Lawrence Edmund Taylor Movies

Despite its lack of production values and box-office "names," The Jackie Robinson Story is one of the best and most convincing baseball biopics ever filmed. Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson plays himself, and quite well indeed. The film traces Robinson's career from his college days, when he excelled as a track star at Pasadena College and as UCLA's All-Sports record holder. Upon his graduation, Robinson tries to get a coaching job, but this is the 1940s, and most doors are closed to black athletes. After serving in the army, Robinson plays with the Negro Baseball League, where his uncanny skills attract the attention of Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Anxious to break down the "color line" that exists in major-league baseball, Robinson is chosen in 1946 to play for the Brooklyn farm team in Montreal. In a harrowing sequence, Rickey lets Robinson know what he's in for by bombarding him with insults and racial slurs. The manager is merely testing Robinson's ability to withstand the pressure: he wants a black ballplayer "with guts enough not to fight back." Robinson agrees to ignore all racial epithets for the first two years of his Brooklyn contract. Despite the unabashed hatred to which he is subjected during his year with Montreal, Robinson steadfastly continues to turn the other cheek, and in 1947 he graduates to the Dodgers lineup. After a slow start, Robinson justifies the faith put in him by Rickey. The Dodgers win the pennant race, and slowly but surely the ban on black players vanishes in the Big Leagues. Though a model of restraint by 1990s standards, The Jackie Robinson Story is surprisingly frank in its detailing of the racial tensions of its own era. It falters only in a couple of silly vignettes involving comic-relief ballplayer Ben Lessey. The cast is uniformly fine, including Louise Beavers as Robinson's mother, Ruby Dee as his wife Rae (Dee would later play Robinson's mother in the 1990 TV movie The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson), Joel Fluellen as his brother Mac, Minor Watson as Branch Rickey, and best of all, Richard Lane as Montreal manager Clay Hopper. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

It's nice to see perennial supporting player (and future TV sportscaster) Richard Lane in a full-fledged leading role, even in an inconsequential "B" like Columbia's Devil Ship. Lane plays a tuna-boat skipper whose business is in the dumpster. To pad his income, he agrees to ship convicts to Alcatraz Island. You don't need a crystal ball to predict what happens next. The Devil Ship was produced by Martin E. Mooney, a real-life ex-jailbird who put together several low-budget prison pictures in the 1940s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

S.S. Van Dine's gentleman detective is reduced to an ordinary "hard boiled" gumshoe in this inexpensive mystery. Philo Vance (Alan Curtis) is hired by a magazine publisher, ostensibly as a technical advisor for a crime periodical. This is a cover for his "secret mission": to learn the truth behind the death of the publisher's former partner seven years earlier. When the publisher is himself killed, Vance learns that practically everyone who came in contact with the dead man had a motive. Vance gets to the bottom of things with the dubious help of his pretty secretary (Sheila Ryan). Philo Vance's Secret Mission was the fourteenth and final Hollywood film based on Van Dyne's creation. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ever so slightly, the quality of PRC Pictures' film output improved as the 1940s rolled on. In PRC's Dixie Jamboree, Frances Langford plays Susan Jackson, the daughter of a showboat skipper (Guy Kibbee). Captain Jackson's vessel, the Ellabelle, is the last of the Mississippi showboats, and as such has become a refuge for such social outcasts as con artists Tony (Lyle Talbot) and Curly (Frank Jenks), itinerant musician Jeff Calhoun (Eddie Quillan), and ham actors Yvette (Fifi D'Orsay) and the Professor (Charles Butterworth). When Jackson inadvertently picks up a shipment of whiskey, Tony and Curly, assuming that the captain is a wealthy distiller, plan to hijack the boat and its cargo. All of this is set to the music of Cajun ditties, black spirituals, and lively cakewalks, performed con brio by Frances Langford and company. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi