Ed Kelso Movies

In this musical, a struggling young singer falls in love with a nightclub owner whose father mistakes her for someone else and tries to convince her to serve a summons at the club. Fortunately, the love between the youngsters prevails. Music and happiness ensues. Songs include: Stormy Weather" (Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler) and "Just a Little Fond Affection" (Elton Box, Desmond Cox, Lewis Ilda), Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five with "Don't Worry About the Mule" (William Davis, Duke Groner, Charles Stewart), "A Tender Word Will Mend It All" (Doris Fisher, Allan Roberts) "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh), "Oh, Brother" (Matt Melneck, Allie Wrubel), "After All This Time" (Paul DeFur, Ken Thompson), and "Caledonia" (Fleecie Moore). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Sgt. Andy Mason Jr. (James Ellison) is on the eve of shipping out from New York with his unit -- he's the son of Andrew Mason Sr. (Eugene Pallette), a wealthy, blustery Wall Street financier. While paying respects to his father and the latter's business partner, dithering fuss-budget Peyton Potter (Edward Everett Horton), at the Club New Yorker, he spots chorus girl Eadie Allen (Alice Faye) and turns on the charm and all of the allure that the ne'er-do-well son of a Wall Street millionaire can muster. That, however, doesn't impress Eadie, who ignores his invitation so she can do her patriotic bit helping servicemen at the Stage Door Canteen (or, as it's called here, the "Broadway Canteen"). Realizing how down to earth and genuine she is -- exactly the kind of girl who doesn't care about his money or social position -- Andy shows a bit of the boyish innocence he has hidden beneath the arrogance that comes from his background of wealth and privilege, and also some humility, hiding that background and his real name. Before the night and their "date" on the Staten Island Ferry are over, they're genuinely in love with each other, but that presents a problem -- since age 12, Andy has been unofficially "engaged" to Potter's daughter Vivian (Sheila Ryan), who expects to marry him, and he can't quite bring himself to hurt Vivian by telling her that he's met someone else.

Flash forward a few months, and Andy is on his way home on leave, a hero in the Pacific, and his father is so proud that he has to do something special to honor him, trying to rent out the Club New Yorker for a party but discovering that it's closed for rehearsals of a new production. Suddenly, his fatherly devotion, patriotism, and Wall Street experience all click together -- he brings the entire performing company, plus Benny Goodman's band, up to his and Potter's adjoining estates in Westchester to stage their act for his upscale neighbors and friends as part of the biggest War Bond rally ever seen (minimum admission a new 5,000-dollar War Bond), and in the process giving his son the biggest party he's ever seen. This leads to more comic turns for Horton's Potter, as a man who would make coffee nervous -- especially around show people -- but delights his ex-dancer wife (Charlotte Greenwood). That's also how Eadie and Vivian end up at the Potter mansion together, comparing notes on their remarkably similar respective fiancés. When the show's star, Dorita (Carmen Miranda), lets the cat out of the bag, it looks like Andy may lose Eadie, who can't bear to lose Andy but also won't even try to take him away from Vivian, who loves him too, but has loved him a lot longer. But while they sort out their romance, the show must go on, and go on it does. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

A better-than-average crime thriller from Poverty Row company Monogram, the plainly titled Criminal Investigator (aka Crime Reporter) stars Robert Lowery in the title role, an intrepid sleuth who discovers that the two cases he has been investigating have something in common. A deaf-and-dumb inmate (Lawrence Creighton) possesses some of the answers to the mysterious slaying of Joyce Greeley (Vivian Wilcox), a lady with a past, and the hero quickly discovers that murderers Miss Drake (Jan Wiley) and Soapy (Charles Hall) are answering to someone of importance. But who? There is a damsel-in-distress (former child star Edith Fellows) to save and several red herrings to dismiss before young Bob Martin (Robert Lowery) can wrap up this particular investigation. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, the police endeavor to destroy the oppressive protection racket that has been plaguing their city. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This upbeat WW II-era musical features performances by the Andrews Sisters and Harry James as it tells the story of a rebellious young inductee who has trouble toeing the line until he meets a retired officer's lovely daughter. James and his band are also drafted and decide to perk up their camp by putting on a big show. Of the many songs featured, the best known is the Andrews' rendition of "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else but Me"." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set in the Caribbean shortly before the U.S. was drawn into WWII, this zombie chiller tells the tale of an American special agent who, along with his butler and a pilot, is sent out to find a missing American Admiral, whose plane crashed on one of the islands. Unfortunately, the hero's plane also crashes. Fortunately, a suave but sinister German doctor with a very strange wife is there to help them. The doctor explains that his spouse is in a strange trance and he is trying to find a cure. The butler soon discovers that she is not the only one; the island is teeming with zombies. When the butler tries to tell his employer, the employer refuses to believe in "voodoo hocus pocus." The butler and the pilot find themselves entranced. Fortunately, the agent is still around to solve the mystery of the zombies and to confront the culprit, an enemy spy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Monogram publicity machine advertised Gang's All Here as a story of "Young Americans Fighting for Their Rights." Young driver Frankie (Frankie Darro) decides to take on a gang of truck hijackers single-handed, running into opposition from the crooked district manager behind the crime spree. Frankie is aided and abetted by undercover insurance investigator George (Keye Luke), boss' daughter Patsy (Marcia Mae Jones) and longtime pal Jefferson (Mantan Moreland). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Top Sergeant Mulligan was Monogram Pictures' attempt to cash in on the popularity of such service comedies as Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates and Laurel & Hardy's Great Guns. Frank Faylen and Charlie Hall (a longtime Laurel & Hardy foil) star as Dolan and Doolittle, a pair of goofy druggists who join the army to escape the wrath of bill collector Mulligan (Nat Pendleton, a carryover from Buck Privates). So guess who turns out to be our heroes' drill sergeant? (Hint: the film's title gives it away). Evidently deciding that Faylen and Hall couldn't carry the picture by themselves, Monogram stocked the supporting cast with an abundance of top laughmakers, including black comedian Wonderful Smith, late of Red Skelton's radio show. The film's two leading ladies are Carol Hughes (Mrs. Frank Faylen in real life) and Marjorie Reynolds, the latter singing (in a dubbed voice) the topical song hit "21 Dollars a Day-Once a Month." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a young woman shows two dogs at the championship competition at Madison Square Garden and when the two dogs get into a fight, they are both disqualified. The girl decides that she cannot keep them both and decides to sell her least favorite. Unfortunately, her servant loves that dog and secretly smuggles it aboard his mistress' plane on the way back for Canada. When the plane crashes, the dog survives and runs off to bring back help. Some of the racial stereotypes contained in this film may be offensive to contemporary viewers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Tex Ritter, Monogram' low-budget answer to Republic's Gene Autry, got himself a new sidekick in rangy Nelson McDowell in the otherwise dull Roll, Wagons, Roll. Executive producer Edward F. Finney only allowed two songs -- Roll Wagon Wheels, by Dorcas Cochran and Charles Rosoff, and Oh, Suzannah, by Stephen Foster -- and the Western included enough stock footage -- some dating back to the silent era -- that it barely qualified as a new feature film. Ritter and McDowell played army scouts attempting to lead a wagon train safely through hostile territory. The Indians, as it turns out, are under the influence of an evil white fur trader, Coleman (Reed Howes). The wagon master, Grimes (Tom London), who is in cahoots with Coleman, has Ritter and McDowell fired on a trumped-up charge of conspiring with the Indians but the two friends manage to alert the cavalry and the wagon train is saved in the nick of time. Muriel Evans. Ritter's blond leading lady, also appeared in his next film, Westbound Stage (1940). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Filmed after the star and his producer already had signed a new deal with rival company Monogram, this Grand National Tex Ritter Western slashed the usual parsimonious budget even further by recycling the entire final reel of Ritter's previous Sing, Cowboy, Sing. Filmed back-to-back with Utah Trail, Ritter's final Grand National Western, Rollin' Plains once again burdened the star with perhaps the worst comic sidekicks available at the time, Horace Murphy and Snub Pollard, the latter still sporting the paint-on mustache he had used since the silent days at Keystone. The three played rangers coming to the assistance of Gospel Moody (silent screen star Hobart Bosworth), a cattle rancher in trouble with an ornery sheepman, Trigger Gargan (Charles King). Soon, Gospel is accused of killing old Hank Tomlin (Horace B. Carpenter), an act actually committed by his half-brother Cain (Ernie S. Adams). With Tex's help, Moody stages his own "death," only to come back as a "ghost." Accompanied by a group calling themselves The Beverly Hill Billies, Ritter performed Rollin' Plains by Whitcup, Samuels and Powell, Me, My Pal and My Pony by Frank Harford, and Rock of Ages by Augustus Montague Toplady and Thomas Hastings. Hank Worden, a friend of Ritter's from his days on Broadway, appeared in a bit part, still billed under his real name, Heber Snow. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The "Three Mesquiteers"--John Wayne, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune--find themselves in the modern-day west in Overland Stage Raiders. The "stages" being raided are actually Greyhound buses, bearing gold shipments to the east. Airborne hijackers steal the gold, but the Mesquiteers vanquish the crooks, then parachute to safety. Overland Stage Raiders represents John Wayne's second appearance in Republic's Three Mesquiteers series, but never mind that. The film's leading lady was former silent star and future cult- figure Louise Brooks, the hauntingly beautiful leading lady of G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl and Pandora's Box, here making her last film appearance. When asked in later years why she would accept such an unprepossessing project, the no-nonsense Brooks replied that she needed the three hundred dollars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With the departure of John Wayne to more prestigious films, Robert Livingston returned to the role of Stony Brooke in Republic's "Three Mesquiteers" series. In Outlaws of Sonora, Stony and his saddle pals Tucson (Ray Corrigan) and Lullaby (Max Terhune) are hired by a cattleman's association. While transporting his employers' money to the bank, Stony is waylaid by an outlaw who is his exact double (Livingston plays both roles, of course). Keeping our hero under wraps, the villain poses as Stony in hopes of further financial gain. While thus disguised, the false Stony kills a banker, leaving Tucson and Lullaby to wonder if their good pal has gone bad. Eventually everything is straightened out, thanks to the intervention of sharp-witted Dr. Martin (Jack Mulhall). Outlaws of Sonora is one of the best-known "Three Mesquiteers" entries thanks to constant TV exposure and videocassette rentals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide