Charles Coleman Movies

Fox Western star Buck Jones enjoyed a change of pace in this boxing melodrama directed by a young William Wellman. Returning from the war, Dan O'Hara discovers that his wife has left him for another man. To find a new purpose in life, Big Dan turns his home into a gym for street boys, where he teaches them how to box. He later falls in love with pretty Dora Allen (Marian Nixon), but a jealous woman (Jacqueline Gadsden) is only too happy to inform Dora of Big Dan's marital status. Fortunately, the errant wife obligingly dies in a sanitarium, leaving Dan and Dora free to marry. Big Dan successfully mixed action with sentiment, leaving the comic relief to veteran comedian Monte Collins and African-American actress Mattie Peters, the latter portraying a no-nonsense factotum named Ophelia. Hired originally to keep the studio's reigning cowboy star Tom Mix in line, Buck Jones proved to be no mere copy and quickly found his own audience. Unlike Tom Mix, Jones would regularly be cast in non-Westerns, but his bread-and-butter remained sagebrush tales. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The racy William Hurlbut play The Strange Woman was toned down to make this romantic Shirley Mason vehicle. When small-town resident John Hemmingway (Theodore Von Eltz) travels to wicked Paris to study architecture, he meets Inez de Pierrefond, a young widow (Shirley Mason). He falls in love with her and when he has to return to America he proposes, but much to his surprise, she turns him down. Because of her unhappy marriage, she no longer believes in the institution; on top of that, she's actually the author of a scandalous novel about free love. She manages to convince Hemmingway to bring her to the States without a marriage certificate. The folks in his small town have equally small minds and they do not welcome their freethinking guest. Inez notes all the hypocrisy around her and threatens to expose it unless she is left alone. Finally, Hemmingway's nice, old-fashioned mother is able to talk some sense into Inez and she agrees to marry her sweetheart. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Pert and pretty Sandy McNeill (Madge Bellamy) is strong-armed by her parents into marrying wealthy Ben Murillo (Bardson Bard). Ben turns out to be a sadistic wife-beater whose cruel excesses lead to the death of Sandy's baby. Fleeing this abusive environment, Sandy falls in love with handsome architect Ramon Worth (played by the "original" Harrison Ford). Her happiness proves short-lived when Ramon's former sweetheart Judith (Gloria Hope) arrives on the scene. Sadly, Sandy moves in with her cousin Isabel (Lillian Leighton) -- whereupon she promptly falls for Isabel's boyfriend Douglas Keith (Leslie Fenton). When Ramon finds out about this, he shoots Sandy and kills himself. To avoid scandal, Douglas valiantly takes responsibility for Ramon's death, but Sandy steps forward to exonerate him in court. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A devoted valet takes a vacation in this lively drama. After 15 years of faithful service, he has earned it. He goes to India where he ends up mistaken for a colonel and gets into trouble. After it is straightened out, he brings home the charming widowed housekeeper he met, and she begins working with him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After several musicals and light comedies, Bebe Daniels went dramatic in this adaptation of Samuel Shipman's play Lawful Larceny. When Marion Dorsey's (Daniels) gullible husband Andrew (Kenneth Thompson) loses a great deal of money to seductress Vivian Hepburn (Olive Tell), our heroine adopts Vivian's crooked tactics to get it back. Before long, Marion has Viv's partner-in-crime Guy Tarlow (Lowell Sherman), who also directed, eating out of her hand. Interestingly enough, villainess Olive Tell was the wife of Henry Hobart, the film's associate producer, who evidently didn't mind that his missus was cast in a thoroughly unsympathetic role. Hope Hampton and Conrad Nagel were the stars when Lawful Larceny was first filmed in 1925. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A typical pre-code era comedy, Bachelor Apartment was the creation of its leading man, silent screen matinee-idol Lowell Sherman. He plays Wayne Carter, a Park Avenue roué, whose dalliances with a series of women are beginning to catch up with him. Enter a brunette and rather drab Irene Dunne searching for her wayward sister (Claudia Dell). Sherman falls like a ton of bricks for the no-nonsense and seemingly unresponsive Dunne, whom he hires as his executive secretary. For unexplained reasons, Dunne falls in love with her whimsical boss as well and after Sherman shows signs of shaping up, they embrace for a happy ending. Daring in its day, Bachelor Apartment is not really worth a second look except for a next-to-final glimpse of silent screen femme fatale Mae Murray. Playing Sherman's most ardent conquest -- who, as the suave playboy explains, "might commit a sin but never a faux pas" -- Murray has to be seen to be believed. Valiantly attempting to display her trademark bee-stung countenance while at the same time deliver a series of hoary lines, the still svelte Murray -- who is introduced to the strains of an ersatz Merry Widow Waltz lest we forgot -- offers an overripe performance that all but ended her screen career. Sherman used her once more -- in High Stakes, another frothy comedy -- but the aging Murray was obviously not talkie material. Bachelor Apartment offers a glimpse of yet another faded silent screen star, the mustachioed Norman Kerry of Phantom of the Opera fame, here playing the minor role of a theatrical wolf. Like Murray (and Lowell Sherman himself), Kerry's looks and mannerisms belonged to a bygone era. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A very young Loretta Young stars in this domestic drama in which a naïve department store clerk falls for an inveterate gambler. The clerk, Buster Green, falls in love with handsome Wallie Dennis (Norman Foster) at a dance and marries him after a whirlwind romance. But their wedded bliss is ruined by Wallie's gambling habit and a pregnant Buster is forced to return to the Mayfield Department Store counter. In an effort to salvage her crumbling marriage, Buster plays on a dark horse to win the Big Race but is cheated out of her prize by unscrupulous bookie Martie Happ (Noel Madison). An angered Wallie picks a fight with Happ and is arrested by the police. Buster, meanwhile, delivers a baby girl and Wallie, who has been released due to the happy circumstances, bets that their next child will be a boy. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Veteran stage and screen star George Arliss forsakes his biographical roles for domestic comedy in A Successful Calamity. Arliss plays an elderly millionaire saddled with a selfish young second wife (Mary Astor) and a pair of spoiled grown children (William Janney and Evelyn Knapp). To test his family's mettle, Arliss pretends to have gone broke. Just as he suspected they would, his children rally to their father's side and change their ways: The daughter forsakes a fortune hunter (Hardie Albright) for the nice young man she's really in love with (Randolph Scott), while the son applies for a demanding job and performs admirably. Only Arliss' young wife seems to desert him--but even she turns out to be true blue, hocking her jewels to save Arliss from ruin. A Successful Calamity was based on a play by Claire Kummer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The factual story of H.A.W. Tabor and "Baby Doe" was the inspiration of Silver Dollar. Edward G. Robinson plays the Tabor counterpart, a prospector who strikes it rich with a silver mine. Robinson establishes the city of Denver, strongarms his way into political power, buys every creature comfort he can get his hands on, and deserts his faithful wife (Aline McMahon) for a flashy younger woman (Bebe Daniels, playing the character based on Tabor's mistress "Baby Doe"). Robinson is ruined by the decline of the silver market, spending his last days in near-madness planning and dreaming for a return to his glory days. In real life, it was Baby Doe who went insane, living (and dying) in a tiny shack near the once-prosperous silver mine. Stodgily directed, Silver Dollar isn't nearly as surrealistic as the true story it's based on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

James Cagney stars as a popular prizefighter who loses his winnings through too much partying and too many women. Cagney's fans finance the boxer's regenerative stay at a New Mexico health resort. For the sake of pretty, poverty-stricken Marian Nixon, Cagney enters into a return bout. He splits his winnings with Nixon, then goes back to his old skirt-chasing pattern with fickle society girl Virginia Bruce. Having had his nose broken, Cagney fixes it up to please Bruce, and stops taking chances in the ring lest his beezer get smashed again. It doesn't take long for Cagney to plummet from popularity, but true-blue Nixon is there for him when he gets wise to himself. The beautifully staged fight scenes in Winner Take All, wherein James Cagney disdains the use of a double, were later excerpted in Cagney's last-ever film, 1985's Terrible Joe Moran. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

No relation to the later Clifton Webb vehicle of the same name, Sitting Pretty is a dated but likable film about the songwriting racket. Jack Oakie and Jack Haley play a pair of would-be tunesmiths who team up with aspiring dancer Ginger Rogers. Through the kindness of a tippling director (Lew Cody), the trio is given a bid for stardom in a movie musical directed by an excitable Russian (Gregory Ratoff). The characters played by Oakie and Haley were loosely based on Paramount's real-life songwriting team Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, who show up in bit parts. Sitting Pretty is the film that introduced the sprightly tune "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Slowly dying of an unspecified illness, wealthy invalid Charles Sellon wants his aide Neil Hamilton to end his suffering. Hamilton won't do it, but villainous lawyer Alan Dinehart, in line to inherit Sellon's millions, is not so charitable. Dinehart kills Sellon, then makes it look as though Hamilton murdered the old guy for his money. During his trial, Hamilton is ostensibly given the best defense attorney that money can buy -- Dinehart, who secretly plans to deliberately lose the case so our hero will be railroaded into the electric chair. Instead, Hamilton is sentenced to life imprisonment, so there's still the possibility that he'll fall heir to the money. But Dinehart still has several more tricks up his sleeve. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide