Esther Dale Movies

Viennese-born Luise Rainer plays a young Parisian girl who attends an exclusive drama school, working nights at a factory to pay the tuition. Despite the jealousies of her fellow students, Luise allows nothing to discourage her from her goal to become as great an actress as her idol (Gale Sondergaard). The girl wins the coveted role of Joan of Arc in an upcoming play, but the victory has a bitter taste when she realizes she's beaten out her idol for the part. At the end, Luise manages to have both a happy career and a successful marriage, even though her friends (and enemies) insist that such a combination is impossible. Dramatic School is a film buff's banquet; virtually every bit player in the cast (Ann Rutherford, Lana Turner, Dick Haymes, Hans Conried, etc.) later graduated to show-biz prominence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marriage Forbidden is the film version of Eugene Briaux' once-notorious 1912 stage drama Damaged Goods. This pioneering study of the consequences of venereal disease had been praised by none other than George Bernard Shaw; the film version likewise boasted a "famous name", muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair, who is credited with the adaptation. George (Douglas Walton), a young man from a good family, makes the mistake of going "all the way" with Margie (Phyllis Barry), a girl with a bad reputation. Feeling guilty, George tries to wriggle out of his upcoming marriage to Henrietta (Arletta Duncan), the daughter of a congressman. The wedding proceeds as planned, however, with the expected long-range tragic results for Henrietta and her child. Acting as the "voice of reason" is Pedro de Cordoba as kindly Dr. Walker. Produced in 1936 by Phil Goldstone (who directed under the name of Phil Stone), the film was first released as Damaged Goods in 1937, then under its Marriage Forbidden cognomen the following year. Neither version was able to earn a production code seal, and both ran into heavy censorship problems when distributed nationally. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a tightwad accountant for a newspaper becomes friends with a reporter. The bookkeeper goes on vacation, and while there he learns of a kidnapping conspiracy. He quickly phones the paper and they order him to follow up on the story and stay off the phone so the reporter (whom he secretly has a crush on) can use it. The paper also gives him a $25,000 expense account. He uses this money to make sure no other reporters can reach them. This insures that he will always get the scoop. His ploy increases sales of the paper and brings the crooks to justice. He also wins the heart of the reporter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

A Mississippi flood saves the life of a petty crook who is about to be lynched for a murder he did not commit. After he escapes, he flees to a nearby plantation where he and a woman (claiming to be his wife) are taken in and treated with great kindness. They are happy until the killer that framed the crook shows up. Things look bleak until once again, the Mighty Mississippi roars in to save the day. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A love triangle forms the basis of this drama. It all begins in a steel mill when a steel worker ignores the besotted gazes of his landlady at the boarding house and falls in love with a gold-digger. His best friend also finds himself smitten by the seductive young woman. But when the one of the workers fritters away a collection that had been taken up for the wife of a deceased co-worker on a foolish bet, he and the vamp take off until the good-hearted landlady intervenes and convinces them to stay and take their lumps. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this homespun comedy, a farm family in Iowa lead a pastoral existence until old Ma decides that they must pull up stakes and head for Hollywood so their daughter can become a movie star. As it turns out, it is Pa who becomes the movie star, while the domineering stage Ma almost destroys her daughter's love life with her obsession. To protect his kin, Pa takes the family back to their peaceful farm. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When wealthy Mr. Ames is murdered, his beautiful wife Hope (Madeleine Carroll) is the principal suspect. She is acquitted through lack of evidence, but it's hardly a happy ending: her son Bobbie (Scotty Beckett) is taken away from her by spiteful relatives, who poison the boy's mind against her. Making matters worse, assistant DA Matt Logan (George Brent) is still convinced that Hope is guilty. Upon seeing Hope's devotion to her child, Logan softens a bit and alters his strategy. He offers a huge reward for additional information pertaining to the case, ostensibly to prove Mrs. Ames' guilt, but actually to clear her name so that she and her son can be reunited. If the outcome of The Case Against Mrs. Ames seems predictable, it is only because the actor who plays the real murderer was nearly always revealed as the "surprise" culprit in the final reel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Great Impersonation is based on the E. Phillips Oppenheim espionage novel of the same name, previously filmed in 1921. During WW I, drunken, dissolute British nobleman Everard Dominey (Edmund Lowe) wanders into the African jungle, where he meets his exact double, German spy Von Ragenstein (also Edmund Lowe). The scene shifts back to England, where, apparently, Von Ragenstein has assumed Dominey's identity after the latter is reported killed. The actual identity of the protagonist is kept secret until the very end. Either way, it's a story of redemption: If he's really Von Ragenstein, he may very well be persuaded to cast his lot with the British; if he's really Dominey, he might just sober up and assume his proper place in society. The film is brightened by the presence of two former Bride of Frankenstein co-stars: Valerie Hobson, then only a teenager, delivers one of her best performances as Dominey's distraught wife, while Dwight Frye goes through his usual "Renfield" paces as a roving lunatic. Both the 1935 Great Impersonation and the 1945 remake with Ralph Bellamy and Evelyn Ankers were later included in Universal's "Shock Theater" TV package, even though both films are more suspenseful than shocking. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Oklahoma's own Will Rogers stars in In Old Kentucky. The storyline is in the grand tradition of most films about the Bluegrass State: There's a long-standing family feud, a pair of star-crossed lovers, and a crucial horse race. Rogers cuts through the banality with his seemingly off-the-cuff observations about Kentucky life in particular and the World in general. The best moment of In Old Kentucky has Rogers attempting to escape from jail by putting on blackface makeup and disguising himself as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson--whereupon he's forced to tap-dance to prove his identity. 1935's In Old Kentucky was the third film version of Charles T. Dazey's 1895 stage play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

If Columbia could make an acceptable movie star out of opera-diva Grace Moore, then RKO Radio could do the same with Lily Pons. At least that was producer Pandro S. Berman's reasoning when he cast Pons in the 1935 musical romance I Dream too Much. The actress plays Annette, a rural French musical student who marries struggling American composer Jonathan (Henry Fonda). Possessed of a splendid singing voice, our heroine rises to fame on the opera stage, while poor Jonathan continues struggling, supporting himself as a tour guide. Annette eventually saves her marriage by transforming her husband's "masterpiece," a rather turgid modernistic opera, into a light-hearted musical comedy. Lucille Ball, who'd later co-star with Henry Fonda in The Big Street and Yours, Mine and Ours, has a funny minor role as a gum-snapping tourist. Though Lily Pons was at least 10 years older than Fonda, they make an attractive and believable screen couple, adding credibility to this somewhat contrived yarn. And of course, Lily Pons is seen and heard to excellent advantage in a variety of solos, both brand-new (courtesy of Jerome Kern) and classical: In the closing production number, the svelte Ms. Pons is alluringly garbed in a revealing oriental costume, proving once and for all that women did have belly-buttons back in 1935! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This adaptation of the oft-filmed Jean Webster novel Daddy Long Legs has been tailored to the talents of Shirley Temple. The orphaned daughter of vaudeville entertainers, Elizabeth Blair (Temple) is the most precocious charge at super-strict Lakeside Orphanage, regularly disrupting protocol with her extemporaneous performance of such songs as "Animal Crackers in My Soup" at the dinner table. While paying a visit to the orphanage, wealthy trustee Edward Morgan (John Boles) is enchanted by cute little Elizabeth -- and even more so by the girls more mature sister Mary (Rochelle Hudson). He secretly arranges for the sisters' release from the institution, sets them up in a lavish mansion, and finances their education. When Mary almost falls in love with another man, it is miss-fixit Elizabeth who brings Mary and Edward together, capping this bit of cupidity with her trademarked exclamation "Oh, my goo'ness!" The first Shirley Temple vehicle specifically aimed at children, Curly Top contains some wonderful character bits from its adult cast, notably Etienne Girardot, Rafaela Ottiano and Jane Darwell as the orphanage officials and by Arthur Treacher and Billy Gilbert as the hero's household servants. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Crime Without Passion is an odd, almost existential murder yarn. Famed attorney Claude Rains, incensed that his mistress (Margo) has been seeing other men, kills the girl--or at least thinks he does. Rains believes he is "above" such irritations as conscience and morality, and calmly arranges to cover his crime, using his knowledge of the law to escape detection. But Rains cannot truly escape from himself, and is cajoled by a surprising turn of events to break down and confess. Crime without Passion was ostensibly directed by Ben Hecht, who cowrote the screenplay with his longtime partner Charles McArthur, but most of the actual direction was the responsibility of cameraman Lee Garmes. Watch for cameo appearances by Fanny Brice, by MacArthur's wife Helen Hayes, and by Hecht and MacArthur themselves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide