William Anthony McGuire Movies

Lillian Russell is the sanitized musical biopic of the legendary (and much-married) 19th century musical comedy star. Discovered in 1880 by bandleader Tony Pastor (Leo Carrillo), Lillian Russell (Alice Faye) wastes no time rising to fame and fortune on the Broadway stage. Along the way, she curries the favor of such eligible bachelors as newspaperman Alexander Moore (Henry Fonda), composer Edward Solomon (Don Ameche), and railroad tycoon Diamond Jim Brady (Edward Arnold). She marries the first two, and has a high old time (albeit chastely) with the third. The story ends with Russell's retirement in 1912, and her reunion with the one true love of her life. The film's hands-down highlight is a timeworn but classic routine involving those two Broadway comedy giants Joe Weber and Lew Fields, both of whom had appeared on-stage with the real Lillian Russell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, newlyweds soon discover that life in the fast lane is not as fun as it seems. As they both work for the same advertising agency, they can well afford the high life. They joyfully spend all their money on fast cars, country clubs, and booze. They begin to change their lifestyle after they encounter three social freeloaders who proceed to suck the newlyweds dry. Realizing that their life has caused them to fall deeply in debt, the lovers adopt a saner, slower lifestyle. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

More burdened with leaden production numbers than plot, Rosalie took Sigmund Romberg and George Gershwin's 1928 Broadway hit, threw out most of the songs, including "How Long Has This Been Going On?," but retained the spindly story of the incognito Princess Rosalie of Romanza (Eleanor Powell), who falls head-over-heels in love with All-American Dick Thorpe (Nelson Eddy), although she finds him conceited at first. But Dick gallantly flies to Romanza where the crooning Charles Lindbergh lands in the middle of yet another comic opera revolution. Rosalie, of course, is engaged to someone else, but after a series of misadventures and a colossal closing number, the star-crossed lovers decide to settle down together in democratic America. Cole Porter was hired to write a new score and Eleanor Powell, Nelson Eddy, and newcomer Ilona Massey perform "I've Got a Strange New Rhythm in My Heart," "Why Should I Care?," "Spring Love is in the Air," "It's all Over but the Shouting," "Who Knows?," "To Love and Not to Love," and, most memorably, "In the Still of the Night." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Lew Ayres and Patricia Ellis are the "official" stars of Let's Be Ritzy, but the film is dominated by Frank McHugh as brash radio performer Bill Damroy. In his efforts to appease his social-climbing girlfriend Betty (Isabel Jewell), Damroy gets young hero Jimmie (Lew Ayres) mixed up in all sorts of hair-brained schemes. As a result, it looks as though Jimmie and his young bride Ruth (Patricia Ellis) will never be able to scrape enough money together to rent their own apartment, much less "crash" society themselves. In addition to lavishing praise on Frank McHugh, reviewers in 1934 were quite taken by Robert McWade's performance as last-minute problem-solver Mr. Spelvin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in Germany shortly before the collapse of the Weimar Republic, this romantic drama chronicles the travails of an impoverished newlywed couple who leave their home village and move in with the groom's stepmother in bustling Berlin to find success. The husband gets a small job in a department store and things are okay until they discover that the stepmother is really a notorious madame and runs an exclusive brothel. This leads the groom to quit his job and take his pregnant bride on the road in search of opportunity. The plot is based on a novel by Hans Fallada. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this tepid melodrama, an aspiring writer and her boyfriend, a professional agitator head off to the Big Apple in search of good fortune. Unfortunately, the agitator soon finds himself in trouble with the cops. Meanwhile the writer attempts to become a Greenwich Village Bohemian type. She and her new friends are all starving for their art until a kindly gent offers them financial assistant. They refuse on principle. Tragedy pays a call when the writer learns that her boyfriend has been untrue. For a time she thinks seriously about ending it all. Fortunately, she reconsiders and success comes her way. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a young couple are forced to marry after they are accidentally locked in a store overnight. Unfortunately for the young groom, his overbearing mother is unhappy with the match and keeps trying to get them divorced. She even follows them on their honeymoon. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Easily the best of Eddie Cantor's gargantuan musical comedies for producer Sam Goldwyn, Roman Scandals begins in the middle-America community of West Rome, where our hero Eddie (Cantor) is employed as a delivery boy. A self-styled authority of Ancient Roman history, Cantor bemoans the fact that the local shanty community is about to be wiped out by scheming politicians, certain that such an outrage could never have happened during Rome's Golden Days. After a blow on the head, Cantor wakes up in Imperial Rome, where he is sold on the slave auction block to good-natured tribune Josephus (David Manners). Cantor soon discovers that the evil emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold) is every bit a crook and grafter as the politicians in West Rome, and he intends to do something about it. He gets a job as food taster for Valerius -- a none-too-secure position, inasmuch as the emperor's wife Agrippa (Veree Teasdale) is constantly trying to poison her husband -- and does his best to smooth the path of romance for Josephus and recently captured princess Sylvia (Gloria Stuart). Cantor's well-intentioned interference earns him a session in the torture chamber, but he escapes and commandeers a chariot, setting the stage for a spectacular slapstick climax. On the verge of recapture, Cantor wakes to find himself in West Rome U.S.A. again, where he quickly foils the modern-day despots and brings about a happy ending for all his friends.

Co-written by George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, George Oppenheimer and Arthur Sheekman (the soon-to-be husband of leading lady Gloria Stuart), Roman Scandals manages to get off a few clever satirical licks, but essentially it's a "lappy" lowbrow vehicle for Eddie Cantor, and in this it succeeds immensely. The Busby Berkeley-staged musical numbers, written by Harry Warren, Al Dubin and L. Wolfe Gilbert, must be seen to be believed: In "No More Love", Ruth Etting, playing the Emperor's cast-off mistress Olga, sings a plaintive torch song as dozens of enslaved Goldwyn Girls (including Lucille Ball and Barbara Pepper), wearing nothing but long, blonde wigs, are chained to a rotating pedestal; and in "Keep Young and Beautiful", these same maidens gleefully cavort around a Roman bathhouse in the near-altogether while Cantor, in blackface, hops about, rolls his eyes and claps his hands -- just before a jet of steam "shrinks" him, at which point he metamorphoses into midget Billy Barty! The quintessence of Depression-era escapism, Roman Scandals is must-see entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The moral of this drama could very well be for people to exercise caution with what they wish for as they just might get it. So it is with the lovely young woman who wins a beauty contest and the love of a millionaire, two things she had aspired to for ages. Unfortunately, her wealthy hubby is terribly possessive and occasionally, completely insane. One night, the husband really goes nuts and tries to feed his bride to the dogs. Fortunately, he slips and ends up dead himself. Later the sadder but wiser girl goes back to the man who has really loved her all along. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

As indicated by its "catchphrase" title, Okay America is one of several early-1930s films based on the exploits of gossip columnist Walter Winchell. The big surprise here is that the Winchell counterpart is played not by W.W. look-alike Lee Tracy, as was usually the case, but by baby-faced Lew Ayres. Caring little how many lives he's destroyed in his pursuit of sensationalism, columnist Larry Wayne (Lew Ayres) is arguably the most-hated man on Broadway -- and in some circles, the most influential. Wayne sticks his nose in everyone's business, including Caponelike gangster Alsotto (Edward Arnold) and the grief-stricken family of a kidnapped girl (Margaret Lindsay). Motivated by his lust for power and publicity, Wayne offers to rescue the kidnap victim, and in so doing absolves himself of his past misdeeds -- but not soon enough to avoid the terrible vengeance of the unforgiving Alssoto, whom he has double-crossed along the way. Its downbeat ending intact, Okay America was effectively remade as Risky Business in 1939. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though he'd intended to retire when talkies came in, silent-screen matinee idol Thomas Meighan kept returning to the screen by popular demand until 1934, two years before his death. In Skyline, Meighan is cast as James McClellan, a builder specializing in Manhattan skyscrapers. Though fiercely independent, McClellan generously takes on talented young architect John Breen (Hardie Albright) as his partner, nurturing his protégé into a successful career of his own. What McClellan knows, but Breen doesn't, is that the younger man is McClellan's illegitimate son. Before McClellan reveals the truth, there is an unpleasant story twist when Breen falls in love Paula Lambert (Myrna Loy), his father's mistress. Part and parcel of the film's happy ending is Breen's romance with ingenue Kathleen Kearney (Maureen O'Sullivan). Skyline is based on East Side, West Side, a novel by Felix Riesenberg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted from Owen Davis's stage comedy The Nervous Wreck (itself filmed in 1927), Flo Ziegfeld's musical spectacular Whoopee! was one of the solid hits of the 1928-29 Broadway season, thanks largely to the irrepressible Eddie Cantor. The property was transferred to film virtually intact in 1930, again produced by Ziegfeld (in collaboration with Sam Goldwyn) and again starring Cantor. The star plays Henry Williams, a wide-eyed hypochondriac who heads to a western resort town in the company of his long-suffering nurse Mary Custer (Ethel Shutta). Meanwhile, Wanenie (Paul Gregory), the son of an Indian chief, pines away out of love for white heiress Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt), who has been forbidden to marry Wanenie because of their racial differences. One of the most unsympathetic heroines in screen history, Sally coerces Henry into helping her elope then allows the poor boob to be accused of kidnapping. All sorts of zany complications ensue, not least of which is the side-splitting scene in which Henry, disguised as an Indian, adopts a thick Jewish accent while trying to sell a rug to a tourist. The Sally/Wanenie dilemma ends happily when the young man turns out not to be Indian after all, while Henry, cured of his ills by all the excitement, marries nurse Marie. The "Ziegfeld Touch" is most obvious in the final reels, when the story stops dead in its tracks to offer a long, drawn-out parade of "Glorified" Follies girls wearing enormous headdresses and precious little else. But the film's highlight is Eddie Cantor's sly, insinuating rendition of the title song, in which he details in humorous fashion the pitfalls of "makin' whoopee" with the wrong girl. Featured among the Goldwyn Girls are such future stars as Claire Dodd, Virginia Bruce, and 14-year-old Betty Grable, who energetically performs the very first chorus of the very first song in the film. Lensed in eye-pleasing early Technicolor, Whoopee was a success, launching a long and fruitful cinematic collaboration between Eddie Cantor and Sam Goldwyn. It was remade by Goldwyn in 1944 as Up in Arms, a showcase for the producer's "new Cantor" Danny Kaye. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide