Evelyn Young Movies
- 1941
Wild Bill Hickok is once more impersonated by Will Bill Elliot in the Columbia western Wildcat of Tucson. This time, Hickok is saddled with an irresponsible brother named Dave (Stanley Brown). Falling in with a bad crowd, Dave ends up victimized by claim jumpers, forcing Wild Bill to leave his usual stamping grounds and head for Tucson. Kenneth MacDonald, later the oily villain of many a 3 Stooges epic, is the "brains" heavy whom Hickok trounces in the last reel. Also featured in the cast is professional boxer Sammy Stein, characteristically portraying a hulking henchman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Evelyn Young, Stanley Brown, (more)
- 1940
Edith Fellows and Billy Lee, two of Hollywood's most talented second-echelon child stars, are teamed in the Columbia tearjerker Nobody's Children. The film was inspired by Walter White Jr.'s popular human-interest radio series, which ran from 1939 to 1941. The radio version of Nobody's Children was dedicated to finding loving homes for the orphaned and abandoned kids under the care of the Children's Home Society of Los Angeles. White himself appears in the film in the "framing" scenes, ostensibly taking place during one of his broadcasts. The story proper deals with the plight of orphaned siblings Pat (Fellows) and Tommy (Lee), whose efforts at finding adoptive parents have been thwarted by the fact that Pat is crippled. Many adults have offered to adopt Tommy alone, but he loyally refuses to be separated from his sister?and the plot wends its sentimental way from there. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edith Fellows, Billy Lee, (more)
- 1940
The vice squad takes on escort services in this crime drama. Two services are depicted. One escort agency is legitimate, offering fine upstanding girls with no funny business. The other agency has a more tawdry reputation (though the none of the women there are prostitutes) and makes most of its money by blackmailing clients. The trouble begins when a basically good woman finds herself mixed up with the bad escort service. Fortunately, an investigating officer is looking into both of them and saves her from a criminal's life and fate. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anita Louise, Roger Pryor, (more)
- 1940
In this drama, set in Paris, a devout communist is slowly seduced into becoming a capitalist by a persuasively pretty young woman. The tale begins as the young man shoots at a banker and then flees the police. He runs into the woman's apartment, and for some reason, she decides to let him stay. She then tells him that she is the banker's ex-wife, and they begin to converse; she is fascinated by communist philosophies and in turn shares her views on capitalism with him. He comes to like them and so abandons his other ideologies for the bourgeois life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Loretta Young, Melvyn Douglas, (more)
- 1940
The lives of female hoboes in the Great Depression are chronicled in this interesting drama. In order to fully understand the travails of their existence, the governor's daughter dresses down and joins them. There in the hobo camps she experiences their aimless unlucky lives as they hitchhike across the country, and live out of doors. The women are hindered by a pesky sheriff who constantly harasses them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ann Dvorak, Helen Mack, (more)
- 1940
An average Columbia B-Western, Prairie Schooners once again features William Elliott as a highly fictitious Wild Bill Hickock. When local farmers are ready to string up nasty banker Dalton Stull (Kenneth Harlan), who had taken advantage of a drought to foreclose on their loans, Wild Bill agrees instead to negotiate on their behalf. When that fails, the hero suggests that the farmers sell their property and move to the hopefully more congenial Colorado. En route, the wagon train guided by Bill is attacked by Sioux Indians, who have been armed by Stull and his chief henchman Wolf Tanner (Ray Teal). Lovely Virginia Benton (Evelyn Young) is taken hostage by Stull, but Wild Bill and sidekick Cannonball (Dub Taylor) finally convince Chief Sanche (Jim Thorpe) to join the forces of good and the villains are rounded up. Prairie Schooners, which premiered in October of 1940, was based on a 1930 magazine story by George Cory Franklin. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Evelyn Young, Dub Taylor, (more)
- 1940
World War II was just heating up, but the U.S. hadn't yet entered the fighting when the Three Stooges made this comic short. It opens with the boys selling greeting cards on the street, none too successfully. One surly guy in particular is a victim of the Stooges' harassment. To get away from his wrath, the boys dash into an apartment building, where they find a weepy young woman who thinks her husband doesn't love her anymore. To help her out, the Stooges offer to try to make her husband jealous. The woman's spouse turns out to be the very same man they harassed a few minutes earlier. To get away from him -- again -- the guys get in what they think is a bread line, but it's really a recruitment line for the Army. In a flash the Stooges are in uniform -- only to discover that their sergeant is the very same angry husband. They manage to make it through basic training and are sleeping through bomb blasts when they're woken up and sent on a mission. The sergeant has been captured and they're supposed to bomb enemy headquarters with laughing gas. Naturally, the gas shell explodes on them and they're captured. At the enemy headquarters, they manage to knock everyone unconscious while laughing uncontrollably. The place is being shelled by the American troops, and the Stooges, still laughing, ride one of the shells as it soars out of the building. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
