Alec Craig Movies

Ayn Rand wrote this adaptation of Chris Massie's book Pity Mr. Simplicity, about a soldier who falls in love with a former comrade's wife -- an amnesiac who may have murdered her husband. The story begins in Italy when two soldiers, Allen Quinton (Joseph Cotten) and Roger Morland (Robert Sully), hatch a scheme concerning Singleton (Jennifer Jones), his girl back home. Allen agrees to write love letters to Singleton for his friend and, based on the heartfelt emotions evident in the letters, she falls in love with Roger. Returning home, Singleton and Roger marry, but Roger proves to be a drunken, abusive husband. One night, as Roger is beating Singleton, he is stabbed to death by her stepmother. Singleton goes in to shock, rendering her unable to recall the murder, while her stepmother has a stroke, making her unable to speak. Accused of murder, Singleton is sentenced to a year in jail. Allen, in the meantime, hears about the murder of his friend and comes to visit Singleton, and the two proceed to fall in love. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Kitty is the "Pygmalion" legend, 18th century style. London aristocrat Ray Milland takes it upon himself to make a lady of a guttersnipe (Paulette Goddard, complete with a cockney accent not to be believed). Milland and fellow conspirator Constance Collier aren't bothering with the girl out of the goodness of their hearts. They want their protegee to marry a wealthy nobleman (Reginald Owen), then divide the wealth between them. Based on the novel by Rosamund Marshall, Kitty ends with the heroine in the arms of the penitent Milland. The opulent sets and costumes assembled for this film were too good for Paramount to waste; most of them popped up one year later in the Bob Hope vehicle Monsieur Beaucaire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this high-spirited musical comedy, J. Newport Bates (Eddie Bracken) is a millionaire who finds women are only interested in him for his money. When he becomes infatuated with Teddy Collins (Veronica Lake), a cigarette girl, he tries to hide his true identity from her, hoping she'll be interested in him for himself rather than his bank account. However, once Teddy figures out who he is, Bates drops her, and he is about to give up on women entirely when he meets Sue Thomas (Marjorie Reynolds), a nice girl who isn't interested in his money (or at least not yet). Musical satirists Spike Jones and his City Slickers also appear, though most prints are missing a bit from one of their musical numbers: a verse from a song that made fun of Eleanor Roosevelt was clipped after the film's initial engagements. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Colonel Breckinridge Marshall (Walter Catlett) of Clearwater, GA -- who puts on a big front but is actually only a step away from the poor house -- rents a luxurious townhouse in Manhattan in anticipation of the Carnegie Hall debut of his two daughters, singer Melinda (Gloria Jean) and pianist/singer Susannah (Martha O'Driscoll). But on their first night there, they hear strange noises and other disturbances, including the sound of someone tap-dancing -- Susannah runs for help to the next building, which turns out to be a nightclub where Olsen (Ole Olsen) and Johnson (Chic Johnson) are working, and finds herself in the middle of one of their "nut humor" Hellzapoppin'-style sketches. The two comics try to make amends by helping her out and find themselves up to their neck in strange warnings ("First is worst"), noises, and bizarre, ghostly apparations seemingly from nowhere, and alleged ghostly goings on. They eventually figure out that the house once belonged to one Wilbur Duffington, a wealthy ne'er-do-well out of New York's "gilded age" whose main hobbies were tap-dancing and drinking plum brandy, before he fell from a third-story window in the year 1900 at a party he was throwing. The boys reason that Wilbur, if he is there, might want to finish the party he was having the night he died; when that doesn't work, they reason out that he had to be a real square because he died in 1900, and so they bring in a swing band and a bunch of jitterbug dancers to drive him out -- that seems to do the trick, the ghost seemingly departing. But then the noises continue and the Marshalls are at their wits' end, until Olsen and Johnson accidentally discover far more sinister goings on, involving a band of criminals who have already committed one murder, something in that house worth killing for, and a plan to eliminate the Marshall family. Before it's over, a pitched battle ensues between the heroes and a band of costumed thugs (including a pair of ill-tempered dwarves), and a race against time to get the Marshall girls to a performance on time to save their careers, plus the unmasking of the man behind all of the mayhem, all intermixed with lots of Olsen and Johnson's patented nut-humor and the presence of a pre-Sky King Kirby Grant leading a band, singing, and playing a violin. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The career girl in this PRC musical is Joan (Frances Langford), a Kansas City gal with showbiz aspirations. She heads to New York, where she sets up residence in a theatrical boarding house straight out of Stage Door. A few setbacks later, Joan lands the lead in a Broadway musical revue, which despite its threadbare production values (a PRC trademark) bids fair to be the hit of the season. Endearingly old-fashioned, Career Girl puts over its clichés with energy and verve. Besides, any picture with wisecracking Iris Adrian in a large role can't be all bad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A strong contender for the title of Universal's worst horror film of the 1940s, Jungle Woman continued the melodramatic exploits of "Ape-Woman" Paula Dupree (Acquanetta from Captive Wild Woman) including seemingly endless "flashback" footage. (Captive, of course, had itself "benefitted" from plenty of stock footage courtesy of the studio's 1933 Clyde Beatty film, The Big Cage.) Poor Dupree is found roaming an all-too familiar back lot jungle and is once again captured by a scientist (J. Carrol Naish), who proceeds to torment the girl to death. At his trial, Dr. Carl Fletcher is acquitted when he proves that the girl was not only more simian than human, but jealously stalked the good doctor's lovely daughter (Lois Collier). Fletcher is acquitted after an excursion to the morgue, where the body of Dupree has indeed transformed into that of an "Ape Woman." The film's odorous repute, even among the most ardent Z-movie apologists, stems mainly from its overuse of stock footage and some notoriously rotten acting. The studio's "Scream Queen," first-billed Evelyn Ankers, basically walked through her repeating role as Beth Mason and the film's only comedy relief was provided by the patently unfunny Edward M. Hyans, Jr., whose eventual demise thus came as a true relief. Worst of all, Irish-American character actor J. Carrol Naish, who was between Academy Award-nominated performances in Sahara (1943) and A Medal for Benny (1945), delivered perhaps the only bad performance of his long career as the not-so-mad doctor. Acquanetta (né Mildred Davenport), a former fashion model claiming to be the result of a liaison between an Arapaho princess and British royalty, was allowed to speak this time around, a fact which hasn't exactly enhanced the film's reputation either. Starlet Julie London was lucky; her small role as one of Lois Collier's friends landed on the cutting-room floor. The third and final installment in Universal's "Paula, the Ape Woman" trilogy, The Jungle Captive (1945), replaced Acquanetta (who had become a "goodwill ambassador" to South America for President Roosevelt) with 18-year-old starlet Vicky Lane. The series' strongest critic at the time, John T. McManus, actually took Universal to task for spreading "Nazi propaganda" through the work of legendary make-up artist Jack Pierce. "In Mein Kampf," McManus wrote, "Hitler calls the Negro a 'half-born ape.' Jungle Woman illustrates the point, changing a Hollywood glamor girl into an ape and vice versa with the Negro stage inserted right where Hitler says...Apparently it is to be an annual outrage unless somebody passes a law against propounding Nazi race theories in America." Still much debated today, Jungle Woman has a certain notoriety for modern audiences. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Someone in London has driven several prominent men to madness and suicide. Normally, Scotland Yard would call in Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) to help solve the case, but Holmes has recently perished in an accident. Or has he? Officially declared dead, Holmes is able to move about undetected as he tries to find out who's behind the rash of suicides -- and why. The culprit turns out to be the bewitching, deadly Andrea Spedding (Gale Sondergaard), and for once, Holmes seems to have met his match. The now-famous climax finds a bound-and-gagged Holmes hidden behind a shooting-gallery target, while his faithful assistant, Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce), unwittingly prepares to blast away at the target with live ammunition (in wartime, yet). Filled to overflowing with amusing dialogue and devilishly clever plot twists (one of them involving an autistic pygmy!), Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman is among the best of the Universal Holmes series. Best bit: told to "act inconspicuous," Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) ceremoniously rolls his eyes upward and begins whistling loudly -- whereupon Dr. Watson chides him with "Inconspicuous, Lestrade, not half-witted." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this melodrama, a doctor returns to his home town to set out his shingle. He was born on the poor side of town and so has had a life-long anger towards the town's wealthiest family. When the daughter of this family comes in for treatment, he finds himself faced with a dilemma. A bout with meningitis has left her deaf. He has a new drug that can cure deafness. Will he use it, or will he let his anger prevent him from helping her? ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Female dogs tend to shed while in heat; this is why all the collies who've played doggy heroine Lassie in the movies have actually been well-disguised males. A magnificent animal named Pal was the screen's first Lassie in 1943's Lassie Come Home. Set in Yorkshire during the first World War, the film gets under way when the poverty-stricken parents (Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester) of young Joe Carraclough (Roddy McDowall) are forced to sell his beloved Lassie. While her new master, the duke of Rudling (Nigel Bruce), is pleasant enough, Lassie prefers the company of Joe and repeatedly escapes. Even when cared for by the duke's affectionate granddaughter, Priscilla (Elizabeth Taylor), Lassie insists upon heading back to her original home. This time, however, the trip is much longer, and Lassie must depend upon the kindness of strangers, notably farmers Dally (Dame May Whitty) and Dan'l Fadden (Ben Webster) and handyman Rowlie (Edmund Gwenn). Based on the novel by Eric Knight (originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post), Lassie Come Home was released quite some time after Knight's death. Like all the Lassie sequels turned out by MGM between 1943 and 1951, Lassie Come Home was lensed in Technicolor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For his first independently-produced starring effort, James Cagney chose the sentimental drama Johnny Come Lately. Cagney plays itinerant newspaperman Tom Richards, who wanders into a small corruption-ridden town. Striking up a friendship with elderly Vinnie McLeod (Grace George in her only movie appearance), the editor of the local newspaper, Tom tries to help Vinnie exposed the community's crooked politicians. He is thwarted in his efforts until Gashouse Mary (Marjorie Main), a wealthy dowager with a shady past, exposes the machinations behind a phony Orphan's Fund. At the insistence of star Cagney, the cast of Johnny Come Lately was filled with familiar character actors (Hattie McDaniel, Edward McNamara, George Cleveland, Margaret Hamilton, Lucien Littlefield) who are herein offered a lot more screen time than was customary. Based on the Louis Bromfield novel McLeod's Folly, Johnny Come Lately was produced by Cagney's brother William; the film garnered an Oscar nomination for Leigh Harline's nostalgic musical score. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

RKO horror producer Val Lewton dished up seven reels of brooding psychological terror with The Ghost Ship. Richard Dix stars as the ship's captain, a tortured soul who teeters on the verge of madness. Seaman Russell Wade notices the captain's deterioration, but his warnings are dismissed by the crew. Captain Dix completely goes over the edge, sadistically playing a game of cat and mouse with the luckless Wade--and endangering the lives of everyone on board. While the viewer may notice that Ghost Ship closely resembles the Jack London tale The Sea Wolf, playwrights Samuel R. Golding and Norbert Faulkner felt that the film was too close for comfort to an unproduced play of their own. The writers sued RKO, forcing the studio to withdraw Ghost Ship from theatres and prohibiting future TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide