William Collier Movies

A heated rivalry between two newspapers provides the basis for this mystery. The trouble begins when a corpse is discovered in the gossip columnist's apartment. It is a puzzling mystery until a rival reporter confesses that he killed the fellow in a drunken rage and hid the body in the columnist's apartment. The despairing killer then throws himself beneath a speeding train. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this action drama, a war correspondent finds a gun-runners agent and ends up falling in love with her. To escape those that pursue him, the ring-leader pretends to suicide. Then to start a war, he sinks a ship. Later he is killed by his agent. Unfortunately, during the scuffle, she is mortally wounded. As the film fades out, she dies in the correspondent's arms. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert seemed to make a career out of playing plucky heiresses with minds of their own, which sums up her character well in this romantic comedy. When her wealthy father goes broke, Jeanette Desmereau (Claudette Colbert) decides she should find a job of her own, applying for work as a writer at a magazine edited by hot-headed Cyrus Anderson (Fred MacMurray). Jack Bristow (Robert Young), one of the staffers, tells Cyrus about Jeanette's misfortunes, and while he's not initially swayed by this tale of woe, Cyrus buckles under and hires her, primarily because Jack has lobbied strongly for her (which might have something to do with the fact he finds her attractive). While Jeanette and Cyrus don't get along well at first, when the irresistible force meets the immovable object, something has to give and before long the two fall in love. Cyrus and Jeanette make tentative plans to marry, but when Jeanette decides to do Cyrus a favor and clean up his very sloppy bachelor apartment, Cyrus becomes furiously angry and calls off the wedding. After this, Jeanette is just as angry with Cyrus and Jack, waiting in the wings, steps in; she impulsively decides to marry Jack, and they hit the road for Indiana for a date with the Justice of the Peace. Cyrus realizes just how big a mistake he has made, and points his motorcycle toward Indiana to stop the marriage before it's too late. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A dedicated priest sets up a mission in the slums of a great metropolitan city, hoping to clean up the community by cleansing the souls of its denizens. The plot concentrates on one of these unfortunates, a falsely accused convict played by William Collier Jr. Released from jail, Collier returns to his tenement neighborhood, seeking revenge on the man who framed him. But upon meeting mission worker Blanche Mehaffey, the ex-girlfriend of his would-be victim, Collier vows to change his ways. He also sees to it that his two ex-cellmates (Murray Smith and James Bradbury Jr., a sort of poor man's Laurel and Hardy) will likewise follow the straight and narrow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first "talkie" gangster movie to capture the public's imagination, Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar started a cycle of crime-related movies that Warner Bros. rode across the ensuing decade and right into World War II with titles such as All Through the Night (1941). At the start of the picture, Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello (Edward G. Robinson, made up to look a lot like the real-life Al Capone) and his friend Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) are robbing a gas station -- later on, at a diner, they're looking over a newspaper and see a story about Diamond Pete Montana (Ralph Ince), a gangster so well known that he gets headlines and stories written about how powerful he is. That's what Rico wants, more than money or anything else: to be czar of the underworld and "not just another mug." Joe admits that sometimes he just thinks of trying to become what he wanted to be when he started out: a professional dancer. They head east to Chicago (which is never named, but with the talk of the north side and the territories, you know what city it is) and Rico talks his way into the local mob run by Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields). The leader has his doubts over how quick Rico is to go for his gun, but also thinks he might be useful if he is as fearless as he says and can be kept under control.

Soon Rico is Sam's top enforcer and bodyguard, but it isn't long before he starts acting like the boss, questioning other members' loyalty and bravery and pushing into Sam's role as leader. He also commands the loyalty of the gang through his resourcefulness at planning and pulling jobs that are tough and risky, and getting away with them; the only exception is Joe, their respectable "front man," who has found romance with an actress (Glenda Farrell) and a career, and wants out of helping the gang. Rico won't let him leave, and pushes him to help them on a brazen New Year's Eve robbery of a restaurant, during which the new crime commissioner is shot dead by Rico. Now the heat is on, but instead of keeping a low profile, Rico seizes control of the gang from Sam and secures his power by ruthlessly rubbing out the only member (William Collier) who seems likely to squeal, gunning the man down on the steps of a church. Before long, Rico is the first among equals among the local mob chieftains, sharing a dais at a dinner honoring him with his nominal boss and one-time idol Diamond Pete. He's also making enemies by the bushel -- Flaherty (Thomas E. Jackson), the cop heading the investigation into the murder of the commissioner, won't let up and makes it his personal business to nail Rico, and the rival chieftains don't like the publicity Rico's getting or the attention it brings to all of them. Rico survives attempts on his life and consolidates his hold on the streets, and is suddenly on the edge of achieving his goal -- the "Big Boy" (Sidney Blackmer), the wealthy social Brahmin who really controls crimes in the city, invites him to a meeting to tell him that Diamond Pete is finished. Rico is going to be in charge of the rackets across the entire city and making sure the local bosses stay in line. He is at the pinnacle of his career, and then Rico overreaches -- he can still be nailed for the murder of the commissioner, and is paranoid enough not to trust Joe, even though Joe helped saved Rico's life and insists that he'll never squeal; Rico also plans on supplanting the Big Boy. His rise to power unravels as fast as it happened, in an outburst of violence that drives him underground. But with an ego as big as his, Rico can't stay hidden for too long, and Flaherty is waiting for him.

The violence in Little Caesar may seem tame by today's standards -- although seeing a proper print of the movie, such as the 2005-issued DVD, does restore some of that impact -- but it was shocking at the time, and proved riveting and even seductive, especially because it was tied to a very charismatic performance by Robinson. Between his portrayal and the sounds of pistols and Thompson submachine guns, the movie was a sensory revelation and literalized the violence that had been suggested purely by visuals in such silent gangster classics as Josef Von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), itself yet another telling of a version of Capone's story. The language was also something newly coarse and bracing in movies, at a point when talkies were only a couple of years old. There's also a slightly homoerotic undertone to aspects of the character relationships that managed to get past the censors: Rico doesn't drink and seems uninterested in women; his fixation on Joe Massara, and his seeming competition for Massara's loyalty with the latter's fiancée, are couched in what seem like almost romantic terms; and his feeling of betrayal when Massara says he wants to leave the mob to get married seem almost more appropriate to someone caught in a romantic triangle. This is all made especially vivid when Rico laments not having killed Massara, admitting that he's been undone over "liking a guy too much." It's all nearly as striking as some of the more pointed psychological elements in subsequent gangster movies, including Tony Camonte's incestuous fixation on his own sister in Scarface (1932) and, at the far end of the cycle, Cody Jarrett's mother-fixation in White Heat (1949). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide