Marguerite Churchill

RKO's Bunco Squad stars Robert Sterling as Sgt. Steve Johnson, a big-city detective dedicated to tracking down con artists. His current target is a gang of slicksters who are running a successful seance racket. Wealthy Jessica Royce (Elizabeth Risdon) is on the verge of bequeathing her fortune to the crooks, in exchange for communications from her deceased son. Posing as a couple of "marks," Johnson and girlfriend Grace Bradshaw (Joan Dixon) turn the tables on con-man Anthony Wells (Ricardo Cortez) and his confreres. On hand to reveal some of the techniques used by bunco artists is Dante the Magician, aka Harry A. Janssen, making the second of his two screen appearances (the first was in Laurel & Hardy's A-Haunting We Will Go). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The all-purpose title Man Hunt was trotted out for this 1936 Warner Bros. "B". Aging country newspaper editor Chic Sale is laughed off by the rest of his community for his tall tales. When an escaped Public Enemy (Ricardo Cortez) shows up in the vicinity, Sale decides to prove his worth by tracking down the criminal himself. The G-Men on the case tell Sale to mind his own business, but it is the old codger who collars Cortez and drags him in. No one made gangster pictures as well as Warner Bros., so even a low-priority item like Man Hunt has its moments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a middle-aged housewife decides that she has had enough of her philandering husband's neglect and her children's ingratitude. To liven up her life, she has an enormous penthouse party where she proceeds to drink herself blind. Fortunately, her adult children intervene and get her back together with her husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Legion of Terror was the first in a cycle of "exposé" films inspired by the upsurge in such hate groups as the KKK, the Silver Shirts and the Black Legion. The titular vigilante organization, which cloaks its extortionist motivations in the guise of patriotism, has a habit of sending mail bombs to its enemies -- and that's how Postal Inspector Frank Marshall (Bruce Cabot) becomes involved in the story. Before Marshall is able to expose the Legion of Terror for the cowards that they are, the group has murdered Don Foster (Ward Bond), the brother of Marshall's sweetheart Nancy (Marguerite Churchill). The film closes with an admonition to the audience to avoid getting suckered in by similar phony "All American" organizations. Legion of Terror was released just before Warner Bros. similar (and superior) The Black Legion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ralph Bellamy stars as John Vickery, a brilliant but alcoholic attorney. Vickery's opportunity for professional and personal redemption comes in the form of hat-check girl Flo Russell (Marguerite Churchill). An otherwise intelligent lass, Flo has a bad habit of being in the wrong place in the wrong time, and winds up being arrested for a robbery and murder rap. Vickery manages to clear her name in court, whereupon she returns the favor by getting him off the booze and back on his feet. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, The Final Hour showed up on TV at least once every three weeks; where is it today? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though the film is called Speed Devils, the only racetrack scenes occur at the very beginning of the picture. After cracking up during a race, the driver of the car (Paul Kelly) is advised to get into another line of work. Picking up on this, he and his buddy (Russell Hardie) open up a garage, only to be pounced upon by crooked politicians who want a chunk of the profits. The friend agrees to play ball with the crooks, but his partner balks at the idea. The villains then contrive to frame the reluctant man for a crime he didn't commit, and when this fails they lock our hero and his girlfriend (Marguerite Churchill) in a burning building. His pal comes to the rescue, and the two then team up to smash the corrupt politicos once and for all. Speed Devils was directed by former D. W. Griffith protégé Joseph Henaberry, who spent much of his talkie career on Poverty Row. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Forgotten Commandments is a well-meaning but clumsy attempt to explore the consequences of communism. The story takes place at a Russian university where religious discussion is forbidden. A priest risks his life to espouse the Ten Commandments, but he is killed by a hedonistic scientist (Irving Pichel) who writes up his own set of "pagan" commandments--which leads to an overall loosening of morals at the university. The scientist comes to grief when his own mistress (Sari Maritza) takes the "new" commandments to heart and begins an affair with a married man (Gene Raymond). The sole highlight of Forgotten Commandments is a "flashback" sequences to Moses' flight from Egypt, lifted bodily from the Cecil B. DeMille silent epic The Ten Commandments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first talkie version of Zane Grey's classic yarn Riders of the Purple Sage proved a suitable vehicle for Fox Studios' resident cowboy star George O'Brien. Within an astonishingly brief running time, the film manages to pack together all the plot ingredients in the Grey original, save one: chief villain Noah Beery is no longer an amoral Mormon elder but instead a crooked judge. O'Brien is cast as Texas Ranger Jim Lassiter, who devotes his life to rescuing his sister and daughter, who've been kidnapped by Lew Waters (Beery). Taking a job at the ranch owned by Jane Withersteen (Marguerite Churchill), Jim learns from Jane that Waters is now living pseudonymously as "respectable" Judge Dyer. The famous finale, in which Jim and Jane escape a posse by sealing themselves off in a fertile valley seems a bit ludicrous when seen today, but works within the context of the film. Magnificently photographed by George Schneiderman, the 1931 Riders of the Purple Sage remains the best adaptation of this Zane Grey classic (A remake of a 1925 Tom Mix vehicle, it would itself be remade, less effectively, in 1941). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bill Harper (Will Rogers), a cattle baron turned diplomat, is assigned to the middle European country of Sylvania, which is in a nearly constant state of uproar ever since King Lothar (Ray Milland), who is convinced Queen Vania (Marguerite Churchill) was having an affair, left the country. Their young son Paul (Tad Alexander) is supposedly the leader, but it's really ruled by scheming Prince de Polikoff (Gustav Von Seyffertitz), who instantly dislikes the easygoing Bill, who makes friends with Paul and Vania. Lothar, who sneaked back into the country disguised as Bill's pilot, tries to reconcile with Vania, but to no avail. Thanks to de Polikoff's plans, Bill is arrested -- just as Lothar starts a revolution. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

Also known as Harmony at Home, She Steps Out was based on The Family Upstairs, a play by Harry Dell. William Collier Sr. stars as a well-meaning patriarch who is forced by circumstance to run a sweatshop. Meanwhile, Collier's garrulous wife Elizabeth Patterson unintentionally scares off Rex Bell, the blue-collar fiance of her daughter Marguerite Churchill. Good ol' pop steps in to reunite Bell and Churchill and to tell Patterson in as nice a way as possible to shut her big yap. Inasmuch as William Collier Sr. was a screenwriter and dialogue director at Fox Studios, one suspects that he penned his own lines in She Steps Out. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this classy crime drama, the well-spoken, leader of a sophisticated gang of gangsters use their high social status to gain access to the vaults of the local rich people. The suave ring leader smoothly moves through the aristocratic social circles, charming all those who cross his path. He falls in love with the bank president's daughter and that is the beginning of the end. It is not long before the true avocation of the classy robbers is revealed. They and the romance are immediately ruined. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This comedy features Collier unwittingly running a sweatshop and Mama Churchill keeping the suitors away from her daughters by discussing marriage. ~ All Movie Guide

Will Rogers' first all-talking feature casts the beloved humorist as Pike Peters, owner of an auto repair shop in Claremore, OK (Rogers' real-life home town). Living in genteel but contented poverty, Pike and his family suddenly find themselves millionaires when an oil well in which he is part-owner comes in a gusher. Though Pike remains the same humble, down-to-earth fellow that he was before his good fortune, his social-climbing wife (Irene Rich) instantly begins taking on airs, insisting that the family spend a year in Paris. Reluctantly, Pike agrees, and before long he, his wife, his daughter, Opal (Marguerite Churchill), and son, Ross (Owen Davis Jr.) are seeing the sights in the City of Lights. Determined to crash Parisian high society and land a wealthy nobleman husband for daughter Opal, Mrs. Peters callously insists that her "embarrassing" husband keep his distance at all social gatherings. Not surprisingly, the Peters family unit begins to unravel, with Opal succumbing to the charms of silky gigolo Marquis de Brissac (Ivan Lebedeff), and Ross living a life of debauchery in the Latin Quarter with French floozy Fleury (Marcelle Corday). Though Pike manages to make a friend of exiled Russian grand duke Mikhail (Theodore Lodi), he simply cannot coordinate himself with his wife's incessant title-chasing, nor can he convince her that her new "friends" are only interested in her money. Cast out of the hotel suite he shares with his wife, the crestfallen Pike heads to a sidewalk café, where he renews his platonic friendship with vivacious cabaret entertainer Claudine (Fifi D'Orsay, whose saucy performance caused a bit of trouble with the local movie censors of the era). With her help, Pike cooks up a scheme to bring his family back together by pretending that he's "gone Parisian" and has taken Claudine as his mistress. Adapted from a 1926 novel by Homer Croy (and a subsequent stage version by May Savell Croy), They Had to See Paris remains one of Will Rogers' most entertaining talkies, with the star ad-libbing to his heart's content. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide