Sylvia Thalberg Movies

This crime drama is set in the fictional San Francisco eatery, Mary Grady's Chowder House which is presided over by the crusty Mary, a tough broad with a marshmallow heart. One of her regulars is a newspaper reporter who decides to write about the widow Grady's long lost son who disappeared 15-years-ago. The trouble begins when a vagabond fugitive, who got in trouble after trying to prevent a murder, learns of the reporter's search and decides to pretend to be the prodigal son. At first the gruff Mary and her adopted daughter are skeptical. But later when the detective who pursues the killer closes in, they end up defending the young man. When the fugitive sees a picture of Mary's late husband, he realizes that the real killer is Mary's estranged son. Soon the widow and the reporter begin putting things together and find themselves closer to finding her real son. They do not know what he has done so the good-hearted fugitive tries to thwart them at every turn. This puts him in grave danger, but this doesn't sway him. Unfortunately, he fails and Mary finds her long-lost offspring, and just after he admits that he is her son, he is killed in a police shoot out. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on the play by Sidney Howard (of Gone with the Wind and Dead End fame), Christopher Bean is a showcase for the magnificent Marie Dressler. She plays Abby, the poor but proud housekeeper of a small-town doctor (Lionel Barrymore), his wife (Beulah Bondi), and their children. Years before the story proper begins, Abby had been a close friend of Christopher Bean, a local painter who was treated as a pariah by the community because of his drunken misbehavior. After his death, however, Bean was acknowledged as a genius, and his paintings became extremely valuable. One of Bean's best works is a portrait that he painted of Abby -- and she refuses to part with it at any price, despite the entreaties of her avaricious employers. Sadly, Christopher Bean was Marie Dressler's final film; she died of cancer not long after its completion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Maggie Warren (Marie Dressler) is the matriarch of a banking family who has run the Warren Bank for years, until she turns it over to her son John (Norman Foster) to run, following his marriage to Helen (Anita Page). Maggie and Helen's mother Lizzie (Polly Moran) don't really get along that well, but they tolerate each other -- barely -- for the sake of the children and grandchildren. Then comes the stock market crash, and the Great Depression, and the wave of bank failures -- and a rumor that starts a run on Maggie's bank, just as her son has lost all of the personal bonds, with which she had always secured the depositors' holdings against such an emergency, in a get-rich-quick scheme that collapsed. It takes every bit of personal persuasiveness that Maggie can muster, along with a lot of luck, to keep the bank afloat, and Lizzie -- whose own holdings may have gone up in smoke with the rest of the bank's assets -- won't stop needling her. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

With a blonde wigged Joan Crawford offering one of her more high-handed performances, and veteran silent star Pauline Frederick doing her best to keep up, audiences are in for MGM soap-opera at its 1931 zenith. Reunited with her long-lost mother in Paris, Crawford fails to realize that the loving and dignified woman is actually kept by a Parisian roué Albert Conti. Although she briefly falls in with a fast crowd, headed by the alcoholic Monroe Owsley), Crawford, a good girl at heart, falls in love with visiting Harvard graduate Neil Hamilton, and he with her. But Hamilton's stern, puritanical parents (Hobart Bosworth and Emma Dunn) frown upon Crawford's Parisian friends, who rudely spoil a dignified but deadly dull evening of superficial conversation and bridge. When a disgusted Hamilton informs his upcoming bride about her mother's true metier, Crawford is at first disbelieving and then huffily breaks the engagement. A penitent Frederick agrees to leave her life as a kept woman, but when she realizes that her daughter still carries a torch for the stuffy Hamilton, she pretends to willingly return to Conti. Denouncing her mother, Crawford goes on a tryst with Owsley, but is returned by Hamilton, who reunites her with the self-sacrificing Miss Frederick. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Metropolitan opera star Grace Moore's second movie vehicle was the 1930 adaptation of the Oscar Hammerstein II-Sigmund Romberg operetta New Moon. On this occasion, Moore was teamed with another "Met" alumnus, baritone Lawrence Tibbertt. The stars are cast respectively as Tanya Strogoff, a White Russian princess slated to marry a man she does not love, and Michael Petroff, the handsome lieutenant whom she does love. The jilted fiance, Governor Boris Brusiloff (Adolphe Menjou) vows revenge, leading to a bloody military engagement in which even comedy-relief character Potkin (Gus Shy) is killed. Nonetheless, both hero and heroine live to love and sing again. The fact that the original operetta was set in 18th-century New Orleans rather than pre-Revolutionary Russia did not stop the screenwriters from utilizing most of the plot devices from the 1928 stage version. Likewise left intact were many of the timeless Hammerstein-Romberg tunes, including Lover Come Back to Me and Stout-Hearted Men. Despite its Slavic setting, New Moon was retitled Parisian Belle for television, to avoid confusion with the 1940 Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald remake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Strictly Unconventional offers two subplots united by irony. British wife Elizabeth (Catherine Dale Owen), weary of her much older M.P. husband Clive (Lewis Stone), dreams of running off with her handsome Canadian lover Ted (Paul Cavanaugh). Hoping to vicariously experience her fantasy, Elizabeth invites her mother-in-law Lady Kitty (Alison Skipworth), who years earlier had stirred up a scandal by leaving her husband in favor of the dashing Lord Proteus (Ernest Torrence), for a weekend party. Our heroine is sorely disillusioned when Lady Kitty turns out to be a superficial old windbag desperately trying to recapture her past while Lord Proteus is likewise -- old, fat, and fatuous. Astonishingly, Elizabeth fails to profit by this example and runs off with her lover all the same -- but only after she is convinced that Ted is not and never will be a Lord Proteus. Strictly Unconventional is a cleaned-up adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Circle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although both of their starring careers would be cut short by the talkie revolution, MGM house comedians Karl Dane and George K. Arthur were still riding high in 1929 with such silent vehicles as China Bound. In this outing, the towering Dane and the diminutive Arthur find themselves smack in the middle of a Chinese revolution. Endeavoring to escape, our heroes disguise themselves as "typical Orientals," buck teeth, pigtails, and all (which may be why this film isn't revived very often these days). Polly Moran, who appeared in most of the Dane-Arthur comedies, is back again in this adaptation of a screenplay by Sylvia Thalberg (sister of MGM head-honcho Irving Thalberg). After his fall from stardom, George K. Arthur went into the production end of the business, but Karl Dane was not so lucky; despondent over his dormant career, he committed suicide in 1934. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in 1917 with Frank Morgan and in 1921 with Fatty Arbuckle, Baby Mine was brought to the screen a third time in 1928. This time, the warhorse Margaret Mayo stage play was refashioned into a vehicle for the MGM comedy team of Karl Dane and George K. Arthur. The plot remains as always: Dane's wife Charlotte Greenwood, hoping to win back her husband after an argument, claims that she's delivered a bouncing baby boy. This time around, Dane and Arthur engage in some broad but hilarious byplay concerning diapers. There's also an amusing vignette involving a midget (smoking the inevitable cigar). For reasons unknown, Baby Mine was never remade as a talkie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide