Kathryn Grant Movies

The title character in this silent, two-reel Our Gang comedy is lovable Mr. Tuttle, played by Richard Daniels, the father of freckle-faced Gang regular Mickey Daniels. The kids love to hang around Tuttle's shoe-repair shop, and he in turn enjoys their company, even when they get a bit too rambunctious for their own good. In a typical Our Gang plot twist, Tuttle receives a letter informing him that his back-pension has arrived. Exultantly he invites the gang on a picnic to celebrate -- a riotous sequence capped by a standard "watermelon" gag involving black youngster Allen "Farina" Hoskins. The Cobbler was originally released on February 18, 1923. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Originally intended as a 3D film, this standard-issue Bob Hope musical comedy was released "flat." The 50-year-old Hope plays over-aged chorus boy Stanley Snodgrass, whose attempts to get ahead in the early 20th-century theatre world always come acropper. His luck suddenly changes when he's promoted to the leading-man role in a show headlined by Irene Bailey (Arlene Dahl). What Stanley doesn't know is that he's been set up as a decoy to bring the murderous Jack the Slasher (Robert Strauss) out in the open. It seems that Jack is obsessed with Irene, and has a nasty habit of cutting all of her male co-stars into ribbons. Meanwhile, Stanley lays waste to the show by performing all of his big numbers incorrectly, but his faithful gal Daisy Crockett (Rosemary Clooney) loves him all the same. Tony Martin also appears as Irene's boyfriend, while Millard Mitchell makes his final film appearance as Stanley's stepfather (and never mind that he and Hope were the same age!) A brief clip from Here Come the Girls showed up in, of all places, the 1953 sci-fier Conquest of Space. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartments around his courtyard. As he watches his neighbors, he assigns them such roles and character names as "Miss Torso" (Georgine Darcy), a professional dancer with a healthy social life or "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn), a middle-aged woman who entertains nonexistent gentlemen callers. Of particular interest is seemingly mild-mannered travelling salesman Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who is saddled with a nagging, invalid wife. One afternoon, Thorwald pulls down his window shade, and his wife's incessant bray comes to a sudden halt. Out of boredom, Jeffries casually concocts a scenario in which Thorwald has murdered his wife and disposed of the body in gruesome fashion. Trouble is, Jeffries' musings just might happen to be the truth. One of Alfred Hitchcock's very best efforts, Rear Window is a crackling suspense film that also ranks with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) as one of the movies' most trenchant dissections of voyeurism. As in most Hitchcock films, the protagonist is a seemingly ordinary man who gets himself in trouble for his secret desires. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Cell 2455 Death Row is based on the autobiography of condemned prisoner and "jailhouse lawyer" Caryl Chessman. William Campbell plays the Chessman counterpart, here renamed Whit. A seriously disturbed misfit, Whit begins a life of crime, culminating in sexual assault as the "Lover's Lane Bandit." Condemned to the gas chamber at San Quentin, Whit spends six years fighting his sentence, gradually winning the support and sometimes the respect of various legal experts. The film ends in 1955 (the year of its production), some five years before Caryl Chessman's ultimate execution; accordingly, the film's "open-ended" finale has been removed from many TV prints. A more thorough and incisive study of the Chessman case was offered in the made-for-TV movie Kill Me If You Can, which starred Alan Alda. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on actual events, The Phenix City Story tells the tale of a wide-open "Sin City" in Alabama (across a bridge from Columbus, GA, and just a stone's throw from the Ft. Benning Army base) where gambling, prostitution, and any number of other vices were tolerated openly by the law, most of it centered on the main downtown drag, 14th Street, thanks to the 50-year influence of organized crime on the local government. Reform groups, mostly in the form of vigilantes, had tried to clean up "the wickedest city in the United States" before, even taking the law into their own hands and wrecking some of the establishments, only to be stymied by the courts (which were otherwise indifferent to activities on 14th Street). At the outset of the movie, set in 1954 -- when the actual events took place -- a new reform group is trying to organize and attempting to get the city's most prominent attorney, Albert Patterson (John McIntire) on their side; so are the club owners on 14th Street, led by Rhett Tanner (Edward Andrews), a cheerful, affable sort with a mean streak not far from the surface. But Patterson wants no part of either side's activities -- he's been a reformer, even a successful candidate, only to see his efforts come to little, and has also successfully defended Tanner and the others on 14th Street in an investigation of a murder of which they weren't guilty. Now he's old, and he wants to sit back with his wife and enjoy the return of his army office/lawyer son, John (Richard Kiley), and his family from Germany. But when the 14th Street boys, led by Clem Wilson (John Larch), go too far beating up Patterson's friends, and involve his son John, and then turn to murder and intimidation, it forces the elder Patterson and his son to join the reformers.

The Phenix City Story runs 87 minutes, but most prints also include a 13-minute preface, compiled from newsreel footage and interviews with the original participants, that provides background on the events that inspired the film (and also spoils a few plot points). Ironically, given the negative image that it portrays of Alabama, the movie was surprisingly well-received in the state at the time; residents were simply fascinated by and taken with the notion of a feature film set in their home state and even including a couple of actual local residents in its cast. Director Phil Karlson was to enjoy even greater success 18 years later with a similar story about one man fighting a city turned bad, Walking Tall, which included many similarly staged action scenes amid its somewhat wider plot-canvas. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Trouble brews when a widowed, small town librarian takes a stand against censorship. The trouble begins when the town fathers ask that she remove a book from the shelf because they deem it a pro-communist tract and fear it will taint susceptible young minds. She sees the idiocy of their request and defies them. They in turn fire her and replace her with her old friend and assistant. The town judge considers the whole mess a gross miscarriage of justice and demands a trial. This gives an ambitious young lawyer, the boyfriend of the new librarian the opportunity to do a little grandstanding by publicly proclaiming the highly-principled widow a communist. The poor woman suddenly finds herself the town pariah; her only remaining friend is a small boy she used to talk to in the library. He plays a key role in restoring her good name. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The "hipster" dialogue bandied about in The Wild Party is reason enough to sit through this curious time capsule. Anthony Quinn stars as an embittered ex-athlete who seeks an escape from his dead-end existence. Unfortunately, Quinn opts for a life of crime when he ties up with unemployed pianist Nehemiah Persoff, petty thief Jay Robinson and mixed-up girl Kathryn Grant. The trio impulsively kidnap naval officer Arthur Franz and his fiancee Carol Ohmart, hoping to shake down Franz for a huge sum of money. Not unexpectedly, the whole scheme blows up in the schemers' faces. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Mister Cory represented the first of several successful collaborations between star Tony Curtis and director Blake Edwards. Adapted from a story by Leo Rosten, the story details the rise of Mr. Cory (Curtis) from summer-resort busboy to high-stakes gambler. Along the way, Cory uses several close associates to get ahead, including sluttish socialite Abby Vollard (Martha Hyer) and Abby's virtuous young sister Jen (Kathryn Grant). Charles Bickford delivers a sturdy performance as the worldly-wise older gambler who becomes Cory's partner and severest critic. Judging by the number of times it has recently popped up on Cable TV, Mister Cory is one of the most enduringly popular of Tony Curtis' 1950s vehicles. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this frantic service comedy, a group of bored-to-tears American GI's stationed at a medical facility in France would like nothing more than to have a big party to let off steam -- except for the possibility of having a big party with some of the nurses they work with. However, it seems that the nurses are officers and the GI's are enlisted men, which means the Army forbids them to socialize, and Capt. Locke (Ernie Kovacs), the camp's Commanding Officer, is not a man to bend the rules. But Private Hogan (Jack Lemmon) is not the sort of guy to let the rules get in the way of a good time, and with the help of Yancy Skibo (Mickey Rooney), a sergeant with a talent for scaring up needed supplies, and Mme. LaFour (Jeanne Manet), a local hotel manager with a soft spot for making money off American servicemen, Hogan hatches a plan to make his dream a reality. Hogan's lady friend, Lt. Betty Bixby (Kathryn Grant), isn't quite as convinced as her beau on the potential success of this scheme. Operation Mad Ball was the first directorial effort from former actor Richard Quine, and afforded Jack Lemmon his first starring role; Blake Edwards also contributed to the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Whilst Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) is on his way to Baghdad, transporting the Princess Parisa (Kathryn Grant), who is to become his bride and secure peace between her kingdom and his, the ship encounters the isle of Colossa. Sinbad and his men are attacked by a gigantic, bestial one-eyed Cyclops, and are saved only when the mysterious magician Sokurah (Torin Thatcher) appears and uses a magic lamp to protect Sinbad's men. But in the process of escaping harm, Sokurah loses the lamp to the Cyclops. He desperately wants to retrieve it and tries to persuade Sinbad to put about and return to Colossa -- but the captain won't jeopardize the safety of the princess or the success of his mission, and the Caliph of Baghdad (Alec Mango) feels the same way, even after Sokurah amazes the court by conjuring up a snake-woman. It is only when the princess is shrunk by an evil spell, the breaking of which requires the shell from the egg of the giant Roc -- which resides on Colossa -- that Sokurah can get his expedition mounted, with Sinbad in command. With a crew made up of a handful of his bravest men and some of the most desperate convicts in the Caliph's prison, he has to contend with potential mutiny at every turn, and the men are driven almost to madness before they even reach Colossa. Once there, they find terrors as great as the Cyclops and the treachery of the magician, but Parisa -- in her tiny state -- also discovers the beautiful world inside the lamp, and the lonely boy genie (Richard Eyer) who inhabits it. They strike the bargain that, when Sinbad's bravery is added to the equation, will bring their quest to an end. If, that is, they can all survive the dangers that Sokurah puts in their path. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

1001 Arabian Nights was the first animated feature film produced by the "progressive" UPA cartoon firm. The studio had originally planned to feature its star attraction, the nearsighted Mr. Magoo, in an adaptation of Don Quixote scripted by no less than Aldous Huxley. But Columbia, UPA's distributor, didn't think that a Quixote film would sell to the kiddie trade, so the studio settled on the oft-used "Aladdin's Lamp" story. It might have worked better had Magoo portrayed a bumbling genie; instead, the Myopic One is cast as Aladdin's uncle, a wholly extraneous character who has no bearing on the plot or its outcome. Beyond its script shortcomings, 1001 Arabian Nights boasts an attractive production design and color scheme, as well as some pleasant voicework by Dwayne Hickman, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Hans Conried and Herschel Bernardi. Many of the character designs seen in Arabian Nights were reused on UPA's weekly 1964 TV series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on the best-selling novel by Robert Traver (the pseudonym for Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker), Anatomy of a Murder stars James Stewart as seat-of-the-pants Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler. Through the intervention of his alcoholic mentor, Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O'Connell), Biegler accepts the case of one Lt. Manion (Ben Gazzara), an unlovable lout who has murdered a local bar owner. Manion admits that he committed the crime, citing as his motive the victim's rape of the alluring Mrs. Manion (Lee Remick). Faced with the formidable opposition of big-city prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott), Biegler hopes to win freedom for his client by using as his defense the argument of "irresistible impulse." Also featured in the cast is Eve Arden as Biegler's sardonic secretary, Katherine Grant as the woman who inherits the dead man's business, and Joseph N. Welch -- who in real life was the defense attorney in the Army-McCarthy hearings -- as the ever-patient judge. The progressive-jazz musical score is provided by Duke Ellington, who also appears in a brief scene. Producer/director Otto Preminger once more pushed the envelope in Anatomy of a Murder by utilizing technical terminology referring to sexual penetration, which up until 1959 was a cinematic no-no. Contrary to popular belief, Preminger was not merely being faithful to the novel; most of the banter about "panties" and "semen," not to mention the 11-hour courtroom revelation, was invented for the film. Anatomy of a Murder was filmed on location in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this made-for-TV shocker, a young sorority pledge (Kay Lenz) gets even for being humiliated in a hazing prank. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi