Nancy Carroll Movies

In this musical romantic comedy of 1938, Deanna Durbin plays Alice Fullerton, a young woman of a "certain age" who is prone to developing crushes against her best judgment. Her parents have taken in an intriguing house guest, Vincent Bullitt (Melvyn Douglas), a successful international news correspondent who has come to town to work on some assignments for her father's newspaper. Alice falls hard for Bullitt, and she ditches her boyfriend Ken (Jackie Cooper), a local guy who seems provincial and pedestrian in comparison to Bullitt; unfortunately, complications ensue. The songs include You're as Pretty as a Picture. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Having fallen from grace at Paramount, musical comedy star Nancy Carroll retreated to Columbia Pictures, known in 1935 as "the Port of Missing Stars." Though Carroll does no singing in Columbia's Atlantic Adventure, she is still a charming and delightful screen presence. The actress is cast as Helen, the oft-neglected fiancee of hotshot reporter Dan Miller (Lloyd Nolan). When he tries to keep his appointments with Helen, Dan is fired by his newspaper. Hoping to get back in the good graces of his boss, Dan boards an ocean liner in pursuit of the man responsible for the murder of the District Attorney. It must needs be that Helen is also on board this ship, as is a gang of jewel thieves, leading to more than a few perilous situations for the hero and heroine. Silent film comedian Harry Langdon, who like Nancy Carroll was considered a fading star in 1935, is hilarious as Dan's photographer pal Snapper. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The marital strife of a newlywed couple is chronicled in this drama. The couple, and engineer and a former actress, have just barely ended their honeymoon when the troubles begin. When she finds herself pregnant, the troubled wife keeps it to herself. At the same time, her husband has become a thief who quickly squanders his loot. He is then arrested and imprisoned. He lies to his wife telling her that he is on a long-term business trip to Russia. Eventually the two come back together when he is paroled. He then meets his baby son. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this romantic comedy, a rakish fellow involves himself with a married woman. Later his secretary endeavors to win him away with the promise of a more stable relationship. The rake is tempted, but then decides he prefers the married woman, which is fine with her husband who has an eye for the secretary. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

While crossing the Atlantic aboard a luxury liner, a radio troupe (led by Jack Benny) becomes involved in a murder mystery among a buffet of romance, music, trickery and blackmail--ornamented with a few musical numbers. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi

On the eve of her marriage to Cary Grant, socialite Nancy Carroll is visited by her sadistic ex-lover Louis Calhern, who threatens to have his gangster pal Jack LaRue rub out Grant if Carroll doesn't give up her marriage plans. She responds by killing Calhern with a piece of statuary; a sympathetic housekeeper helps Carroll hide all evidence of the crime, but LaRue, whom Calhern had telephoned just before the killing, has heard all. While on her honeymoon ocean voyage with Grant, Carroll is accosted by John Halliday, a friend of Calhern's who suspect her of being responsible for Calhern's death. Halliday's cat-and-mouse game comes to an ugly head during a mock trial held by the partying passengers. Carroll confesses, but the passengers think she's just playacting. Later on, Grant is informed that Carroll's confession was for real. The couple are met at dockside by Halliday, who has produced LaRue as a witness to the crime. Grant strongarms LaRue into changing his testimony; with no evidence, the DA is compelled to free Carroll. Had this labyrinthine melodrama been made after the Production Code went into effect, not only would Nancy Carroll have paid for her crime, but Cary Grant would also have spent a few years in stir for witness tampering. A Woman Accused is based on one of those "committee" literary works (a la The President's Mystery and Naked Came the Stranger) wherein each chapter is written independently by a different author. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

On the outs at Paramount, musical comedy star Nancy Carroll was "punished" by being sent to Columbia for the lachrymose Child of Manhattan. Carroll plays a dance-hall girl who falls hard for wealthy John Boles. Marriage is out of the question until she becomes pregnant. After losing her baby, Carroll divorces Boles and runs off with Charles Jones (better known as cowboy star Buck Jones). As the plot would have it, this convinces Boles that Carroll is not the golddigger she appears to be. Child of Manhattan was based on a Preston Sturges play, but most of the wittier and more pungent lines were lost in translation. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In his first starring role, George Raft plays Nick Darrow, a fence convinced by the police to go undercover after his father is killed in a Wall Street heist. Teaming up with Lora Madigan (Nancy Carroll), yet another victim of the gang, Nick gets close to the gang boss, Mason (Lew Cody), and his moll (Noel Francis), but is almost killed when Mason becomes suspicious. In the end, however, Nick manages to kill the man who murdered his father, a vile Russian (Gregory Ratoff), and is able to hand over Mason to the authorities. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

This comedy/drama (which is really more drama) tells the tale of Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll), a young woman who is at odds with the pace and texture of life in her small town. On the one hand, she is a dutiful daughter and the sole supporter of her aging father (William Collier, Sr.), home-maker mother (Jane Darwell), and younger sister (Rose Coghlin); she works at the local bank in her small upstate town and, from the looks of the film's opening sequence at the bank, may be the most serious and diligent employee under the age of 50 that the bank has. But she's also got a fun-loving, flirtatious side, which comes out when she's in the company of young men, especially her boyfriend and co-worker Conny Billup (Edward Woods). Invited to a party at the local getaway at a nearby lake, she is sidetracked briefly by the attentions of Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant), the town's resident ne'er-do-well -- a playboy of independent means who takes pleasure in the gossip that he knows is stirred by his every move, Sheffield does as he likes, without a care about what anyone thinks. That's fine for him, but his flirtation with Ruth causes her all kinds of problems -- in a fit of jealousy, Conny abandons her at the lake in the middle of the night, and in the ensuing confusion the whole town soon thinks that Ruth was alone with Sheffield at his mansion for hours, till two in the morning, and immediately believes the worst of her. She is fired from her job and can't even speak any longer to anyone in town. Her own mother, who is mostly concerned with the loss of her salary, attacks her. And then a ray of hope arrives in the person of Bill Fadden (Randolph Scott), a one-time neighbor boy who left to become a geologist, and is passing through on his way to do a survey nearby. He's loved Ruth since he was a teenager, and hasn't seen her in years, and their chance meeting in her parents' house leads the to two to decide to marry. But Conny, still jealous and now angry, successfully poisons Bill's image of her. He rejects her, and Ruth's world seems to be collapsing around her once again, until she realizes that her one real chance for redemption lies with the man who started it all, Romer Sheffield. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Nancy Carroll's popularity enabled her to survive the melodramatic excesses of Stolen Heaven with little if any damage to her career. Carroll plays Mary, the streetwalker sweetheart of born-loser Joe (Phillips Holmes). Engineering a $20,000 robbery, Mary and Joe draw up a pact to spend all the money foolishly and then commit suicide. But as time passes, they decide that they might as well live. Joe confesses to the robbery and willingly marches off to jail, secure in the understanding that Mary will await his return. Louis Calhern makes an excellent first impression as the film's nominal villain, only to completely disappear from view in the final scenes. The 1938 musical drama Stolen Heaven is not a remake. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this crime drama, a Prague DA must close down a house of prostitution masquerading as a cafe. He sends the owner's daughter to a nurse's home until her mother is released. When the happy day comes, he goes to visit them, but is attacked by the doorman, who is in love with the daughter and jealous of the DA. The DA kills him in self-defense but is acquitted when the daughter delivers a highly emotional speech professing her love for him. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi

Considered the best of the all-star "studio" musicals of 1929 and 1930, Paramount on Parade utilized the talents of practically everyone on the Paramount Pictures payroll. Under the supervision of British musical-comedy favorite Elsie Janis, 11 top directors contributed to the project: Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H. Knopf, Rowland V. Lee, Ernst Lubitsch, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, Edward Sutherland and Frank Tuttle. Introduced by masters of ceremonies Jack Oakie, Skeets Gallegher and Leon Errol, the film is a vaudeville-like maelstrom of musical duets, comedy sketches, occasional dramatic interludes, and spectacular production numbers. To mention all the highlights would take a book in itself but among them are Nancy Carroll's rendition of "Dancing to Save Your Sole" (performed inside a giant shoe!); Maurice Chevalier (and chorus) soaring heavenward in "Sweeping the Clouds Away" ; child actress Mitzi Green's dead-on impersonations of Chevalier, George Arliss, Moran & Mack and Helen "Boop-a-doop" Kane; Ernst Lubitsch's witty staging of an Apache dance in the style of a polite boudoir farce, with Chevalier (again) and Evelyn Brent; Clara Bow's saucy "I'm True to the Navy Now" ; the wish-fulfillment sketch "Impulses," in which George Bancroft and Kay Francis delightedly upset a dinner party by saying what's really on their minds; and best of all, "Murder Will Out," a murder-mystery parody wherein Fu Manchu (Warner Oland) bumps off Sherlock Holmes (Clive Brook) and Philo Vance (William Powell) when they refuse to give him proper credit for his killing of Jack Oakie. Only the dramatic sketch with Frederic March and Ruth Chatterton truly creaks when seen today. Originally released at 102 minutes, Paramount on Parade is presently available only in an 80-minute version, with all its Technicolor sequences missing: casualties include the elaborate "Drink to the Girl of My Dreams" number, directed by Edmund Goulding and featuring Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur and Fay Wray, and Harry Green's dialect song "Isadore the Toreodor". ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This musical, based on a Broadway show, was filmed in two-color technicolor. Set upon a golf course, it chronicles the attempts of a handsome golfer to teach a young woman how to play the game. This causes her gossipy rival to start a string of vicious rumors about the two. It seems that her rival is jealous of the golfer's attentions. Songs include: "A Peach of A Pair", "It Must Be You", "You Wouldn't Fool Me, Would You?", "Button Up Your Overcoat", "I Want to Be Bad" and "I'm Hard To Please". ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi