Junior Coughlan Movies
Bette Davis was on loan from Universal when she appeared in this little juvenile delinquent melodrama from independent producer B.F. Zeidman. Although Davis earned above-title billing (along with Pat O'Brien), Junior Durkin is the real star, a teenager who is sent to juvenile prison after being caught in a raid on a bootlegging establishment operated by Kelly (O'Brien). At juvenile hall, Jimmy befriends Shorty (Frank Coghlan Jr.), a sickly youth who is subsequently sent to solitary confinement. When it appears that Shorty will die without medical attention, Jimmy escapes and manages to contact Kelly's kindhearted girlfriend, Peggy Gardner (Davis). The latter goes to the newspapers and the resulting uproar helps change the inhuman conditions in the country's youth detentions. Unfortunately, the efforts come too late for Shorty, who has already died from the abuse. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grapewin, Junior Coughlan, (more)
- 1927
A Harp in Hock proved to be a felicitous reteaming of veteran Austrian stage star Rudolph Schildkraut and juvenile favorite Junior Coghlan, who'd previously co-starred in The Country Doctor. Upon arriving in New York, Irish lad Coghlan discovers that his mother has just died. Coghlan is unofficially adopted by May Robson, his mom's tenement neighbor, but when the feisty orphan takes a poke at Robson's bullying son, he is turned over to the cops. Likeable Jewish pawnbroker Schildkraut assumes custody of Coghlan during the boy's probation, but after a second confrontation with Robson's son, the kid is shipped off to an orphanage. Escaping, Coghlan makes a beeline to Schildkraut's hockshop, where in a tearful conclusion the old man decides to permanently adopt the boy. In recalling A Harp in Hock in his autobiography, Frank "Junior" Coghlan noted that director Renaud Hoffman insisted that the young actor speak in an Irish brogue while on the set -- even though the film was silent! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rudolph Schildkraut, Junior Coughlan, (more)
- 1926
Sally O'Neil is "Mike," the hoydenish daughter of railroad-construction foreman Charles Murray. Our heroine tries to help out Harlan (William Haines), who's been having trouble finding work since serving a prison term for a crime he didn't commit. She arranges for Harlan to get a job on her dad's construction crew, and in this capacity he rescues the girl from train robbers. The climax is handled in a farcical manner, with "Mike"'s father and his "friendly enemy" Tad (Ford Sterling) arranging for a fleet of WWI planes to strafe the villains with bombs! Director Marshall Neilan also wrote the original story, so he had only himself to blame for the sillier plot developments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sally O'Neil, William Haines, (more)
- 1926
Skyrocket was a vehicle for non-actress Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a former Ziegfeld dancer who managed to get herself into the headlines by romancing and marrying a series of millionaires. Here Ms. Joyce plays Sharon Kimm, a girl of tenements who through a combination of luck and determination becomes a movie star. Unfortunately, once she's made it to the top, Sharon sabotages her career with her prima donna behavior. Plummeting to obscurity, Sharon realizes that there are more important things in the world than fame or fortune, so she settles for middle-class security as the wife of her childhood sweetheart Mickey Reid (Owen Moore) -- who happens to be the screenwriter of the film which made Sharon a star in the first place! Contemporary reviews indicate that Peggy Hopkins Joyce was as endearingly awful in Skyrocket as she was opposite W.C. Fields in 1933's International House. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gladys Brockwell, Charles H. West, (more)
- 1925
The mercurial Marshal Neilan warmed the director's chair for the 1925 comedy The Great Love. Robert Agnew plays a small-town doctor who takes care of an ailing circus elephant. Once cured, the pachyderm refuses to leave Agnew's side! Everything turns out OK when the elephant aids in the rescue of Agnew's kidnapped girlfriend Viola Dana. A variation on this yarn, Zenobia, was filmed in 1939, with Oliver Hardy as the doctor and "Miss Zenobia" as "herself". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1922
It was hard for director Thomas N. Heffron to flesh out this skimpy storyline into feature length material. Polly Heath (Wanda Hawley) is a romantic young girl who can't cope with Dick Barton, her prosaic Wall Street fiancé (William Boyd). She hands him back his engagement ring, which upsets her Aunt Emily (Adele Farrington) to no end. Aunt Emily locks Polly in her room, but she escapes and heads for Greenwich Village where she finds that a pal has hooked up with an artist's colony. Everyone wears sandals, Grecian-style togas and spouts a lot of poetic nonsense. Polly finds all this exciting, especially the colony's one male member, poet Paul Lamont (William P. Carleton). All the girls love Lamont, and Polly falls especially hard until she discovers that there is also a Mrs. Lamont (Ethel Wales), not to mention two Lamont kiddies (Junior Coughlan and Robert Kelly). Wisely, when Barton tracks her down, she is more than happy to go back to him. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
