Virginia Carroll Movies

Sombra, the Spider Woman is the feature-film abridgement of the 1947 Republic serial The Black Widow (which explains why a number of the listed actors had died by this film's listed year of release). The formidable Carol Forman stars as Sombra, whose fortune-telling establishment serves as a front for a vast criminal empire. Making things trickier for hero Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards) is the fact that Sombra is a master (or mistress) of disguise. Colt and plucky girl reporter Joyce Winters (Virginia Lindley) try to prevent Sombra from stealing the plans for a revolutionary atomic rocket engine. This is one serial in which the male actors are thoroughly overshadowed by the female leads. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) investigate the theft of a car containing a baby. The car is ultimately found abandoned, but the baby has completely disappeared. Following the trail of clues, the two detectives determine that a pair of juvenile delinquents may know something about the missing infant. The role of Benson Dall is played by veteran B-western comic Sid Saylor, he of the "bobbing Adam's-apple" fame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) search for an elusive check forger with extremely expensive tastes. The forger uses his ill-gotten gain to purchase fancy clothes, which he then sells at a tidy profit. The detectives' investigation leads to a very young girl (Dawn Richard with some very shady (and highly suspect) relatives. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Every time Republic Pictures head honcho Herbert J. Yates starred his minimally talented wife Vera Ralston in a film, the studio's stockholders began trembling in their boots. Like most of its predecessors, the 1957 Ralston vehicle Spoilers of the Forest just barely made back its cost. Vera plays Joan Milna, who shares several thousand acres of valuable Montana timberland with her stepfather (John Alderson). Coveting Joan's property, lumber baron Eric Warren (Ray Collins) sends out his foreman Boyd Caldwell (Rod Cameron) to persuade her to sell. Instead, Caldwell falls in love with the girl, vowing to protect her trees from the eco-unfriendly Warren. Republic's wide-screen Naturama process is shown to good advantage throughout Spoilers of the Forest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on an article in the New Yorker, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life stars James Mason (who also produced the film) as elementary school teacher Ed Avery, a thoughtful, gentle man, with a loving wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and a young son, Richie (Christopher Olsen), who loves him. Avery is successful and well liked in his community, but he is over-extended in his pursuit of the American dream -- he secretly works a second job to earn extra money, and doesn't dare break stride, despite the increasingly painful physical spasms that he suffers. He collapses one day, and the doctors inform him that he suffers from an arterial disease that will probably give him less than a year to live. But they also offer him one hope, with treatment using cortisone, which was then a new, not-fully-tested drug. Avery makes a seemingly full recovery and returns to work, but it soon becomes clear that he's not the same -- he has a new, cavalier attitude toward money, and then Lou becomes alarmed over his expressions of rage over seemingly insignificant annoyances. He starts expressing himself in grand, exalted terms, first to Lou and then to his colleagues at school, including his closest friend, Wally Gibbs (Walter Matthau). And matters only get worse when Wally determines that it is the cortisone -- which Ed has been taking in far greater doses than prescribed -- that is making him act this way. And his obsession w ith forcing Richie to live up to his full potential soon turns into a much darker fixation. Director Ray later offered regret over having used cortisone by name, as it was still not standard treatment and its benefits and drawbacks weren't known. But this did lend the movie a verisimilitude that was essential for what appeal it did hold for audiences. (Seven years later, screenwriter William Read Woodfield would incorporate Bigger Than Life's cortisone plot device into his script for the Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea episode \"Mutiny\". Bigger Than Life's more immediate problem at the time lay in its broader plot -- with a story that brought drug addiction and fact-based psychological unhingement into a suburban American setting, it was a daring subject for its time, for which audiences were unprepared in 1956. It was also one of a group of offbeat pictures that Mason produced as well as starred in. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this drama, the eagerness of a rookie reporter gets him into deep trouble after he finds himself entangled with big city racketeers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This distaff variation of the Goodbye Mr. Chips theme is based on a novel by Frances Gray Patton. While confined to a sickbed, ageing New England schoolteacher Miss Dove (Jennifer Jones) recalls the many students who passed through her classroom. Among her now-grown-up prize pupils are surgeon Tom Baker (Robert Stack), policeman Bill Holloway (Chuck Connors) and playright Maurice (Jerry Paris), all of whom were able to overcome difficult childhoods and strive for success with the help of Miss Dove. As it turns out, it is Dr. Tom Baker who is to perform the operation that may save the life of his ailing former teacher. A 60-minute TV adaptation of Good Morning Miss Dove, with Phyllis Kirk in the Jennifer Jones role, was seen in 1956 as part of the weekly anthology The 20th Century-Fox Hour. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Loan Shark was one of several independently-produced films made by George Raft in the early 1950s. Raft plays Joe Gargan, a good guy who pretends to turn bad to trap a gang of usurious loan sharks. In order to convince the crooks that he's on their side, Gargan is forced to call it quits with his sweetheart Ann Nelson (Dorothy Hart). Once he's accepted by the villains, Gargan dreams up an elaborate new method of siphoning money from an unsuspecting public. Inevitably, however, the villains get wise to Gargan's subterfuge, and for a while it looks like curtains for our hero. One of the most appealing aspects of Loan Shark is the no-frills cinematography of Joseph Biroc, who went on to such loftier pursuits as The Towering Inferno. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A little crippled girl named Cathy Williams (Isa Ashdown) has one special wish in life: To meet her idol, Superman (George Reeves). When Cathy accidently intercepts a phone call intended for a gang of counterfeiters who've stolen printing plates from the Bank of France, one of the crooks (John Doucette) passes himself off as Superman in order to gain the girl's confidence and find out how much she knows. Inevitably, the bad guys kidnap poor Cathy, and of course the real Superman races to the rescue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry's second 1949 release for Columbia was Riders of the Whistling Pines. As was customary for Autry, the title refers to one of the songs heard in the film, rather than the plotline at hand. The villains busy themselves destroying all the timber in a government forest preserve. When Autry steps in to stop the bad guys, they cook up a frame by accusing him of poisoning cattle. Jimmy Lloyd co-stars as an aviator who figures prominently in the action-packed finale. Autry's leading lady this time out is Patricia White, who later gained prominence on TV as Patricia Barry. At 72 minutes, Riders of the Whistling Pines was one of the longest of Autry's Columbia efforts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Johnny Mack Brown stars in this above-average B-Western from Monogram, penned under the pseudonym of Jess Bowers by veteran genre specialist Adele Buffington. Mack Brown plays Johnny Murdoch, a drifter arriving in Gold Flats in search of his prospector father. From old-timer Dusty Hanover (Raymond Hatton), Johnny learns that Old Man Murdoch was murdered for his claim by Rex Hillman (Holly Bane), a hireling of Carter Morgan (Bill Kennedy). The latter proves to be a representative of Brandon Enterprises, a company that is grubstaking local prospectors in order to appropriate their claims when they suddenly, and mysteriously, expire. But Dusty is in possession of an old poster that proves Marc Brandon (Steve Darrell), the owner of the crooked company, to be a wanted outlaw. When Johnny accuses Brandon of killing both his father and fellow prospector Matt Cramer (Ted Adams), the elderly outlaw takes his own life. Rumors of a valuable strike at Dead Man's Basin start a gold rush and Morgan uses this opportunity to rid himself of the prospectors by having them attacked by henchmen masquerading as Indians. The entire wagon train is wiped out, except for Matt Cramer's widow, Mary (Virginia Carroll); her son, Bud (Lanny Rees); and Brandon's willful daughter, Marcia (Virginia Belmont). They are all rescued in the nick of time by Johnny and Dusty. It all comes down to a brutal fistfight between Morgan and Johnny, with the latter emerging the victor. With peace and tranquility restored, Johnny asks Marcia to marry him. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide