Joseph Crehan Movies

In this drama, a husband becomes a single parent after his wife dies in childbirth. He is so engrossed in his newspaper career that he pays little attention to his daughter. He then meets and falls for a woman who chastises him for ignoring the child. He has just begun reestablishing his relationship with his daughter and is about to marry the woman when a convict escapes from prison and goes looking for the woman, who testified against him in court, to exact his murderous revenge. Fortunately, her fiance saves her and happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Man Betrayed in this Republic actioner is hero Eddie Nugent, though this doesn't occur until the film is half over. Framed for a murder he didn't commit, Nugent finds support from an unlikely corner: a group of crooks, led by John Wray, set about to prove the boy's innocence. All of this meets with the benign approval of clergyman Lloyd Hughes, whose beatific good influence turns out to be contagious. Evidently intended to be longer than its present 58 minutes, Man Betrayed contains several gaping plot and continuity holes, the result of what seems to have been ruthless wholesale editing. The film makes even less sense on TV, where it was pared down to 53 minutes -- and then, to accommodate extra commercials, was whittled down further to 48 minutes (whew)! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A middle-aged Clark Gable returned from active duty in World War II to star in this MGM release that was heavily advertised as his big comeback. Gable is Harry Patterson, the bosun mate on a merchant marine vessel, a tough sailor and fighter with the proverbial girl in every port. But while in a San Francisco library, looking up a book on the human soul for his sidekick Mudgin (Thomas Mitchell), who thinks his soul has departed his body, Harry meets librarian Emily Sears (Greer Garson), whom he woos, marries, and leaves to sail off on another freighter. When he returns, Emily has retreated to an old farm to await the birth of their child. Harry continues to resent staying in one place, but he ultimately changes his tune when his baby's life hangs in the balance. Garson and Joan Blondell, playing her outspoken best friend, are both terrific, and Gable gives a less heroic performance that's a thoughtful change for him, although critics at the time were less than charitable. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

His Aunt Sophie (Helen Westley) and his teacher Professor Heinrich (Jean Hersholt) are sure that Roger Grant (Tyrone Power) will be a famous classical violinist, but Roger's more interested in popular music. He and his friend, pianist Charlie (Don Ameche), audition at a saloon in San Francisco's Barbary Coast, using sheet music left by singer Stella Kirby (Alice Faye), which had been sent to her by a friend in New York, Irving Berlin. The number, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," proves to be a sensation, and Stella goes along with Charlie's plea to sing with the band, which soon becomes famous for its ragtime numbers. Charlie has fallen in love with Stella by the time they open at the Cliff House, but he soon realizes that she and Roger are in love. Stella is invited to New York by a famous producer, but Roger's against this, and angrily fires her, so Charlie quits, too. When Roger returns from World War I, he meets Stella, only to learn she and Charlie have been married for a year. Another year passes, and Charlie and Davey have formed a new band with Jerry Allen (Ethel Merman) as their lead singer. Charlie knows Stella still loves Roger, so he divorces her, but Roger sails for Europe with the new band. Back in New York, Roger is set for a major concert in swing at Carnegie Hall. Charlie tells Roger about the divorce, and that Stella still loves him. Unable to get a ticket, Stella listens to the concert in a cab. Explaining that he is playing it for one particular person, Roger and his band perform "Alexander's Ragtime Band" as their encore, bringing Stella into the theater, where she's reconciled with Roger. He brings her onstage to perform the number with his band. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

In this rollicking adaptation of Ring Lardner's short story, Joe E. Brown plays an ace baseball player whose insistence upon making up excuses earns him the nickname "Alibi Ike." In the course of his first season with the Chicago Cubs, Brown also falls in love with Olivia De Havilland, sister-in-law of the team's manager. Brown's "alibi" habit prompts De Havilland to walk out on him, whereupon he goes into a slump-- which coincides with attempts by gamblers to get Brown to throw the World Series. The plot weaves its way towards a climax in which Brown escapes the gamblers by commandeering an ambulance and driving onto the ball field during the final Series game. Alibi Ike was the most successful of Joe E. Brown's "baseball trilogy" (which included Elmer the Great and Fireman Save My Child), and one the best baseball comedies of all time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Yards and yards of stock footage from the old German jungle actioner Green Hell were used to pad out the 1949 programmer Amazon Quest. Tom Neal stars as a Dutchman who journeys into the wilds of Brazil to find his father. Neal hopes to clear the name of his dad, who has been accused of deserting his family and friends for a native girl but who was actually on a secret mission on behalf of a major rubber-manufacturing concern. As he ventures deeper into a studio-built forest, Neal finds romance in the shape of Amazonian Carole Mathews. The stock footage is rather clumsily matched with the newly-shot scenes, but director S.K. Seeley manages to keep things moving fast enough to deflect the audience's attention from the film's flaws. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When David O. Selznick produced the film version of the 1000-plus page novel Gone with the Wind, he declared he could not make a film running any less than 222 minutes. When Warner Bros. adapted the even longer Hervey Allen best-seller Anthony Adverse, the studio managed to pack everything--except the most censorable passages, which had made Allen's novel a best-seller in the first place--into 139 minutes. Surprisingly, the film version of Anthony Adverse moves rather smoothly, though it is nowhere near as involving (or as much fun) as Gone with the Wind. Fredric March stars as Anthony Adverse, the illegitimate offspring of Anita Louise, the wife of Spanish nobleman Claude Rains. When Adverse comes of age, he inherits the prosperous business run by his kindly foster father Edmund Gwenn, which he abandons for an aimless trip around the world after his heart is broken by childhood sweetheart Olivia De Havilland. Sinking deeper into the morass of alcohol and degeneracy in the West Indies, Adverse is regenerated when he is reunited with De Havilland, now the mistress of Napoleon Bonaparte. Suddenly enervated, Adverse battles the efforts of Claude Rains and Gwenn's duplicitous former assistant Gale Sondergaard to take over Gwenn's business. Along the way, he learns that Gwenn was actually his grandfather and that De Havilland has born him a son (Scotty Beckett). Instead of dying, as he does in the novel, Anthony Adverse takes his son to America to start life anew. Whew! Though no award winner itself, Anthony Adverse enabled Gale Sondergaard to win the first-ever "best supporting actress" Oscar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This fun-filled spin-off of the Rodgers & Hart Broadway musical by the same name, features Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney as two young children of vaudevillian parents who aren't included in their parents travels, so they set out to produce a show of their own. Rooney's the driver here and he's up against the administrators of a fogy state-run trade school, who think the whole show idea is nonsense. A listening judge gives them 30 days to put on the show and prove they don't belong in the jail-like school. The rest of the action involves the highly talented kids successful efforts to not only stage the show, but to bring the whole troupe to Broadway. ~ All Movie Guide

One of the more notorious "sex hygiene" exploitation melodramas of the 1940s, Because of Eve began its long life in 1948 as The Story of Life. Bob (John Parker) and Sally (Wanda McKay) are expecting their first child when Sally learns that Bob had once suffered from venereal disease. Although kindly Dr. West (Joseph Crehan) assures the young woman that there is no remaining trace of the malady, Sally declares that she will sooner be married to a leper and storms out. Realizing that the couple needs education on the topic, the good doctor trots out two documentaries on venereal diseases and their effects and cures. Not only are Bob and Sally treated to these clinical films on screen but so were the paying customers who went to see the much ballyhooed Because of Eve. In most places, the screening then came to an abrupt halt as a certain "Mr. Alexander Leeds" proceeded to lecture the auditorium, while actresses dressed up as nurses sold pamflets with titles such as "Love and Marriage; As it Concerns the Modern Teenager," and "The Frigid Husband." Produced by one William Daniel Bacon (whom some careless historians have confused with famed cinematographer William Daniels), Because of Eve was "road-shown" for years around the country, often employing the so-called "four-walling" method of renting a local theater outright for a flat fee. Joseph Crehan, a dignified character actor who twice had played Ulysses S. Grant on film, acted essentially the same crusading doctor in the similar Street Corner (1948). Brunette Wanda McKay is today perhaps best remembered for her many roles in Monogram potboilers and such B-Westerns as The Medico of Painted Springs (1941) and The Royal Mounted Patrol (1941), both with Charles Starrett. Needless to say, Because of Eve was not exactly a shining moment in their careers. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Brian Donlevy was well enough established as a film personality in 1939 that he didn't have to accept the leading role in the Columbia "B" Behind Prison Gates. But like many other actors, Donlevy realized that Columbia treated character actors like stars-and boy, did he ever want to be a star. In this no-frills prison drama, Donlevy plays an undercover agent who goes "in stir" to locate the money stolen by a pair of cop-killing bandits. He almost pulls it off, but then someone recognizes him. Jacqueline Wells assumes the "gal on the outside" role generally played by Anne Sheridan over at Warner Bros. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Never mind the title Bengal Tiger; Warner Bros. wasn't about to make a full-fledged jungle epic on a B-picture budget, so most of the action takes place in a stateside circus. At base, the film is Warners' 1936 edition of its 1932 hit Tiger Shark, resurrecting the "old guy and young guy battling over the same girl" bit. Animal trainer Barton MacLaine and his younger assistant Warren Hull duke it out over beautiful June Travis. Things come to a pretty pass when the titular tiger escapes during a circus fire. MacLaine is ingested while trying to corral the beast, and Hull ends up with the girl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Like many 1930s Warner Bros. films, Black Fury drew its inspiration from the headlines. The story is adapted from a true-life incident from 1929, wherein a striking Pennsylvania coal miner was beaten to death by three company detectives; this served as the focus for Henry R. Irving's stage play Bohunk as well as Judge M. A. Musmanno's story Jan Volkanik, both of which were woven into Black Fury's screenplay. Using a Polish accent so thick one can cut it with scissors, Paul Muni plays an illiterate miner, happy in his job and his company-town surroundings until his girl Karen Morley deserts him for policeman William Gargan. A disconsolate, drunken Muni stumbles into a labor meeting, where his loud, unthinking outbursts win him the leadership of the new miner's union. When the company locks out the strikers and brings in scabs, the angry miners hold the thick-headed Muni responsible. Fellow miner John Qualen, Muni's best friend, is then killed by a gang of rampaging hired goons. Vowing to "feex" the situation, Muni kidnaps head goon Barton MacLaine and takes him into the bowels of the mine with several sticks of dynamite in tow. Muni threatens to blow himself, MacLaine, and the mine to smithereens unless management comes to terms with the union. Thanks to overwhelming public support, the owners capitulate, and Muni is the hero of the hour. Though it seemed uncompromising in 1935, Black Fury obviously pulls its punches when seen today; for example, it is suggested that the mine owners are guiltless regarding violence against the strikers, laying blame on the hired detectives, who are shown to be in the employ of a crook who plays both sides against the other. Even allowing for this, Black Fury is one of the most powerful of Warners' "social conscience" films. Although the Academy gave Muni a Best Supporting Actor nod for this film, the AMPAS database indicates that it wasn't an "official nomination" - he was a write-in candidate, and came in second. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Through a miscarriage of justice, John Ingram (Edward G. Robinson) is convicted of a crime he did not commit and sentenced to a long stretch on a chain gang in the deep South. In time, Ingram flees to Oklahoma, where he makes a living fighting oil fires under an assumed name. Several years later, he has a successful business, a loving wife (Ruth Hussey), and a child. But he still lives in fear that his secret will be revealed, and one day he's visited by William Ramey (Gene Lockhart). Ramey admits that he committed the crime for which Ingram was convicted; he proposes that they meet with the authorities together, and Ramey will sign a confession that will clear Ingram's name. But Ramey instead double-crosses Ingram, putting him back on the chain gang while Ramey lays claim to his business. Before long, Ingram learns that his wife and child are nearly broke thanks to Ramey's gutting of his once-thriving business, and he decides that he must once again escape if he is to protect the safety of his family. Blackmail marked one of Edward G. Robinson's first "good guy" roles after making his name in a series of gangster epics; a year later, he would be starring in prestigious biopics, such as Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet and A Dispatch From Reuters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide