William Moore Movies

In hopes of cashing in on the popularity of "Number One Cowboy" Gene Autry, a fly-by-night firm called Times Pictures reissued a shortened version of Autry's 1935 Mascot serial Phantom Empire under the title Men with Steel Faces. It will be remembered that the original plotline of this 12-episode chapter play required Autry to head to the underground city of Murania, where the evil Prime Minister Argo (Wheeler Oakman) plotted to overthrow Queen Tika (Dorothy Christie) and take over the Surface World. In addition, Gene had to take leave of Murania on a daily basis and return to his ranch, lest he jeopardize his radio singing contract! As silly as this was in 1935, it was even more ridiculous in 1940, especially when compared to Autry's slicker Republic singing westerns. Even so, Men with Steel Faces posted a profit, as did practically anything associated with the name of Gene Autry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though he would later dismiss it as "just a ten-day job," actor Conrad Nagel made a remarkably smooth directorial debut with Grand National's Love Takes Flight. Bruce Cabot stars as Neil Bradshaw, an egotistical commercial pilot in love with stewardess Joan Lawson (Beatrice Roberts). Somewhat incredibly, Neil becomes a movie star, jilting Joan in the process to taking up with vampish actress Diane Audre (Astrid Allwyn). Joan takes small comfort in the fact that she is also offered a Hollywood contract; to show up the swell-headed Neil, she matriculates into a champion aviatrix, breaking airborne records left and right. Before the inevitable reunion between Neil and Joan, the audience is treated to dozens of "product placement" plugs for American Airlines. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This hard-hitting Warner Bros. courtroom drama begins with the usual "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental" disclaimer. Filmgoers with long memories, however, recognized Robert Rossen and Aben Kandel's screenplay as a blow-by-blow recreation of the Leo Frank-Mary Phagan case of 1915. Phagan, a 14-year-old employee in a Marietta, GA pencil factory, was found murdered. The bulk of the evidence pointed to a black janitor (who actually confessed to the crime years after the fact), but race-baiting Atlanta newspaper publisher Tom Watson decided to go after Leo Frank, the Northern Jew who owned the factory where Mary worked. "We can lynch a nigger any time," the politically ambitious Watson is alleged to have said, "but when do we get a chance to hang a Yankee Jew?" Thanks largely to Watson's "guilt by headline" campaign, and to Fulton County's cooperative solicitor general, Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death. Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, who all along smelled something fishy in the case, commuted Frank's case to life imprisonment (and was ruined politically as a result). En route to prison, Frank was abducted by a mob and lynched, an incident that boosted the prestige of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. Aben Kandel dramatized this appalling miscarriage of justice in his novel Death in the Deep South, which served as the basis for They Won't Forget. In Mervyn LeRoy's film version, Lana Turner (in a star-making turn) plays Mary Clay, a teen-aged typing school student who dresses garishly and flirts with every man she meets. Mary is later found murdered; the last person to see her alive was her teacher, recently arrived Northerner Robert Hale (Edward Norris). Once more, a black janitor (played as a superstitious moron by Clinton Rosemond) is the most likely suspect, but the ambitious district attorney (Claude Rains) seems sincere in his belief that Hale is guilty. Once Hale is sentenced to death, the governor, played by Paul Everton, commutes his sentence, serene in the belief that, once his career is finished, he'll be able to retire peacefully (real-life governor Slaton did not go down so benignly). Except for the removal of the original case's anti-Semitic elements, They Won't Forget is stark, powerhouse filmmaking, one of the best of Warners' "social protest" films of the 1930s. It was remade as the 1987 TV movie The Murder of Mary Phagan starring Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, and Charles S. Dutton (as well as as the unsuccessful 1998 Broadway musical Parade). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Actual footage of the 1936 Rose Bowl game is cleverly (if not seamlessly) integrated into the action of this sports-oriented comedy. Longtime chums Paddy O'Reilly (Tom Brown) and Dutch Schultz (Benny Baker) may be heroes of the high-school gridiron, but they're persona non grata with the girls, thanks to campus lothario Ossie Merrill (Larry "Buster" Crabbe). Managing to get on the college football team in time for the Rose Bowl competition, Paddy and Dutch finally win out over Ossie by scoring the winning touchdown. Of interest in the cast as one of the campus cuties is curvaceous Priscilla Lawson, who'd previously starred as Princess Aura opposite Buster Crabbe in the Universal serial Flash Gordon. Also on hand is William Frawley, as-what else? -- a college football coach. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his first starring role, Gene Autry must perform daily on Radio Ranch or forfeit his contract. Meanwhile, local kids Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy Baxter (Betsy Ross King) establish a group of Junior Thunder Riders to emulate a mysterious band of horsemen that seems to vanish into thin air. In reality, the real Thunder Riders disappear 25,000 ft. below the earth's surface to the "Scientific City of Murania," an underground empire lorded over by Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy), a blonde Amazonian who constantly compares her superior society with that of the pitiful world above. But Gene's broadcasts draw too many curious onlookers, among them Professor Beetson (J. Frank Glendon) and a group of crooked scientists who will stop at nothing, including murder, to get their hands on Murania's wealth of radium. While Queen Tika is busy preventing an insurrection lead by the evil Lord High Chancellor (Wheeler Oakman), the scientists do their level best to keep Gene from performing his daily broadcast, which includes such favorite Autry tunes as "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine" and "I'm Getting a Moon's Eye View of the World". Comic sidekicks Smiley Burnette and William Moore add to the overall fun with their rendition of I'm Oscar, I'm Pete" and other comical selections. The Phantom Empire has been credited with inspiring not only Republic Pictures' similar Undersea Kingdom (1936) but also Universal's superior Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials and was remade as part of the short-lived 1979 television series Cliffhangers. No less than two reedited feature versions of The Phantom Empire were released in 1940, Men With Steel Faces, distributed by Times Pictures, and Radio Ranch, distributed by Nat Levine and carrying the now defunct Mascot label. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Both Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy (Betsy Ross King) survive the airplane crash no worse for wear but are quickly picked up by the Muranian Thunder Riders. Brought before Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy), the kids ridicule Murania in general and the queen in particular and are condemned to spend the remainder of their lives in "the lower dungeons." Happily, the Muranian guards are easily fooled and our young friends manage to evade their captors. An increasingly desperate Queen Tika orders the removal of the electric eye that operates the entrance to Murania, thus preventing Gene Autry) from reaching Frankie and Betsy. Henceforth, the entrance can only be opened from inside the control room, which is guarded by a dangerous radium beam. In order to escape Murania, Frankie breaks the beam and all hell breaks lose. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Both Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy (Betsy Ross King) manage to parachute to safety. Meanwhile, 25,000 feet below the surface, in Murania, Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy) sentences the captain of the Thunder Riders (Ray Bernard, later known as Ray "Crash" Corrigan) to death in The Lightning Chamber for failing to catch Gene Autry and thus prevent the continuation of the Radio Ranch, whose popularity threatens to expose the secret underground empire. But the captain, Ord, is spared by Argo (Wheeler Oakman), Murania's Lord High Chancellor, who is secretly planning to overthrow the queen. Back at the ranch, an incognito Gene comes across the rifle that killed his partner, Baxter, but Professor Beetson (J. Frank Glendon) and his thugs are right behind. Discovering too late that his getaway car is missing the brakes, Gene crashes over a steep cliff. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry, Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy (Betsy Ross King) all escape the tunnel explosion courtesy of the Junior Thunder Riders, who manage to unlock the secret exit. Planning to broadcast from a shack in the desert, the fugitive Autry is surprised by a Muranian lieutenant (George Magrill), whom he manages to subdue. Impersonating his captive, Gene is brought down to Murania to face Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy), who is displeased that her emissary let "Autry" slip away. Unmasked, a bemused Gene opines that Murania's dead air "is more suitable to rats and moles" than surface people. Taking great umbrage to such heresy, the Queen sentences the intruder to the electrical death chamber, where he is to be executed by a charge of 200,000 volts. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In the opening chapter of the Mascot serial The Phantom Empire, a stagecoach is held up for its content -- musical instruments. One of the "outlaws," a bashful young man, removes a fake mustache to address his radio audience: "Yes folks, it's Gene Autry making another raid on your time with his 'Radio Riders,' broadcasting from Radio Ranch." After a rendition of Smiley Burnette's "Uncle Noah's Ark", the airwaves are given over to teenagers Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy Baxter (Betsy Ross King), who relay the story of how they founded the "Thunder Riders' Club" for kids. Out riding in the desert one day, Frankie and Betsy spotted a group of strangely garbed horsemen who seemingly disappeared without a trace. Using old buckets as headgear, the kids' reenact the encounter and invite boys and girls to form their own groups and come visit a real radio show being produced. Unbeknownst to Gene and his radio performers, however, there is radium in them thar hills, and not only that; the ranch may also be situated on top of a secret treasure trove, the underground world of Murania, a "Scientific City" inhabited 100,000 years ago by people fleeing an ice age glacier. Professors Beetson (J. Frank Glendon) and Cooper (Edward Peil, Sr.) are after both the radium and the treasure and the former make a couple of unsuccessful attempts at Autry's life. The villains trace the radium to a place known as The Garden of Life, a development that greatly endangers the lives of the Muranian people 25,000 feet below. Their ruler, Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy), decrees the entrance to the Garden of Life be destroyed for good and the capture of Gene Autry, less the area be overrun by radio fans. Alerted to danger by the sound of the Thunder Riders, Frankie and Betsy discover a lost Gene in the desert. "Say, we have a broadcast at 2 o'clock," the rustic crooner exclaims. "If we miss it, we'll lose our contract!" Climbing down from the Garden of Life plateau, Gene, Frankie and Betsy can only watch as their rope is torn asunder by the Riders. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Anti-Communist politics and screwball romance make strange bedfellows in this comic tale that plays like a cross between the previous year's It Happened One Night (1934) and a less-sober version of a later generation's The Way We Were (1973). Barbara Stanwyck stars as Drue Van Allen, a college student whose father (Purnell Pratt) is a general in the U.S. Army. Dad is less than enthused with Drue's new beau Arner (Hardie Albright) because the lad is a propaganda-spouting Communist. The general would rather see Drue with Jeff (Robert Young), a handsome, all-American soldier who, despite the senior officer's endorsement, has chronic run-ins with authority and is about to go AWOL. When Drue and Jeff end up in a stolen trailer bound for Mexico, they get to know each other better, and General Van Allen sees a prime opportunity to get his daughter away from the red menace for keeps. Red Salute (1935) has also been exhibited under the titles Runaway Daughter and Her Enlisted Man. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Despite the deadly radium beam, Frankie Baxter (Frankie Darro) manages to pull the lever that opens the surface entrance to Murania, allowing Gene Autry and sidekicks Oscar (Smiley Burnette) and Pete (William Moore) entry to the underground empire. Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy) finally learns of Count Argo's treachery from Gene but the warning comes too late: Argo (Wheeler Oakman) is about to assume control over the entire palace and most of the empire. Knocked unconscious in the ensuing mayhem, Gene lands on a moving conveyor belt and is in grave danger of being incinerated by one of the Muranian worker robots. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide