Cecil Cunningham Movies

Hugh Herbert is the head of The Family Next Door; he's a plumber of modest means and questionable skills. The rest of Herbert's family would love to climb the social ladder and improve their lot, but their dreams are always compromised by papa's ineptitude. In time-honored fashion, Hugh saves the day at the last minute with a sudden act of acute competence. Ruth Donnelly plays Herbert's beleaguered wife, while Eddie Quillan is the oldest son. Universal Studios' The Family Next Door looks like it was intended as the vanguard of a "B" series which never materialized. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Laugh it Off was one of two Johnny Downs vehicles released within the same week in December of 1939 (the other was Bad Boy). Downs plays Stephen Hannis, a Broadway bandleader who aspires to become a lawyer. He gets his big break when he champions the cause of a group of elderly ex-chorus dancers who've been booted out of their retirement home. The thorn in the hero's side is gangster Phil Ferranti (Horace McMahon), who wants to take over operation of the home for his own nefarious purposes. Among the venerable damsels appearing in Laugh it Off are Marjorie Rambeau, Cecil Cunningham and Hedda Hopper, the latter already well established as a Hollywood columnist. For romantic purposes, Johnny Downs is teamed up with a somewhat younger showgirl, played by Constance Moore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

M.G.M.'s opulent costume drama Marie Antoinette marked a return to the screen after a two-year absence for reigning Queen of M.G.M. Norma Shearer. Shearer plays the title role of an Austrian princess who is married off to Louis Auguste (Robert Morley), the Dauphin of France. Marie, by becoming the Dauphine, finds herself plopped smack in the middle of French palace intrigue between Louis's father King Louis XV (John Barrymore) and his scheming cousin, the Duke of Orleans (Joseph Schildkraut). With Louis unable to consummate his marriage to Marie, she takes to holding elaborate parties and gambling her fortune away. In a casino, she meets the handsome Count Axel de Fersen (Tyrone Power) and they have an affair. But when Louis XV dies and Louis becomes King Louis XVI, Fersen takes his leave, telling her that he could carry on an affair with a dauphine but not the Queen of France. Marie vows to be a great queen and remain loyal to her king. But the Duke of Orleans is plotting against Louis XVI, financing the revolutionary radicals. When the monarchy is overthrown, Louis and Marie are thrown into prison, awaiting execution. But when word gets back to Fersen, he travels back to France in an attempt to rescue Marie. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

James Whale's Wives Under Suspicion is remake of Whale's own 1933 production A Kiss Before the Mirror, with a few noticeable concessions for the more militant censors of 1938. District attorney Jim Stowell (Warren William) is convinced that every murder should be sentenced to the electric chair, regardless of motive or circumstances. He remains steadfast in this belief as he prosecutes an elderly professor (Ralph Morgan) for murdering his wife in a fit of jealous rage. But while relaxing at home one evening in the company of his lovely but somewhat neglected young wife Lucy (Gail Patrick), Stowell's own jealousy is aroused by Lucy's response to the innocent attentions of young family friend Phil (William Lundigan). As the days pass, Stowell cannot suppress his own urge to kill his wife and her supposed lover. An eleventh-hour plot twist prevents him from making the same mistake as the old professor-and also gives him a new perspective on the quality of mercy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this often funny crime melodrama, a librarian moves to a small town and finds herself the butt of local gossip. While the town young men strut their stuff before her, the old biddies make her the topic of many bridge parties. The initially harmless gossip takes a nasty twist when a murder occurs and the girl finds herself shouldering the blame. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, wealthy girls attend boarding school to learn proper etiquette. The well-mannered character of the class is disrupted when one of the proper young women plans to elope with a handsome young simpleton. Unfortunately she is outfoxed by a young teacher who elopes with the boy before she can. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy a millionaire must somehow dissuade his daughter from marrying a money-grubbing social-climber. In desperation he offers to back the show of a beautiful starlet--provided she break his daughter's heart. Things don't go exactly as planned, but a lot of fun is had along the way. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Anna May Wong, who cornered the 1930s market in Eurasian heroines, stars in Daughter of Shanghai. Wong is on the trail of the criminals who murdered her father. The villains are running an illegal-alien operation, smuggling cheap Chinese and Mexican labor into San Francisco and killing those unlucky souls who prove "inconvenient". Wong takes a job as an exotic dancer in a Central American nitery, hoping to trap the murderers in the act. Though J. Carroll Naish and Buster Crabbe are top-billed, the actual hero of Daughter of Shanghai is Chinese actor Philip Ahn, playing an FBI agent protecting Wong from the bad guys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Akim Tamiroff, Paramount Pictures' resident crime lord, runs all illegal gambling activities in a major city. Reporter Lloyd Nolan struggles to get the goods on Tamiroff, but runs up against a stone wall until he meets nightclub singer Claire Trevor. Trevor is anxious to avenge the death of her sister (Helen Burgess), who was done in by Tamiroff's minions. Though only a "B" picture, King of Gamblers was given "A" treatment by director Robert Florey. The film was part of an unofficial Paramount series based on the J. Edgar Hoover book Persons in Hiding. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of 1932's Guilty as Hell, Night Club Scandal also borrows a page from 1934's Murder at the Vanities by depicting the "friendly adversary" relationship between a reporter (Lynne Overman) and a cop (Charles Bickford). Top-billed John Barrymore plays a respectable doctor married to a nightclub singer (Evelyn Brent), who murders his wife and frames the victim's lover for the crime. Overman and Bickford spot holes in Barrymore's story, bringing him to justice by Reel Seven. The murder plot is standard stuff, but the main attraction of Night Club Scandal is the aggressively masculine love/hate byplay between tipsy Lynne Overman and flint-eyed Charles Bickford. The best moment occurs at the end, when the wide-eyed ingenue (Louise Campbell) doesn't marry the fellow the audience expects her to! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in his life: he just wants enough time to practice his tuba and compose greeting-card doggerel. When Deeds is convinced to move to New York, hard-boiled newspaper reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) is dispatched to get the inside scoop on "The Cinderella Man." Babe's stories of Deeds' eccentricities and no-nonsense dealings with phonies and poseurs provide excellent headline fodder; but she begins to regret her actions, having fallen in love with the big lug. Deeds ultimately sets up a foundation to dispense his fortune to the country's neediest souls, on the proviso that the recipients do their best to get back on their feet, a turn of events that leads his lawyer John Cedar (Douglas Dumbrille) to try to have him declared insane. By the end of the sanity hearing, the judge (H. B. Walker) declares: "Not only are you sane, but you're the sanest man who ever walked in this courtroom!" A joyously unadulterated hunk of Frank Capra-corn, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was adapted by Robert Riskin from Clarence Buddington Kelland's short story "Opera Hat." In addition to the pleasure of watching the country bumpkin outwit city slickers, the movie is a film buff's dream, boasting one of the best character-actor casts ever assembled for a single film. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the film won Frank Capra his second Oscar (out of three) as Best Director. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

No relation to the 1951 Cary Grant film of the same name, People Will Talk was another of Paramount's moneymaking comedies starring Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland. This time the middle-aged pair try to patch up the marriage of their daughter (Leila Hyams) and son-in-law (Dean Jagger, with hair). They do this to quell the local gossip mongers, who have been set abuzz by the fact that daughter has come home alone. Ruggles and Boland stage a fake fight, hoping to shame their daughter into returning to her husband--and, as expected, the phony quarrel turns into the genuine article. People Will Talk was coscripted by Broadwayite Herbert Fields, the son of famed 1890s comedian Lew Fields and brother of lyricist Dorothy Fields. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An Edgar Wallace yarn was the basis for the uncharacteristic Warner Bros. melodrama Return of the Terror. Hoping to escape prosecution for a series of poison murders, Dr. Redmayne (John Halliday) feigns insanity at his trial. The audience knows that Redmayne is innocent, so when he escapes from the asylum and a new rash of murders breaks out, the good doctor is instantly scratched off the suspect list. But this time the audience has been led up the garden path, as proven in the over-the-top finale. The presence of Mary Astor and Frank McHugh in the cast reassures the audience that this is indeed a Warner production and not something out of Universal or Monogram. Return of the Terror is a remake of The Terror (1928), the studio's first all-talking horror film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide