fly between Donovan and Amelia (and between Donovan and several other characters), in the usual Ford rough-house manner, before their eventual reconciliation and a romantic clinch at the end, in this sweet, sentimental comedy-drama. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

This musical parody follows the exploits of American performers in Hungary. The story begins as a Yankee wrestling trainer becomes friends with a gringo singer who works in the same Budapest nightclub as a female ventriloquist. When the singer is dumped, the trainer offers to help him with his romantic life. The singer then gets involved with the ventriloquist who is married to a notorious swordsman who has successfully killed 40 men in duels. Trouble ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Novelist, professor, and scholar Robert H. Liberman makes his directorial debut with the showbiz comedy Green Lights. Bob Beeman (John Fitzgibbon) is a location scout for the major film studio Everest Pictures in New York City. He struggles to work beneath his brother in-law, Wendell (Joel Leffert), who's also the CEO of the company. Looking for a location in upstate Ithaca for the big-budget movie "Virgin Blood," Bob finds himself surrounded by small-town folk who think he's a big-time movie producer. Different acts pitch their talents to him, and he ends up getting really impressed with the musical "Julio," the work of composer/writer team Jimmy (Daniel Dresner) and Alex (Shawn Randall). Everest Pictures wants nothing to do with it, so Bob sets out to produce it himself with his newfound friends. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Hatari! is Swahili for "danger"--and also the word for action, adventure and broad comedy in this two-fisted Howard Hawks effort. John Wayne stars as the head of a daring Tanganyka-based group which captures wild animals on behalf of the world's zoos. Hardy Kruger, Gérard Blain and Red Buttons are members of Wayne's men-only contingent, all of whom are reduced to jello when the curvaceous Elsa Martinelli enters the scene. In tried and true Howard Hawks fashion, Martinelli quickly becomes "one of the guys," though Wayne apparently can't say two words to her without sparking an argument. The second half of this amazingly long (159 minute) film concerns the care and maintenance of a baby elephant; the barely credible finale is devoted to a comic pachyderm stampede down an urban African street, ending literally at the foot of Martinelli's bed. The other scene worth mentioning involves comedy-relief Red Buttons' efforts to create a fireworks-powered animal trap. Not to be taken seriously for a minute, Hatari is attractively packaged and neatly tied up with a danceable-pranceable theme song by Henry Mancini. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Seasoned newsreel cameraman Bob Adams (John Wayne) is assigned to cover the rebellion in the fictional Arab country of Samarai. Samari is chock full of tribal unrest, and in order for Adams (Wayne) to get footage of rebel leader El Kadar (Charles Brokaw), he must fight his way through a neverending stream of arms smugglers, agents, throat-cutting tribesmen, and a love affair with Pamela (Gwen Gaze), the beautiful daughter of a Colonel. Eventually, Adams gets his pictures, but not before he manages to save his brother Don (James Bush) and all of the British troops stationed in Samari. I Cover the War was directed by Trem Carr and also features actors Don Barclay, Pat Somerset, and Sam Harris. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide