Frank Cavett Movies
Screenwriter Frank Cavett won an Oscar in 1944 for co-writing the screenplay for Going My Way. He and a co-writer won again in 1952 with The Greatest Show on Earth. Cavett started out in 1929 as an assistant director. He began co-writing screenplays in 1939. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is a lavish tribute to circuses, featuring three intertwining plotlines concerning romance and rivalry beneath the big top. DeMille's film includes spectacular action sequences, including a show-stopping train wreck. The Greatest Show on Earth won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Story. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
- Starring:
- Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, (more)
- 1951
Clark Gable is the largely nonheroic hero of the sprawling western Across the Wide Missouri. A cunning trapper who lives purely by his wits, Gable avoids being scalped by the Blackfoot Indians by marrying Maria Elena Marques, the chief's daughter. This marriage of convenience also allows Gable to trap to his heart's content in Blackfoot territory. After bearing a child, Marques is killed by a warring tribe; the opportunistic Gable at first considers abandoning the child, but at long last does right by the boy. Adolphe Menjou steals the show as an eternally inebriated French trapper, while Ricardo Montalban and J. Carroll Naish are convincing (and noncondescending) in their Native American characterizations. Evidently, Across the Wide Missouri tested poorly when it was first previewed: the final release version runs a surprisingly brief 78 minutes, with narrator Howard Keel (who otherwise does not appear) filling in the continuity gaps. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, (more)
A woman struggles to reassemble her broken life in this drama that features Susan Hayward in her first starring role. The woman started out as a night-club singer, but abandoned her career after marrying a budding radio star. At first she does everything she can to insure his success, but when he finally hits the big-time, the woman finds herself deeply depressed and turning toward the bottle for solace because he is increasingly absent from her life. She becomes a full-fledged alcoholic and her husband, unable to take it anymore begins divorce and custody procedures. It takes such extreme measures to wake her up to her problem. Fortunately, with hard work, and renewed support from her husband, she overcomes her addiction. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, (more)
- 1945
In this 1945 filmization of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical 1938 play The Corn is Green, Bette Davis steps into the role originated on Broadway by Ethel Barrymore. Davis plays Miss Moffat, a turn-of-the-century schoolteacher in a Welsh mining town. She has opened her own school in hopes of lowering the town's illiteracy rate, thus enabling the younger residents to seek out more fulfilling lives than merely sweating away in the mines until they drop. She runs into a great deal of resistance from mine-owner Nigel Bruce, who realizes that as soon as the citizens can read and write, they'll rebel against his benevolent despotry. Even Miss Moffat concludes that her mission is hopeless until she is visited by young miner John Dall, who wants to know "what is behind all those books". Within two years, Dall has made so much progress that he has qualified for Oxford. A last-minute snag involving Dall's illegitimate child is solved when Miss Moffet herself agrees to adopt the baby so that her student can complete his education. Emlyn Williams himself came from a backward mining town, and was himself inspired to better things by a compassionate schoolteacher; the pregnancy angle was (probably) added to provide the story with a third act. The Corn is Green was remade for television in 1978, with Katharine Hepburn as Miss Moffat. Watch for one amusing gaffe in the original: despite carefully setting up the premise that the villagers are illiterate, they are shown hovering around a poster and reading it out loud in an early scene. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bette Davis, Nigel Bruce, (more)
- 1944
It took some doing to persuade the staunchly Catholic Bing Crosby to play a happy-go-lucky priest in Going My Way; luckily he acquiesced, winning an Academy Award in the process. Crosby is cast as Father Chuck O'Malley, newly arrived at rundown, heavily in debt St. Dominic's Church. Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald), the cranky, set-in-his-ways curate of St. Dominic's, is none too pleased with O'Malley's breezy, "modernistic" methods. Fitzgibbon is content to adhere to the policies he has followed for nearly 45 years. Without overtly challenging Fitzgibbon's authority (he likes the old buzzard, and the feeling is mutual), O'Malley sets about to win the confidence of the local street toughs, organizing the boys into an angelic church choir. He also forestalls the plans of St. Dominic's mortgage holder Ted Haines (Gene Lockhart) to evict Fitzgibbons by arranging a fundraising choir tour, to be headlined by O'Malley's childhood friend, opera star Genevieve Linden (Rise Stevens). When he's not coming to the rescue of St. Dominic's, O'Malley is smoothing the path of romance for Haines' son (James Brown) and orphaned Carol James (Jean Heather), and arranging for a reunion between Fitzgibbons and his nonagenarian Irish mother. There is sentiment by the bucketful in Going My Way, but director Leo McCarey sagaciously tempers the treacle with moments of genuine hilarity and several delightful (and seemingly spontaneous) musical interludes. In addition to Crosby, Oscars went to Barry Fitzgerald, Leo McCarey, screenwriters Frank Butler and Frank Cavett, and Burke and Van Heusen's song hit "Swingin' On a Star." Bing Crosby repeated his father O'Malley characterization in McCarey's 1945 sequel The Bells of St. Mary's. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bing Crosby, Rise Stevens, (more)
- 1942
This musical chronicles the history of jazz music and features many of the most popular musical acts from the early 1940s, including Gene Krupa and Benny Goodman. The story centers on a trumpet player who falls for a young woman with an equal passion for music. Unfortunately, the girl is still grieving for her true-love whom she lost during the war. The trumpeter begins working to get the girl to trust her. He simultaneously tries to start a band. Songs include: "Goin' Up the River" (Dave Torbett, Leith Stevens), "You Made Me Love You" (Joseph McCarthy, James V. Monaco), "Only Worry for a Pillow," "Chicago Ragtime" (Stevens), "Under a Falling Star" (Rich Hall, Stevens, sung by Connie Boswell), and "Slave Market" (Hall Johnson). ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Adolphe Menjou, Jackie Cooper, (more)
Though not the best of the Fred Astaire musicals, Second Chorus is the most easily accessible thanks to its current public-domain status. Astaire and Burgess Meredith play Danny O'Neill and Hank Taylor, friendly-enemy musicians who after spending seven years in a college band aspire to join the Artie Shaw Orchestra. Danny and Hank also spend a lot of time vying over the attentions of their pretty manager Ellen Miller (Paulette Goddard). While Paulette Goddard later became Mrs. Burgess Meredith in real life, guess who wins her hand in this picture? Charles Butterworth steals the show as Mr. Chisholm, a music-loving eccentric who finances Shaw's "swing concerto" concert at Carnegie Hall. Oh, and Fred Astaire dances, too. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard, (more)
This Victorian-era drama is based upon the classic novel by Thomas Hughes. It follows the exploits of a young boy forced to attend a rowdy boarding school. There he finds himself surrounded by budding punks and hoods. It is rough at first, but eventually he learns to make friends and handle himself well in the tough environment. The film is also titled Adventures at Rugby. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Cedric Hardwicke, Freddie Bartholomew, (more)
- 1939
In the 1830s, despite the development of the steamboat at the outset of the 19th century, all trans-Atlantic travel was still done by sailing ships. David Gillespie (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is first mate on one of the fastest of such ships, commanded by Captain Oliver (George Bancroft), but he is sickened and wary of the loss of life of sailing men caused by the limitations of sail. He meets John Shaw (Will Fyffe), a Liverpool-based machinist who insists that he has a design for an engine and a ship that will allow safe trans-Atlantic travel by steam power, and the two go into partnership -- but Gillespie must contend with the resistance of Shaw's headstrong and skeptical daughter, Mary (Margaret Lockwood), as well as the resistance of bankers and other shipbuilders to the new ideas he represents. All of this pleases Mary, who, despite her love of her father and attraction to Gillespie, regards herself as practical-minded and wants her father safely back working for his old employer on a steady salary, instead of pursuing what she regards as impossible goals. Gillespie gets the backing and Shaw builds his engine, but his ship is burned in an accidental fire, and all looks lost until a sympathetic backer proposes fitting the engine to an existing vessel, and suddenly Shaw is a real threat to the shipping establishment. They try to stop him in the courts, and when that fails, the race is on from Liverpool to New York, between Shaw's steam-powered ship and Gillespie's sail-driven former ship, with Mary aboard to look out for her father and Gillespie, and the future of ocean travel in the balance. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
- Starring:
- Margaret Lockwood, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., (more)
- 1932
In this melodrama, a starving orphan deliberately breaks a store window in hopes that she'll be tossed in jail and get a hot meal. The arresting officer does feed her, but then he gets her a job dancing in the Follies. Eventually the girl falls madly in love with the policeman. Unfortunately, he seems to have only a professional interest in her welfare and does not return her affection. This angers the frustrated girl. To try and get the cop's attention, the girl begins dating a notorious local sleazebag who tries to lure her to his bed. Fortunately, she escapes. Later the gigolo is found dead and the girl stands accused of the crime, forcing her beloved cop to arrest her. Later, he proves her innocence and marries her. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Charles Bickford, Helen Chandler, (more)
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