Brian Donlevy Movies

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

In one of his first "adult" roles (he made his last Andy Hardy vehicle only a year earlier), Mickey Rooney plays Tommy McCoy, a dancer who performs in a going-nowhere nightclub act with his alcoholic father, Brian (James Dunn). Johnny Martin (Mickey Knox), a lightweight boxing champ who is headlining the show that Tommy and his Dad are currently working, admires Tommy's footwork and tells him that he might have a future in the ring. Tommy gives the fight game a try, and he soon proves he's got the goods as a slugger. Before long, Tommy is fighting Johnny for the lightweight title, and after a hard-fought match, Tommy wins -- and Johnny dies. Now dubbed "Killer" McCoy by the press and boxing fans, a distraught Tommy allows his career to be taken over by Jim Caighn (Brian Donlevy), an unscrupulous manager with a gambling problem. Jim drags Tommy through the dirtiest and most dishonest levels of the fight game, but Jim's daughter Sheila (Ann Blyth) sees Tommy's decent side and tries to rescue him. Killer McCoy was a remake of the 1938 Robert Taylor vehicle The Crowd Roars. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Also released as Montana Mike, Heaven Only Knows is an offbeat western with fantasy overtones. Hard-bitten gambling boss Brian Donlevy rules his frontier community with brawn and bullets. To his dismay, Donlevy discovers that he has a guardian angel (Robert Cummings), who shows up in the guise of an Eastern tenderfoot. The angel has been sent from Above to save Donlevy's soul, and to that end encourages the one-time villain to squire a minister's daughter (Jorja Curtwright) rather than his usual dance-hall girls. Donlevy is also given tips on winning against his enemies without resorting to gunplay. The gambler finally redeems himself with Heaven by rescuing the angel from a lynch mob (how can you lynch an angel?) Heaven Only Knows deserves an "E" for Effort for bringing a fresh twist to the venerable western genre. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based in part on a true story, Kiss of Death is given a veneer of reality by being filmed on location in New York, with a bare minimum of studio work. In one of his best performances, Victor Mature plays a cheap crook who is sent up the river for 20 years for robbery. District attorney Brian Donlevy, out of sympathy for Mature's two young daughters, gives him a chance to go free--if Mature will blow the whistle on his accomplices. Stubbornly adhering to the "code" of thieves, Mature refuses to do so, until his wife kills herself and his kids are placed in an orphanage. Once paroled, Mature is prevailed upon to extract additional information from sadistic mob torpedo Richard Widmark (in his chilling screen debut). Living with his children under an assumed name, Mature gradually divests himself of all criminal tendencies, and falls in love with sympathetic Coleen Gray. But Mature feels that it's only a matter of time before Widmark will come gunning for him, so he goes back to Donlevy, offering to turn over evidence that will send Widmark up for life. Thanks to a clever mob attorney, Widmark beats the rap, and Mature knows he is doomed. On his own, he schemes to arrange his impending demise so that the cops will have an air-tight case against Widmark. The last five minutes--one of the most tense 300 seconds on film--is devoted to the cat-and-mouse showdown and ultimate shootout between Mature and Widmark. Though much of Kiss of Death is a "conformist gangster film" (to quote critic Andrew Sarris), the presence of Richard Widmark makes up for any of the script's banalities. This is the film in which Widmark gigglingly pushes a wheelchair-bound old lady down a flight of stairs. Reviewer James Agee said it best: "You feel that murder is the kindest thing he is capable of". The film made Widmark a star--and also convinced him to start lobbying immediately for good-guy roles so that he wouldn't be typecast as maniacal killers for life. Kiss of Death was remade as the 1958 western The Fiend Who Walked the West, then re-remade under its original title in 1994, with David Caruso in the Mature role and Nicolas Cage in the Widmark part. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

Our Hearts Were Growing Up is the sequel to Paramount's surprise 1944 hit Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. The first film was based on the memoirs of actress Cornelia Otis Skinner; the sequel was inspired by the fevered imaginations of the screenwriters. Gail Russell plays Ms. Skinner, while Diana Lynn costars as Cornelia's best friend Emily Kimbrough. This time the girls visit the college boyfriends, only to become involve with a pair of benign bootleggers, portrayed by Brian Donlevy and William Demarest. Their misguided association with the criminal results in consternation for Cornelia's father, the eminent stage actor Otis Skinner (Charlie Ruggles). Ironically, Gail Russell, who played Cornelia Otis Skinner in both of the Our Hearts films, was cast opposite the real Ms. Skinner in the 1943 ghost chiller The Uninvited--and was nearly murdered by the older actress in the course of the plotline! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Several of Paramount Pictures brightest stars make cameo appearances in this comedy set in "Duffy's Tavern," a favorite watering hole from old time radio shows. The trouble begins when the neighborhood bar is in danger of closing. The trouble begins when the proprietor, Archie, discovers that one of his regulars, Michael O'Malley, owner of a record company is going broke. This means that many veterans will soon be unemployed and therefore, unable to pay their tab at the tavern. Archie immediately begins recruiting famous stars to donate their services and help. They do, the record company is saved and so is the tavern. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon 'em." Firmly in the latter category is Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), a feckless wartime 4-F who must stand by helplessly as his sweetheart Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) entertains every visiting GI in town. One morning after a particularly wild night, Trudy labors under the apprehension that last eve, she'd married a soldier named Ratzkywatzky or something. Evidently something had happened that night, for soon Trudy discovers that she's pregnant. Hiding this information from her bombastic policeman father (William Demarest), Trudy begs Norval to tell the world that he's the father. He agrees, but only after secretly wedding Trudy under an assumed name. Complications and disasters pile up thick and fast, and before long Norval is facing arrest on a variety of charges. Providentially, Trudy gives birth to sextuplets-and suddenly Norval is a national hero! This vintage Preston Sturges farce plays so fast and loose with the censorial restrictions of mid-1940s Hollywood that critic James Agee was moved to comment that, "the Hays office must have been raped in its sleep." As usual, Sturges populates his cast with steadfast members of his stock company-- including, in guest roles, Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, the stars of his previous film, The Great McGinty. Originally filmed in 1942, Miracle was held from release from two years, not because of censor problems but because its parent studio, Paramount, was overloaded with product. Miracle of Morgan's Creek was remade (and considerably laundered) as the 1958 Jerry Lewis vehicle Rock-a-bye Baby. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Two Yanks in Trinidad are gangsters Tim Reardon (Pat O'Brien) and Vince Barrows (Brian Donlevy), who split up over a disagreement and join the army, Tim to escape Vince's wrath and Vince to get his lunch-hooks on Tim. Both of our heroes run afoul of Army discipline and protocol in general, and tough top sergeant Valentine (Donald MacBride). Vince and Tim eventually bury the hatchet long enough to foil a German spy who plans to smuggle Nazi oil shipments out of Trinidad. Janet Blair is wholesomely sexy as café entertainer Patricia Dare, over whom Vince and Tim had their original falling out. In his autobiography, Pat O'Brien recalls asking director Gregory Ratoff how to play his role in Two Yanks in Trinidad, whereupon Ratoff replied that the character of Tim Reardon was an "Irish Bugsy Siegel" (which indeed he is!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dashiel Hammett's The Glass Key, a tale of big-city political corruption, was first filmed in 1935, with Edward Arnold as a duplicitous political boss and George Raft as his loyal lieutenant. This 1942 remake improves on the original, especially in replacing the stolid Raft with the charismatic Alan Ladd. Brian Donlevy essays the role of the boss, who is determined to back reform candidate Moroni Olsen, despite Ladd's gut feeling that this move is a mistake. Ladd knows that Donlevy is doing a political about-face merely to get in solid with Olsen's pretty daughter Veronica Lake. It is Ladd who is left to clean up the mess when crime lord Joseph Calleila murders Olsen's wastrel son Richard Denning and pins the rap on Donlevy. As Ladd struggles to clear Donlevy's name, he falls in love with Lake--when he's not being pummeled about by Calleila's psychopathic henchman William Bendix. Far less complex than the Dashiel Hammett original (and far less damning of the American political system), The Glass Key further increased the box-office pull of Paramount's new team of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a remake of Forgotten Faces (1936), a convict busts out of prison to protect his daughter from her conniving mother so that the girl will be able to marry a decent guy in the future. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide